Prof. Dr. Geert Verdoolaege

Geert Verdoolaege obtained the MSc degree in Theoretical Physics in 1999 and the PhD in Engineering Physics in 2006, both at Ghent University (UGent, Belgium). His PhD work concerned applications of Bayesian probability theory to plasma spectroscopy in fusion devices. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the field of computer vision at the University of Antwerp (2007–2008), working on probabilistic modeling of image textures using information geometry. From 2008 to 2010 he was with the department of Data Analysis at UGent, where he worked on modeling and estimation of brain activity, based on functional magnetic resonance imaging.

In 2010, Geert returned to the department of Applied Physics at UGent, first as a postdoctoral assistant and from 2014 to 2019 as a part-time assistant professor. In parallel, he was a researcher at the Laboratory for Plasma Physics of the Royal Military Academy (LPP–ERM/KMS) in Brussels. Since October 2019, he is a full-time associate professor in the department of Applied Physics at UGent, where he leads the research unit Nuclear Fusion. His research activities comprise development of data analysis techniques using methods from probability theory, machine learning and information geometry, and their application to nuclear fusion experiments.

Furthermore, Geert teaches courses on plasma physics and continuum mechanics at UGent and is involved in fusion education at the European level through interuniversity master and PhD programs and through his activities in the European Fusion Education Network FuseNet. He serves on the editorial board of the multidisciplinary journal Entropy and is a member of the scientific committees of several conferences on nuclear fusion and information science. In addition, he is a consulting expert in the International Tokamak Physics Activity (ITPA) Topical Groups on Diagnostics, as well as Transport and Confinement.