With the beginning of the new academic year, The Eindhoven Young Academy of Engineering is proud to welcome seven new members. Anna-Sophie Ulfert-Blank (IE&ES), Kynthia Chamilothori (IE&ES), Nikolaos Paterakis (EE), Michelle Spanjaards (ME), Pavlo Bazilinskyy (ID), Pepijn Moerman (CE&C and AP) and Tania Patino Padial (BME) will join 17 members representing TU/e across departments.
Anna-Sophie Ulfert-Blank
Anna-Sophie Ulfert-Blank is an Assistant Professor in the Human Performance Management group at the Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences. Her research focuses on how AI systems are integrated into human teams, with a particular interest in trust development, team adaptation, and the future of work. She combines insights from psychology, organizational science, and human-computer interaction to understand how intelligent technologies reshape collaboration.
She looks forward to being part of a vibrant community and critically discuss how AI is changing research and academic work - and what we can do to shape that change responsibly. She also cares about making academia more family-friendly and creating space for diverse career paths. EYAE offers a unique platform to push both conversations forward.
A fun fact about her is that she studies how AI earns human trust in teams - though Siri keeps undermining hers with spontaneous phone calls.
Kynthia Chamilothori
Kynthia Chamilothori is an Assistant Professor in the Human-Technology Interaction (HTI) group at the Eindhoven University of Technology since 2019. She received her PhD in Architecture from the Laboratory of Integrated Performance in Design at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2019, and her Master's degree (Dipl-Ing) in Architectural Engineering from the Technical University of Crete in 2014. Her research interests and expertise lie at the intersection of architecture, lighting, and environmental psychology, with a particular focus on how our surroundings can shape our emotions and behavior in supporting sustainability and pro-environmental behavior.
In recent years, she has been increasingly worried about the effects of human action on the Earth's climate and ecosystems, and our own roles as individuals and also as members of an academic institution in this. Within EYAE, she would like to hear from research staff (and students) about their eco-anxiety, their values regarding the environment, how they feel (or not) that their research and education align with those values, and ideas about what we could do further in TU/e about this.
A fun fact about her is that her favorite role in role-playing games (from World of Warcraft to Dungeons and Dragons) has always been that of a druid, which now explains a lot!
Nikolaos Paterakis
Nikolaos Paterakis is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Energy Systems group at the Department of Electrical Engineering. He addresses the challenge of embedding data-driven, scalable, and risk-aware optimization techniques in electrical power systems decision-making pipelines. He blends operations research, AI, and emerging computing technologies, such as quantum computing to enhance power system resilience and enable new electricity market structures and operational procedures.
Within EYAE he aims to better understand how policy that impacts everyone working and studying at TU/e is shaped. He is especially interested in working together with fellow EYAE members to constructively influencing the development of principled and future-proof policy in themes that are new to the university and very challenging to navigate, such as safety and security.
A fun fact about him is that his Erdös nummer is at most 4.
Michelle Spanjaards
Michelle Spanjaards is an Assistant Professor in the Microsystems section of the Mechanical Engineering department. Her research focuses on the development and application of numerical methods for the computation-guided design of bioinspired microsystems. Using advanced numerical methods and often seeking collaboration with experimental researchers, she aims to gain fundamental insights into the rheological behavior of soft materials in biomedical and microfluidic applications.
During her time at EYAE, she hopes to work on promoting interdisciplinarity and open science to foster collaboration, transparency, and innovation. Additionally, she hopes to work on improving TU/e's policies on recognition and rewards for scientific and non-scientific staff.
A fun fact about her is that she has a bit of a fascination for fossils and dinosaurs, and recently tried to incorporate this hobby into her research.
Pavlo Bazilinskyy
Pavlo Bazilinskyy is an Assistant Professor at the department of Industrial Design, focusing on AI-driven interaction between automated vehicles and other road users. He finished his PhD at TU Delft in auditory feedback for automated driving as a Marie Curie Fellow, where he also worked as a postdoc. He was the head of data research at NEXTdriver. Pavlo is the treasurer of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) and was a director of the Research and Innovation unit of the Erasmus Mundus Association (EMA).
He is committed to interdisciplinary teamwork and mentoring the next generation of researchers, who are driven by the motivation to advance our civilization and not just a high h-index. During his time at EYAE, he aims to promote open science, strengthen frameworks of interdisciplinary and international collaboration, and contribute to shaping evidence-based university policies. He also wants to support early-career researchers, expand public engagement with science, and ensure that research at TU/e translates into tangible societal benefits.
A fun fact about him is that he swam, cycled or ran in 71 countries.
Pepijn Moerman
Pepijn Moerman is an Assistant Professor and a soft matter physicist/chemist at the department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, interested in out-of-equilibrium self-organization. To achieve this, he engineers colloidal building blocks that can contain processes and exchange information with each other using tools from DNA nanotechnology. He joined Eindhoven University in 2022 after a PhD on colloidal self-assembly at Utrecht University, and a postdoc on DNA nanotechnology at Johns Hopkins.
He values five principles in the way he approaches his research: it is more important to be thorough than to be fast, it is better to be accurate than to be flashy, getting the research done is more important than getting credited for it, it is better to do few things well than to do many things poorly and it is better to fail and learn than to succeed without understanding why. During his time at EYAE, he hopes to learn about the policy and strategy decision-making processes at TU/e, and to help minimize the effects of the budget cuts on our core tasks: research and education.
A fun fact about him is that he is now working in a chemistry department, whilst chemistry was his lowest grade in high school.
Tania Patiño Padial
Tania Patiño Padial is a biologist with a PhD in Cell Biology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (2015). She developed enzyme-powered nanosystems at the
Institute of Bioengineering of Barcelona, then received a Marie Curie fellowship in 2019 at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, working on DNA nanotechnology for nanorobots. Since 2022, she has been an Assistant Professor and group leader at TU/e's Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute of Complex Molecular Systems. Her group focuses on the development of programmable DNA-based nanosystems that can interface cells in a programmable and controllable fashion for different applications including cancer immunotherapy and regenerative medicine.
At EYAE, she aims to promote clear, transparent career paths for early-career researchers and strengthen the talent pipeline at TU/e. She also aims to expand international collaborations to enrich research and enhance the university's capacity to translate scientific knowledge for the benefit of society.
A fun fact about her is that she loves traveling and discovering new scientific disciplines and cultures and she has lived in several countries.
EYAE Goals for the upcoming year
The Eindhoven Young Academy of Engineering is eager to tackle new challenges in the upcoming academic year. Important topics to which they want to contribute include the implementation of Project Beethoven (and its effect on departments that are not part of the project), the development of a strategic framework for the adoption of AI, policy regarding defense and resilience-oriented research, the New Academic Green Deal, and open science at TU/e.
The academy also aims to set up a collaboration with Tilburg University in the form of small-scale synergy grants to bridge disciplines and build impact. Alongside these topics, they will maintain their close ties with the four TU/e institutes and the other Young Academies in the Netherlands.
Finally, they will monitor the implementation of running actions involving ' Everyone Professor ', workload and wellbeing of early-career researchers, and social safety at the university and contribute advice where needed.
Inaugural dinner and new board
The inaugural dinner in mid-September marked several changes within the EYAE board. Bart Jansen Mathematics & Computer Science) has taken on the role of chair, succeeding Max Birk (Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences). While Ruud van Sloun (Electrical Engineering) becomes the new vice-chairman. Diletta Giuntini (Mechanical Engineering) and Pepijn Moerman (Chemical Engineering & Chemistry) complete the board.
