I was born in a small village in one of the most rural areas of Flanders. One of the favourite sports in my village was putting a cow on a square grid drawn in the grass and then placing bets on the square where the animal would deliver its droppings. Occasionally there would be tractor races.
Tempting as this life may sound, I nevertheless decided to study applied mathematics and computer science at the K.U.Leuven, where I finished my MSc. with a dissertation about 'Orthogonal Rational Functions and Quadrature'. By then I was so much endeared by these functions that I decided to hang around a bit longer and write a doctoral thesis about 'Orthogonal Rational Functions: Asymptotic Behaviour and Computational Aspects', which took me little over three and a half years.
During my two years as a postdoc in Leuven, I had a short fling with integrals of Bessel functions and the computation of the incomplete gamma function. This formed a nice transition to my current research: developing validated software for special functions. I also dabbled in rational interpolation, spectral methods and continued fractions.
In between I try to find the time to tinkle the piano, go to the opera or attend classical music concerts. I also like to hang around in bars or restaurants, where I can indulge in the pleasures of the senses.