Yvan Saeys

• Yvan Saeys was born in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium in 1977. After studying Latin and Greek at the Sint-Lodewijkscollege in Lokeren, he started his graduate studies of computer science at Ghent University.
  
  
• In 2000 he received his diploma of Master in Computer Science from the same university, with a Master thesis entitled "A study and enhancement of the genetic algorithm in the CAM-Brain Machine" (supervisor Prof. dr. ir. Jan Van Campenhout).
  
  
• After doing research on digital neural networks at the "Centre for Evolutionary Language Engineering" (CELE) he started working towards a PhD degree in Bioinformatics in the Bioinformatics group of the Department of Plant Systems Biology at Ghent University. His PhD work was entitled "Feature selection for classification of nucleic acid sequences".
  
  
• Currently he is a postdoctoral researcher in the Bioinformatics group, doing research on applying machine learning algorithms to gene prediction and gene network analysis.
  

In my free time, I like to listen and to play music, as well as play some badminton. Before my studies, I used to be a badminton youth coach at the GSF Badminton club in Belsele, but unfortunately I do not have time anymore for this.
During my past travels, I gave up bringing home lousy souvenirs, and now switched to spending a part of my holiday looking for real hand-crafted local music instruments. My collection varies from Lithuanian "kankles" over Irish whistles and Turkish "Baglama/Saz" to Egyptian violin and African stringed instruments (I am - apparently - slightly biased towards string instruments :-)