Tanja Van Achteren has a Master degree (1997) and PhD (2004) in Electrotechnical Engineering from the KULeuven, Leuven, Belgium. Her Master thesis was performed at the Laboratoire d’Analyse et Systèmes (LAAS-CNRS), Toulouse, France in the ERASMUS student exchange program. She continued working as a senior researcher and training coordinator at Imec on the design and development of electronic system design methodologies for battery-friendly execution of multimedia applications on hand-held devices. In March 2006 she joined the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) as a system engineer for the Medusa project, an ultra light weight camera system for a stratospheric unmanned aerial vehicle. From 2008, she took the role of Principal Investigator of the Proba-V mission, monitoring the end-to-end system performance and image quality of the space segment and user segment during the development phase. From 2012 until 2017, she managed an R&D team active in the development of innovative multi- and hyperspectral remote sensing camera systems and data processing. Since 2018 she moved toward the field of deep learning, building and coordinating the development of AI based solutions applied to a range of domains: land use, civil infrastructure, agriculture, forestry, water management, safety, heritage, and ecological development.
