“Signal Processing in the AI era” was the tagline of this year’s IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, taking place in Rhodes, Greece.
In this context, Brent de Weerdt, Xiangyu Yang, Boris Joukovsky, Alex Stergiou and Nikos Deligiannis presented ETRO’s research during poster sessions and oral presentations, with novel ways to process and understand graph, video, and audio data. Nikos Deligiannis chaired a session on Graph Deep Learning, attended the IEEE T-IP Editorial Board Meeting, and had the opportunity to meet with collaborators from the VUB-Duke-Ugent-UCL joint lab.
Featured articles:
- De Weerdt, B. et al., “Designing Transformer Networks for Sparse Recovery of Sequential Data Using Deep Unfolding” (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10094712)
- Yang X. et al., “Relevance Propagation through Deep Conditional Random Fields” (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10095075)
- Stergiou A. et al., “Play it back: Iterative attention for audio recognition” (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10096532, developed at the University of Bristol)
FWO granted the project Exploiting plasma etching processes for micro/nanotexturing of metal surfaces to enable novel chemical, analytical, optical, and medical applications.
The plasma metal etcher will be installed in the core facility MICROLAB. The project execution will be coordinated by Prof. Wim de Malsche (CHIS) with two ETRO-promoters Prof. Johan Stiens and Prof. Peter Schelkens. Step by step the microfabrication facilities are growing, allowing to dive deeper again in microfabrication related projects.
Fundamentals of evolutionary transformations in biological systems. Special Issue of the journal BioSystems, with Giuseppe Iurato and Abir Igamberdiev
The relation between genetic and epigenetic factors is central to the concept of biological evolution. In early 19th century, the concept that major evolutionary changes are related to rescaling of embryogenesis was formulated by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and reintroduced in more detail by Karl Ernst von Baer who suggested that evolution is based on organism’s interpretation of itself in a dynamic environment and on persistence of these interpretations over generations. In recent years, we observe a transition from the view that the genetic factors are the sole source for biological inheritance and transformation to the broader understanding that, in addition to the mutational process and natural selection, other factors, in particular those associated with alterations in development and morphogenesis, determine the evolutionary process. This means that epigenetic effects can trigger many aspects of biological evolution. The contextual readout of DNA represents an important feature of the evolutionary change that determines consequent transformation and complexification of biological systems. The fundamental mathematical principles operating in living systems and constituting the basis for epigenetic transformation and evolutionary expansion require clarification and further substantiation on the basis of novel findings and discoveries. The issue is dedicated to one of the first evolutionary biologists Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire on the occasion of his 250th birthday.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/biosystems/special-issue/10FRKKW4VHK
Complexity, Chaos and Computation in Living Systems. Special Issue in Entropy
Complexity, chaos and computation in biology may be characterised in terms of entropy, but is this most closely related to the criterion of order, or more correctly to the concept of ‘unification’ of an entity? Clausius’ description of entropy in terms of ‘disgregation’, or disassociation of parts, suggests that the latter would be more relevant to biology, in the sense that a viable and therefore ‘highly unified’ organism, exhibiting comparatively low entropy, could be compared to one suffering from a degree of disorganisation (sickness?), exhibiting comparatively higher entropy. It is notable that the holistic concept of ‘unification’, integrating both reductive top-down character and non-reductive (partially emergent) bottom-up character, is completely absent from conventional science.
Submissions are invited relative to all or a part of these questions.
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/special_issues/Chaos_Living
𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐎𝐍 🕺with TWO ETRO participants!
🤙 Detailed description: https://lnkd.in/egx7zM4X
𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐍 with Ioana-Teodora Ouatu & Johan Stiens
𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐂 with Taylor Frantz
⚡️hub.brussels supports hashtag#entrepreneurs who make an hashtag#impact
Some ETRO staff went to the recent gala ball organised by the engineering students association (PK). We also know how to partyyyy!
Researchers involved in the European ENACT project have shown how wearable environmental sensing technology can help capture real-world air-quality events. Following the industrial fire that broke out in Tubize on 25 May 2026, ENACT environmental wearables deployed in Halle, south of Brussels, recorded clear changes in local air-pollution signals, including increases in nitrogen dioxide and volatile organic compound measurements.
The VUB ETRO department contributes to ENACT’s work on environmental monitoring technologies and data-driven analysis, supporting the development of tools that can help researchers better understand how environmental exposure affects health. The measurements collected during this incident provide a concrete example of how wearable sensing can complement official monitoring networks and contribute to future exposomic risk assessment.
Further analysis will refine the raw sensor readings by comparing them with reference-grade air-quality data from the IRCELine monitoring network.
Read the full ENACT news item: https://enact-he.eu/industrial-fire-air-quality-monitoring-brussels/
Photon link sees the light of day for optical interconnection of electronic chips, based on high-efficiency LEDs, a new CMOS detector and image fibres, developed by Schott Glass gmbh.