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Group portrait

Egon van den Broek Ioanna Lykourentzou

Pattern recognition Improving online collaborations

One of the most technical members of the human-centred Ioanna Lykourentzou is another Assistant Professor in the
computing group is Assistant Professor Egon van den Broek. group. She investigates online collaborations and develops
He studies pattern recognition in both humans and machines. software to improve them. ‘Because of the corona crisis, my
‘There is an awful lot that machines can still learn from hum - work has suddenly become even more relevant than before’,
ans’, he says. ‘I take the human as an example, and based on she tells. ‘Many people have to work from home, while at the
this, I develop mathematical models that can improve the way same time collaborating in online teams. But how can you
machines recognise patterns. For example, I have been looking build the best team if there are team members you have
at categorising colours and at recognising emotions. One of never met in real life?’
my favourite results is from earlier this year: we showed that
emotions should be classified more as a continuous space To solve this problem, she has already built an algorithm
than as separate categories, as it is traditionally done. Our that matches people based on their personality traits.
results can be used in human-robot interaction where the Lykourentzou: ‘For complex tasks, you often need people
robot has to recognise human emotions.’ with a variety of skills: some people should have leadership
qualities; others should excel at focusing on details, while
Van den Broek earned two PhD degrees, one in the social others need to have good social skills. In its core, this is an
sciences and one in electrical engineering, mathematics and optimisation problem, which at the same time needs to
computing science, a combination which fits perfectly in the consider human nature. Our algorithm matches people with
human-centred computing group. ‘I like the fact that there is people to form the best team. We tested it with teams of
a lot of energy in the group, that it combines a wide range of crowd workers who had to create an advertisement for a
interests and that it is very social. What remains a challenge in new coffee product and it proved to work really well. With
the field of human-computer interaction in general, and also this approach, digital collaborations can become very creative.’
in our group, is to work not just in a multi-disciplinary way —
people with different backgrounds sitting next to each other — As somebody developing tools to improve collaboration, what
but in a truly interdisciplinary way — to integrate methods does she think about the teamwork in her own human-centred
from various disciplines. That is crucial if the field is to computing group? ‘I like the diversity in the group, and the fact
become mature.’ that things come about in a very human manner without an
imposed hierarchy. Sometimes, taking decisions might take a
bit longer than in more hierarchical groups, but in the end you
have a much stronger team.’

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