Hello and welcome on my personal webpage! I am an associate professor at the departement of astronomy of KU Leuven in Belgium. Since a very young age, I have been fascinated by the vastness of the cosmos and the unsatisfactory interpretations of the Fermi paradox. Today, I work towards finding a scientific answer to this paradox by using the largest telescopes across the globe (e.g., Chile, Arizona, Hawaii, California) to make images of nearby planetary systems and discover new worlds. My research background covers the whole process of observational astronomy, from the instrument development, commissioning, and data reduction and acquisition software to the observations, data interpretation, and publication of the results. One of my long-term goals is to make direct images of distant rocky worlds and search for signs of biological activity on their surface.