Michiel Van de Velde

Michiel Van de Velde

Engineer from Belgium. I keep infrastructure running, and build with linked data and AI.

See my work How I got there

How I got there

I studied Network & Security Engineering at Odisee, mainly to get a job.

I had great mentors who showed me the fun in building things, and that breaking them is just part of the process.

  1. Cabling
  2. Network
  3. Security
  4. AI models
  5. Compute
  6. Containers
  7. Storage
  8. Power

Cabling. Patched and labelled it all, and tracked down more than one loose cable.

Network. My own VLANs, DNS and DHCP.

Security. A firewall and a VPN, with as little open to the internet as possible.

AI models. Language models running on my own GPU.

Compute. Virtual machines I can break and rebuild in minutes.

Containers. Every open-source project I could find, in containers.

Storage. RAID and backups, and I test the restores.

Power. A UPS, so a power cut doesn't take everything down.

Getting hooked

Naturally, I really got into self-hosting and AI.

At home I self-hosted every open-source project and model I could find and run.

Dengue dashboard Cuba · week 38 No outbreakOutbreakHigh riskProtected Havana Santa Clara Santiago Havana No outbreak Cases at the usual level. W31W38 CASES PER WEEK Havana Outbreak Cases far above the usual level. W31W38 CASES PER WEEK Santa Clara No outbreak Cases at the usual level. W31W38 CASES PER WEEK Santa Clara Outbreak Spreading from Havana. W31W38 CASES PER WEEK Santiago No outbreak Cases at the usual level. W31W38 CASES PER WEEK Santiago High risk Outbreaks nearby, rainy season. W31W38 CASES PER WEEK Santiago Protected Fumigation done, doctors on alert. W31W38 CASES PER WEEK All quiet. Waiting for case reports. New cases reported in Havana. Santa Clara too. The outbreak is spreading. Santiago might be next. Doctors are warned. Preventive measures are taken in Santiago.

Applying it for real

Then came the dengue dashboard. Hospitals, doctors and non-profits shared case data by hand, and processing it took days or even weeks.

We turned that tedious manual work into a web application.

We got handed a broken tool, with barely anything working properly, and turned it into something actually usable.

Working on AI at imec

After dengue I started an internship at imec-IDLab, where I stayed on as a student worker and will work as a full-on AI engineer!

Working on AI and knowledge graphs, and the chips they run on.

Things I've worked on

  1. Education
    Bachelor ICT, Network & Security EngineerOdisee, cum laude
  2. 2021 – 2025
    IT for student organisationsWebsites, databases and security
  3. Sep 2025 – Mar 2026
    DevOps, dengue early warningGhent University and ITM Antwerp

    Getting outbreak data to doctors in time.

    Case reports went from days by hand to a web app. I kept it running.

    About the project

  4. Feb – May 2026
    Internship and bachelor's thesisimec-IDLab, with Odisee

    Keeping your data outside the platforms.

    Your Spotify, YouTube and SoundCloud history in a Solid pod you control. Graded 18/20.

    Read the thesis

  5. Jul – Sep 2026
    Student job: AI and open sourceimec-IDLab

    Hudson: an AI assistant for a research group.

    Reviews code and picks up tasks from GitHub, on local models where possible.

    Moving an open-source linked data server to TypeScript.

    A large part of moving the Linked Data Fragments Server, 12 packages, to strict TypeScript.

    Source code

  6. Sep 2026 – now
    Board memberOpen Knowledge Belgium
  7. From Nov 2026
    AI engineerimec-IDLab

What I'm curious about

  • Owning your own data

    You decide who gets it, and you can take it back.

  • Systems that understand each other

    Linked data carries its meaning along, so different services can use it.

  • Open-source AI you run yourself

    Open models on your own hardware keep your data private. I run mine at home.

Let's work together

If you're working on something I could help with, send me a message.

michiel.vdvelde@outlook.com
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