Dr Dr Dimitar Shterionov is an assistant professor at the Department of Intelligent Systems, at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. His research in MT and NLP focuses on sign language MT, quality estimation, evaluation and automatic post-editing, Large and Small Language models and the impact of language technology on environment and society. Dimitar obtained a PhD in computer science engineering from KU Leuven in 2015 on the topic of Probabilistic Logic and Learning. After working as head of research in KantanMT where his team developed the first cloud-based, customizable and publically available neural machine translation solution, released in early 2017, Dimitar joined the research team of Prof Andy Way at Dublin City University, Ireland. In August 2020, he assumed a tenure track assistant professor position at Tilburg University. Dimitar was the technical and scientific lead of the SignON project (www.signon-project.edu) that developed a mobile application and an open framework for automatic translation between signed and spoken languages. Dimitar is currently the head of the Inclusive and Sustainable Multilingual Technologies group at Tilburg University. The group focuses on addressing topics such as environmental aspects and sustainability of multilingual technologies, inclusiveness of less-represented languages (e.g. sign languages) and of people; bias in data and models and interpretability.
is an assistant professor at the Department of Intelligent Systems, at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. His research in MT and NLP focuses on sign language MT, quality estimation, evaluation and automatic post-editing, Large and Small Language models and the impact of language technology on environment and society. Dimitar obtained a PhD in computer science engineering from KU Leuven in 2015 on the topic of Probabilistic Logic and Learning. After working as head of research in KantanMT where his team developed the first cloud-based, customizable and publically available neural machine translation solution, released in early 2017, Dimitar joined the research team of Prof Andy Way at Dublin City University, Ireland. In August 2020, he assumed a tenure track assistant professor position at Tilburg University. Dimitar was the technical and scientific lead of the SignON project (www.signon-project.edu) that developed a mobile application and an open framework for automatic translation between signed and spoken languages. Dimitar is currently the head of the Inclusive and Sustainable Multilingual Technologies group at Tilburg University. The group focuses on addressing topics such as environmental aspects and sustainability of multilingual technologies, inclusiveness of less-represented languages (e.g. sign languages) and of people; bias in data and models and interpretability.
Valerio Lorini, PhD, is a Project Manager for AI projects at the European Parliament’s Directorate-General for Translation (DG TRAD), where he works on the design, evaluation and responsible adoption of AI in multilingual institutional contexts. His background is in artificial intelligence, natural language processing and Web and Social Science, with a longstanding interest in the relationship between digital technologies and society.
Earlier in his career, while working for the Copernicus Emergency Management Services he worked extensively on the use of AI and social media in crisis and disaster management. He contributed to the Social Media for Disaster Risk Management (SMDRM) project and related international workshops, and served as co-chair of the task force on Social Media-Driven Disaster Risk Management at the European Commission. His work in this area examined how AI, online information and participatory data can support emergency response and risk governance, while also highlighting issues such as reliability, bias, accountability and public trust.
He now focuses on the implications of generative AI and large language models for multilingual communication, translation workflows and public-sector innovation. His perspective combines technical expertise with practical experience in institutional environments, with particular attention to how AI can be deployed in ways that are effective, accountable and aligned with societal values.
Prof. dr. Lieve Macken is an Associate Professor of Translation Technology in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University in Belgium. She has strong expertise in multilingual natural language processing and machine translation. Her research combines product- and process-based approaches to examine the effects of various translation methods, including human translation, machine translation, post-editing, on translators and readers. She also works on integrating of NLP and MT in educational language learning.
She teaches Machine Translation and Natural Language Processing. She was guest editor of the special issue ‘Advances in Computer-Aided Translation Technology’ in the journal Informatics (2019) and co-organised the EAMT2022 conference with CrossLang. She has also co-organised two Creative Text Translation and Technology (CTT) workshops, held in conjunction with the EAMT conference in Sheffield (2024) and the MT Summit in Geneva (2025).