Hidde de Jong

I was born on July 7th 1968 in Delft (the Netherlands). I completed secondary school (VWO) at the Twents Carmellyceum in Oldenzaal, after which I went to study at the University of Twente in Enschede. Between 1986 and 1994 I obtained M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science (cum laude), Management Science (cum laude), and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Society (cum laude). In 1993 I started my Ph.D. thesis in the Knowledge-Based Systems group, headed by professor Nicolaas Mars, at the faculty of Computer Science of the University of Twente. My thesis research focused on the development and use of qualitative reasoning techniques for the model-based analysis of measurements in science and engineering. In addition, I maintained a strong interest in the potential role of computers in making scientific discoveries. In 1998 I obtained my Ph.D. degree (cum laude). In the same year, I joined the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) in France as a research scientist (chargé de recherche). I started to work in the SHERPA research group, headed by François Rechenmann, at the Rhône-Alpes research unit of INRIA in Grenoble. Since 2000, I have been a member of the HELIX research group in bioinformatics. I mainly work on the development of computational methods for the qualitative analysis of genetic regulatory networks. In the fall of 2004, I obtained my `Habilitation à diriger des recherches' from the Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble. I was appointed senior research scientist (directeur de recherche) at INRIA in the next year.