JTS Birthday: A Digital Tech Party
On 27 May 2026, we’re throwing a different kind of party: a Digital Tech Party!
Our community is at the heart of everything we do, so we’re hosting an afternoon of research highlights and interactive showcases of digitalisation to celebrate our birthday and show the unique contributions of our community. From AI that detects deepfakes to robotic fish, board games and prosthetic legs, the afternoon promises a wide range of fascinating exhibits and tastings.
Here’s a sneak peek of what the JTS community is bringing to the table:
Experience the MyLeg powered prosthetic leg, presented by Rafaella Carloni and ChengXiang Liu (Bernoulli Institute). This bio-inspired system uses intelligent algorithms to adapt to your walking speed in real time.
Watch the water come alive as Ming Cao and Bangguo Yu showcase robotic fish swimming together in a pool.
Meet the robots of Esther Metting and Paul Vogt, and see live demonstrations of how robots interact with the world around them.
In an era of digital manipulation, George Azzopardi and Guru Swaroop present technology that verifies image authenticity, showing how AI can detect unseen edits and help protect the truth.
Marília Gehrke presents "Forced To Quit", a collaborative database documenting cases where prominent women were pushed out of public life due to disinformation, harassment and inequality.
Join PhD candidates Raoul Buurke, Hedwig Sekeres, and Lourens Visser for a competitive board game where you conquer territory by testing your knowledge of Dutch and Flemish regional languages.
Explore the intersection of gaming and data with Elisabeth Wilhelm, who showcases interactive games based on her latest sensor and AI research. An enjoyable way to make technology help for revalidation purposes.
Join Angelos Konstantinidis for an interactive strategy board game that explores real-world decision-making, challenging players to balance profit, community, and environmental impact.
Bahar Haghighat and Sebastian Serenyi demonstrate a Mars rover chassis in action, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how commands are sent, received, and executed from software to electronics to mechanics. In addition, Bahar Haghighat presents her work on swarm robotics, tiny, intelligent robots that collaborate to monitor structures like bridges by detecting subtle vibration changes, enabling early damage detection and improved safety..
Dario Rodighiero, Anne Beaulieu and Matilde Ficozzi present Grounding AI Map: The Consequences of Living with the Trouble of an Irreductionist Map, exploring how we understand and interpret complex AI systems.
David Lentink, Professor of Biomimetics, shares how studying bird flight inspires the design of more efficient flying robots.
Put your skills to the test in Foto Fiasco, where teams compete to identify AI-generated images and uncover how convincing “fake photos” can be.
Jenny van Doorn will show how social robots like Pepper and Maatje are being used in healthcare and elderly care to support professionals and engage clients in times of increasing staff shortages.
Presented by Resul Adanur, B.P.A. Campman, and Gert Jan Verheij: Experience VR like never before! Walk through Crustumerium, an ancient city near Rome, and test the GUARD system in a VR assault scenario that monitors human responses with AI. Plus, visit a cave that no longer exists in reality, all through immersive VR.
Michael Wilkinson will explain how AI can be used to detect Potato Virus Y (PVY) in the DigiAgro3 project, using less data and energy than traditional deep learning methods.
Many more surprises await on the day itself. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a linguistics lover, or simply curious, there’s something to spark your imagination. Come and have a look behind the scenes of the wonderful world of digitalisation and have a birthday cake with us!
Register today so we can stock up on cake!