Me!

About Me

I'm pursuing a PhD at the University of Antwerp in the lab of Prof. Guillermo A. Pérez. My research focusses on applying techniques from formal methods to reinforcement learning. Aside from research I also teach four courses on compilers, software engineering, and computer architecture.

Publications

Graph-Based Reductions for Parametric and Weighted MDPs

Kasper Engelen, Guillermo A. Pérez, Shisha Rao
ATVA 2023, vol 1, pp 137–157

Arxiv Springer Zenodo

Analyzing Value Functions of States in Parametric Markov Chains

Kasper Engelen, Guillermo A. Pérez, Shisha Rao
Principles of Verification: Cycling the Probabilistic Landscape, part II, pp 145–165. 2024.

Arxiv Springer Zenodo

Mobility

ESSLLI 2023 summer school

August 2023

This was a summer school on logic, language, and computation. I attended courses on linear arithmetic, formal language theory applied to RNNs, PAC learning of logical formulas, natural language parsing, etc.

MOVEP 2024 summer school

May 2024

There were courses on SMT-solving, model checking, and reinforcement learning. This was also a great opportunity to meet other people in the field of theoretical computer science.

BNAIC 2024 conference

Nov 2024

I attended talks on reinforcement learning and SAT-solving and had the opportunity to meet many interesting people doing research in AI.

Storm days 2025

March - April 2025

This event brought together researchers that make use of the Storm model checker. People presented their Storm-related research during various talks and we brainstormed (pun!) on how to further improve Storm.

Academic service

  • Organising committee CONFEST 2023 (CONCUR, FORMATS, QEST, FMICS)
  • External reviewer for AAMAS 2024

Teaching

Teaching assistance

I oversee the lab sessions of multiple courses:

  • Computer systems and architecture: a course where students build their own CPU in Logisim, a simulator for digital circuits.
  • Project software engineering: a project over the course of an entire semester where students have to put together a software system. In doing so, the students have to pay attention to project management, software testing, quality control, and object oriented programming principles.
  • Compilers: groups of students build a compiler that translates C code into LLVM IR, MIPS, and native binary code.
  • Software engineering: in this course we cover a different topic in each lab session. Topics include formal methods, software testing, software architecture, quality control, etc.

Thesis supervision

I have supervised multiple thesis and research projects on topics that are related to my PhD, such as reinforcement learning and dynamical systems.

Education

Bachelors in Computer Science

University of Antwerp
Sep 2016 - Feb 2020
  • Grade: distinction
  • Elective courses on computational biology and applied logic.

Masters in Computer Science

Specialisation Data Science and AI
University of Antwerp
Sep 2019 - Jun 2022
  • Grade: great distinction
  • Thesis on Graph-Based Reductions for Parametric and Weighted MDPs.
  • Elective courses on neural networks, functional programming, and data science ethics.