About

Must. Keep. Swimming.

Wouter Durnez

I’m Wouter Durnez. I spent a decade in experimental psychology before trading papers for production code. These days, I’m an AI engineer in Ghent and the person behind rugvin.

sink lower

01 · Depth 0m

From research to production

At imec-mict-UGent, I worked on human-computer interaction using biometrics and smartphone logging, alongside the software to collect and analyse that data. During those years, I also completed a master’s in AI.

Since then, I’ve worked on recommenders, generative AI features and agentic products. The tools changed; the work still connects people, data and software.

I’m also the founding AI engineer at Ringtime, a client I work with through haai BV, building recruiting agents and the workspace around them: campaigns, conversations and candidate results.

rugvin is Dutch for dorsal fin: what breaks the surface, with more going on underneath. It’s my studio name; haai remains the BV I freelance through.

02 · Descending

Previously

  • 2023–2025 Senior → Staff AI Engineer at Showpad — GenAI platform: RAG, asset summaries, AI Page Generation, and a tool-wielding conversational agent as part of the flagship agentic product.
  • 2023 Senior Data Scientist at Adapt & Enable — internal HR recommender (fuzzy skill extraction, weighted collaborative filtering, embeddings-based conversational variant).
  • 2023 Python Developer at Jan De Nul — Flask-based BI template (auth, structured logging, CI/CD, Docker — the boring-but-important kit).
  • 2018–2023 Senior Researcher at imec-mict-UGent — HCI research with biometrics and smartphone logging, plus the ETL/analysis frameworks that made it tractable.

03 · Deeper

Studies

  • 2018–2021 MSc Artificial Intelligence (Engineering & Computer Science option).
  • 2011–2015 PhD in Psychology.
  • 2006–2011 MSc Theoretical & Experimental Psychology.

04 · Nearing crush depth

Letting off pressure

A steadily-growing manga collection (shelved with both enthusiasm and system). Lots of bouldering (and the occasional rope climb), plus sports in general — mostly as an excuse to think about something other than software engineering. A soft spot for design and visuals — typography, posters, the odd graphical experiment. Family, friends, and the occasional side project that's too small to justify and too interesting to drop.