Here are a few random bits about myself, in part to make sure that I don't forget. This page will always be under construction.
I grew up in a small Belgian town called Hamme-Mille (N 51, E 5) about 20 miles east of Brussels. It is a great place to grow up in, surrounded by fields and forests yet very close to major cities. Both my parents were educators (Mom, Biology at the high school level; Dad, Botany at the college level), and this apple did not fall far from the tree.
Some claim that I was rather mischievous as a kid and as a teen. The claims are not entirely without basis, but this character trait has completely disappeared in adult life. Throughout my school years I found that if I excelled in school I was able to get away with a whole lot of mischief (Kids, do try this at home).
I hitch-hiked to high school and college, and also to Casablanca, Copenhagen, around Iceland, and to many caves and canyons in Belgium and France (this was an active time of rock-climbing, spelunking, and canyoneering in my life). This mode of transportation allowed me to meet a great many people from all walks of life (Kids, don't hitch-hike in the US - it is not considered safe).
There were no opportunities for undergraduate research in Belgium, so I spent my summers traveling or volunteering. I was heavily involved in scouting, backpacked the West Highland Way in Scotland and the GR20 across Corsica, and helped care for mentally and physically disabled children in Tunisia. I volunteered two months in Pweto, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), a remote fishing village on the northern coast of Lake Mweru, to facilitate a drinking water project (with engineers without borders). The following summer I went to Butare, Rwanda, to teach basic electricity and photography, shortly before the genocide. I spent my last semester of college in Denmark.
I was captivated by exploration, science, and technology at an early age, but I had no formal Astronomy training until I started graduate school at Cornell University. After graduate school I was a research associate at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico for two years, and then a OK Earl postdoctoral fellow at Caltech. I have been very happy to be back in Ithaca (N 42, W 76), which is a fantastic place for some of my favorite activities: running, skiing, and sculling. I am currently trying to decide between staying as a tenured faculty at Cornell or taking an equivalent position at UCLA.