Jurgen Van Erps was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1980. He graduated as an Electrotechnical Engineer with majors in Photonics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in 2003 and obtained his PhD summa cum laude at the same university in 2008. His research includes polymer microfabrication, optical design and characterization of micro-photonic systems, photonics-enhanced lab-on-a-chip devices, optical interconnects and nonlinear optics in photonic integrated circuits.