PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hendrik Blockeel

Hendrik Blockeel is a machine learning researcher at KU Leuven whose work carries decision trees and clustering into relational, logic-based learning. His 1998 KU Leuven doctorate, supervised by Maurice Bruynooghe, upgraded decision tree induction to inductive logic programming, and with Luc De Raedt he built TILDE, a relational decision tree learner. In 2007, he and Joaquin Vanschoren proposed experiment databases, which store complete descriptions of machine learning experiments so that researchers can share and query them. ECCAI, on whose board he served until 2010, named him a fellow in 2015. Today he is a full professor, heads the Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence section of KU Leuven's Department of Computer Science, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Machine Learning.

Timeline

  1. 1998

    A PhD on logical decision trees

    He earns a PhD in computer science at KU Leuven in 1998 under Maurice Bruynooghe. His dissertation, Top-Down Induction of First Order Logical Decision Trees, upgrades decision tree induction from attribute-value learning to inductive logic programming.

  2. 1998–1999

    TILDE, TIC and ACE

    In 1998, he and Luc De Raedt publish TILDE, a relational decision tree learner later used in many relational learning applications. At ICML 1998, he, De Raedt and Jan Ramon present TIC, which adapts top-down decision tree induction to first-order clustering using TILDE's tree representation. ACE, a 1999 relational learning tool, bundles TILDE with other algorithms on a special-purpose logical inference engine.

  3. 2007–2012

    Experiment databases

    In 2007, he and Joaquin Vanschoren propose experiment databases, which store complete descriptions of machine learning experiments so that a single query can answer questions that would otherwise need new experiments; their ExpDB prototype holds results of over 600,000 runs. A 2012 journal paper with Vanschoren, Bernhard Pfahringer and Geoffrey Holmes describes an experiment database holding over 650,000 classification experiments.

  4. 2007–2016

    A second affiliation at Leiden

    From 2007 to 2016, he holds an affiliation with Leiden University in addition to his post at KU Leuven.

  5. 2010

    Leaving the ECCAI board

    He serves on the board of ECCAI until September 2010, when the board thanks him, Marie-Odile Cordier and Paolo Traverso as outgoing members.

  6. 2015

    An ECCAI fellowship

    In July 2015, the ECCAI board announces him among its new fellows, alongside Diego Calvanese and Catholijn Jonker. His name remains on the list of current EurAI fellows.

  7. As of October 2026

    Head of the DTAI section

    He is a full professor at KU Leuven and heads the Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence section of its Department of Computer Science. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the journal Machine Learning.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Hendrik Blockeel yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Home page of Hendrik Blockeel people.cs.kuleuven.be. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Hendrik Blockeel - The Mathematics Genealogy Project mathgenealogy.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. KDnuggets News 99:03, item 4, Publications kdnuggets.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Top-Down Induction of Clustering Trees | ML Anthology mlanthology.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Experiment Databases - A New Way to Share, Organize and Learn from Experiments | ML Anthology mlanthology.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Bulletin #3, September 2010 | European Association for Artificial Intelligence oldwebsite.eurai.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. Bulletin #2, July 2015 | European Association for Artificial Intelligence oldwebsite.eurai.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. EurAI honors – BNVKI ii.tudelft.nl. Checked 19 October 2026.
  9. Hendrik Blockeel • SMASH smash.ung.si. Checked 19 October 2026.