www.Lucq.org

About me

Introduction

Well, every personal web-site has to have a bit of personal promotion, so I hope you'll indulge me. I was released onto this world during July 1976 in Antwerp, Belgium. I also spent the first eighteen years of my life here. After finishing high-school, I went to the University of Ghent where I pursued engineering studies. I also had a lot of fun there while doing this. Immediately after my graduation I took up a job at the university as teaching asisstant and doctoral student, and I moved to Ghent permanently.

Education and work

As I already said, I pursued engineering studies at university, majoring in computer science and telecommunications. For those who are interested, you can get a Postscript copy of my thesis, which dealt with the removal of background noise from speech signals, here.

During high-school my, erhm, “majors” were Latin and mathematics, and I've been fascinated with both ever since. Language-wise, I can make myself understood in a handful of languages, specifically Dutch, German, Fernch and English. I guess C and C++ don't count as languages in this context...

After concluding my engineering studies, I started working for the university as a teaching assistant and doctoral student, in the Speech Lab of the Department of Electronics and Information Systems. There I split my time between the occasional teaching-related job, PhD research in the area of speech recognition robustness (robustness versus background noise and interfering signals, that is), and being the system administrator of the lab network.

After about thirteen months I quit this job and moved to a startup company called Custodix, where I am still working today. Here I deal with network security and computer security in general, UNIX system administration, and part of the product research and development.

Interests

Short version: lots and lots of stuff. But that doesn't say much, does it? First of all, allow me to split the list in computer-related subject, and other things. In the first category, the following subjects intrigue me to a lesser or greater extent (the list is not in order of importance, and this tends to vary anyway):

1. Speech processing. Mainly speech recognition, robustness of speech recognition, noise removal, voice-over-IP and DSP-aspects of speech processing.
2. Data and telephony networks. For example, xDSL, SDH, ATM, diverse broadband technologies, mainly from the perspective of security and management of such networks.
3. Systems and network security.
4. Information theory. This is a consequence of my interest in mathematics. You just have to admire the way in which these theories work out...

As for my other interest, here is a non-exhaustive and again not-in-order-of-importance list:

1. History. My main interest here is Roman history, but I will in general read anything historical I can lay my hands on (and given the time, of course).
2. Music, with a rather broad taste. This goes from Mozart and other classical music to modern stuff. Stops in the journey include all things Celtic, just to name something.
3. As far as books go, my preference goes to fantasy and science-fiction, although I read other things as well. The all-time favorite here is Tolkien.
4. Whisky. Can you call this an interest? I dunno... Anyway, the occasional glass of this stuff goes down very well, thank you. If you ever happen to be in Ghent and you have a liking for this liquid, be sure to stop at the Glengarry in the centre of the city...

Contacting me

The easiest is by e-mail of course: daniel@lucq.org (another possibility is daniel.lucq@skynet.be).