On January 2025, Sédrick Stassin, a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Engineering, Université de Mons (UMONS), successfully defended his dissertation titled "Towards Reliable Explanations of Deep Neural Networks: Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Vision and Vision-Language Models." This remarkable research marks a significant contribution to the field of Artificial Intelligence 🤖,, focusing on explainability in deep neural networks for vision and vision-language models.

The thesis was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Sidi Ahmed Mahmoudi, a renowned expert in software and artificial intelligence at UMONS, and co-supervised by Prof. Xavier Siebert, specializing in mathematics and operational research. Their guidance played a pivotal role in shaping this innovative research. 💡📚

Sédrick's PhD jury was composed of distinguished experts from both UMONS and other leading institutions. The jury members included:

• Prof. Fabian Lecron (President)
  Département du Management de l’Innovation Technologique (MIT), UMONS

• Prof. Sidi Ahmed Mahmoudi (Supervisor)
  Service Informatique, Logiciel et Intelligence Artificielle (ILIA), UMONS

• Prof. Xavier Siebert (Co-supervisor)
  Service de Mathématique et Recherche Opérationnelle (MARO), UMONS

• Dr. Matei Mancas (Secretary)
  Service d’Information, Signal et Intelligence Artificielle (ISIA), UMONS

• Prof. Gianluca Bontempi
  Machine Learning Group, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

• Prof. Christophe De Vleeschouwer
  ICTEAM, Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain)

The defense showcased Sédrick's ability to address fundamental challenges in AI explainability, a field gaining increasing importance as AI systems are integrated into critical domains such as healthcare, finance, and autonomous systems. The research bridges the gap between technical performance and the trustworthiness of AI solutions by focusing on generating reliable explanations for the behavior of complex deep learning models.

🎉 We are thrilled to announce that Sédrick will be staying with the team as a Postdoctoral Researcher! 🥳👏 This exciting new chapter will undoubtedly lead to more groundbreaking contributions to the field of AI.

Congratulations, Sédrick, on this outstanding achievement! 🎊✨