Projects
Social innovation to improve physical activity and sedentary behaviour through elite European football clubs: European Fans in Training KU Leuven
Concept and aim: 20 million fans attend top division football games each week and many more watch on TV. Our social innovation is to attract people to lifestyle change through the personal connection and loyalty to the club they support. Our aim is to use this social innovation to change physical activity and sedentary behaviour, specially targeting low-SES groups, and men as well as women. EuroFIT is supported by UEFA and top football ...
Exposure to suicide as a major risk factor for suicidal behaviour in adolescents: Establishing real-time social interactive pathways KU Leuven
Globally, more than 800,000 people die by suicide every year and approximately 115 individuals are exposed to each suicide. Yet we are still unable to adequately predict which of the people who think about suicide will go on to make a suicide attempt. Exposure to suicide attempts of friends is a powerful predictor of whether individuals will attempt suicide themselves, especially in adolescents, but why exposure increases individuals’ own ...
Daily life interventions for social withdrawal behaviour in adolescents KU Leuven
Social withdrawal behaviour is an important risk factor for many psychological, social, and somatic problems throughout the lifespan. Adolescence is an especially vulnerable and critical period for social development; therefore developing an effective intervention for withdrawal in this particular phase of life is essential. However, not much is known about the daily dynamics of social withdrawal, particularly in adolescents. Targeting ...
Contingent behaviour generation in social robots using Deep Learning Ghent University
The aim for this research project is to equip social robots with nonverbal behaviour similar to the nonverbal behaviour used by people. Nonverbal behaviour refers to the use of gestures, body language and facial expressions which we use when interacting with others. Nonverbal behaviour is said to make up 55% of our communication, and when it is lacking, wrong or ill-timed it can seriously hinder communication. Social robots are robots that ...
Social evolution and behaviour in Bonobos Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp
Quantifying positive social behaviour in pigs through machine learning technology KU Leuven
The overall aim of the project is to identify, validate and use sensor technology to automate the recording of social behaviour under research conditions. The reason to do so is to accelerate existing experiments done on the research farms, enable new long-term observations of social behaviours and to better understand the underlying cause and function of those behaviours. This will positively impact animal welfare relevant decision making ...
Generative deep learning for contingent behaviour production on social robots Ghent University
Social robots are robots which interact with people in a natural manner. Autonomously generating contingent verbal and nonverbal behaviour is currently impossible. We use generative Deep Learning to observe video recordings of people and learn which behaviours are appropriate for the robot,
with the aim of having the robot produce matching verbal and non-verbal behaviour.
Social isolation in adolescent AD mice: effects on behaviour and functional connectivity KU Leuven
Adolescent transgenic mice with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) will be separated into two groups at random: standard housing and social isolation (SI). In addition, wild-type mice will also be randomly separated into a standard housing and isolation group. Each of the four groups will be tested as outlined below. We expect that SI to exacerbate AD-like symptoms in transgenic mice (see e.g. Huang et al., 2015; Hui, Feng, Zheng, Jin, and Jia, 2017). ...