Service & Awards — Femke De Backere

Awards & recognition

ENLIGHT Teaching & Learning Award

2022 — for the summer course Innovation Game: A Summer School Applying Serious Game Design in Health Care and Education, taught at Uppsala University.

Top-3 future-proof course, UGent

2021 — Design Project (1st Master Computer Science Engineering), as lecturer-in-charge.

Best Demo Award, ACM MMSys'19

2019 — Exploring New York in 8K: An Adaptive Tile-based Virtual Reality Video Streaming Experience.

Top 5 — Young ICT Lady of the Year

2019 — nominee, Belgium.

Best Poster Award, FEA Research Symposium

2017 — FallRisk: The future of fall detection.

Governance & representation

Beyond Ghent University

2025–2030Member of the Jonge Academie (Young Academy)
2026–2028Steering Committee member, Jonge Academie
Since 2024Steering Committee member, AIG (Alumni Ingenieurs Gent)
2022–2024Member of the Board (Bestuurscomité), Ghent University Hospital
2022–2024General Meeting, vzw Kinderdagverblijf UZ Gent
2018–2024General Meeting, AUGent (Association Ghent University)

University level

2018–2021Member of the Board of Governors (OAP representative)
2017–2024Member of the Educational Board
2019–2024Co-chair of the central organ of OAP representatives
2022–2024Committee on Privacy and Data Protection; Financial Committee; Committee for Lifelong Learning
2020–2024Personnel Policy Committee & Quality of Education Committee (OKB)
2017–2024Doctoral Schools of Bioscience Engineering

Faculty of Engineering & Architecture

Since 2024Member of the Department Board INTEC; Ombudsperson for PhD students; Advisory member of the Faculty Board
2017–2024Chair of the OAP of the Faculty of Engineering & Architecture
2021–2024Faculty Policy Committee; Industrial Strategic Advisory Board (ISAR)
2019–2022Faculty Committee on Wellbeing & Safety
2015–2024Faculty Committee on Educational Quality & Curriculum Committee
2012–2024Educational Committee for Computer Science Engineering
2011–2017Chair (2016–2017) and member of the FEA Research Symposium committee

Academic service & events

Ghent Legal Techathon

Driving force from the Faculty of Engineering & Architecture for this weekend bringing together law and IT students to tackle legal challenges with technology. Now a course in the Faculty of Law & Criminology, where I coach. (Since 2018)

Master Thesis Fair

Lead organizer of this three-department event (INTEC, ELIS, TELIN) connecting ~200 students with 100+ researchers on master-dissertation topics. (Since 2017)

FEA Research Symposium

Organizing the faculty's research symposium, attended by 300+ researchers, professors and prospective doctoral students.