Overview
Holger Willems is co-founder and chief executive of relu, based in Leuven. He co-founded the company in October 2018 and has led it since. His stated areas of expertise are entrepreneurship, medical devices, finance and marketing.
He also worked as an energy engineer at Flexcity between October 2018 and July 2019, and was a teaching assistant at KU Leuven from September to December 2018. Earlier he spent August and September 2018 as a mechanical engineer at Materialise, worked as a research assistant at KU Leuven in August and September 2017, and was a 3D designer at Health House vzw in July and August 2016.
Willems studied at KU Leuven, taking a bachelor's degree in electrotechnical and mechanical engineering, a bachelor's degree in computer science, the honours programme in engineering science and a Master of Science in energy engineering. He also studied nanotechnology at Universidade de Aveiro, algorithmic information theory at Télécom Paris and biomedical imaging at ETH Zürich, and completed a postgraduate programme in innovation and entrepreneurship in engineering between September 2019 and June 2020. He attended secondary school at Sint-Albertuscollege Haasrode.
Career history
In the news
- Our CEO Holger Willems wrote a piece for the National Association of Dental Laboratories' Journal of Dental Technology on AI automation for orthodontic labs. The short version: going digital didn't solve everything. It just moved the bottleneck: scan cleaning, model trimming, and occlusion correction remain manual, repetitive work that still eats up your best technicians' time. The piece looks at how AI can help, handling the repetitive first pass so technicians can focus on review, adjustments, and the cases that actually need their
- Accessing web applications should be easy and secure. 🔐 So we just added Microsoft SSO (single sign-on). The majority of dental labs run on Microsoft, and some on Google. And from now on, they won't need another password to use Relu. ✅
- A few weeks ago, Relu's CEO Holger Willems sat down with Sergei Azernikov, PhD, from Glidewell Dental for a conversation about the role AI plays in the evolution of digital dental laboratories. They discussed how AI automates baseline design work, freeing up expert technicians to focus their expertise where it matters most. For labs, that translates into clear outcomes: • Higher output without team burnout • Faster, more predictable turnaround times • Less overtime spent catching up on backlog Technicians remain essential, but their
- Building world-class products requires world-class engineers. 🧑💻 We’re expanding our team: 1️⃣ Full-Stack Engineer 2️⃣ Technical Support & Quality If you love relentless execution amidst peers, drop me a DM or check out the comments below. Let’s talk! 🚀
- Back in the States! Visiting some dental labs around the Great Lakes. 🇺🇸 While on business trips, I always try to combine business with natural or historical scenery after a day of work, to better understand the region. Starved Rock State Park offers both natural beauty and history. If you're close to Chicago, go check it out. 👌🏻
- DIA just put another $1.75M into Relu. This round bring our AI design to more U.S. dental labs. 🇺🇸 Proud of my co-founders Adriaan Van Gerven, Antoine Coppens, and Thomas Beznik & Relu team. How far we've come: 1 million cases in 82 countries! Cheers to Kentucky Morrow, Doug Brown, Thomas S., Kate Orr, Philip Toh, and Gregory Harris: So energizing working with you! ⚡️ Press Release: https://lnkd.in/e4RgE9gP
- My visit to Glidewell Dental in California left me mesmerized. They have proven that AI and robotics amp up dental labs. 🤖🌴 Extra special to end up on a podcast with one of the masterminds behind all that technology adoption, Sergei Azernikov, PhD. I couldn't have had a better conversation partner to discuss the latest business and tech insights from Relu shaping dental labs and the industry. 🎙️ Their #DentalTechPodcast features some fascinating voices in dentistry. If you want to learn something new this summer, I'd recommend
- The dental lab market grows at ~7% yoy. That's 2x every 10 years. 🔟 The dental CADCAM market grows at ~10% yoy. That's 2x every 7 years. 7️⃣ The dental AI market grows at ~25% yoy. That's 2x every 3 years. 3️⃣ Which waves are you surfing? 🏄♂️
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