Pieter Ballon

Overview

Pieter Ballon is a Full Professor in Communication Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Director of imec-SMIT, a research group of Vrije Universiteit Brussel and imec with a team of over 150 researchers. His research covers business models for ICT systems and services, mobile services, smart cities and digital platforms. He holds a PhD in Communication Sciences from Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a licentiate in Modern History from KU Leuven. Since 2022 he has been Vice-Rector for Research at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is based in Brussels.

Ballon was a researcher and team leader at TNO, the Dutch organisation for applied scientific research, from 1998 to 2007, and later served as Director of iMinds, the Flemish institute for digital innovation. He is a co-founder of the European Network of Living Labs and of the Open and Agile Smart Cities Network, and a co-founder and board member of the Hannah Arendt Institute, established in 2020. He was designated the first Brussels Smart City Ambassador in 2016 and received the Vrije Universiteit Brussel research council prize for Societal Valorisation in 2017. He has also been a guest professor at Polytech, Université d'Angers, France.

As director of imec-SMIT, Pieter leads a team of researchers working on digital innovation, media technology, and smart city applications, often bridging academic research with practical policy and industry applications.