Thijs Willems obtained a MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering at KU Leuven (Belgium) in 2020 with a master’s thesis on ‘Accurate Camera-based 3D Displacement Measurements in service to Modal Analysis’. Afterwards, he stayed on for a PhD at the KU Leuven Mecha(tro)nic System Dynamics (LMSD) research group to continue his research activities. More specifically, his PhD focuses on the experimental identification of mecha(tro)nic systems by using full-field camera-based measurements. His research interests include the use of computer vision and image processing in dynamic testing and mechanical system identification. He is also a member of Flanders Make, the strategic research centre for the manufacturing industry in Flanders.

In this research, together with Siemens Industry Software, he investigated vision-based motion tracking approaches for the extraction of flexible deformation modes on a rotating tire setup.