The people behind the lab.

Dr. Bartel Van de Walle is working at the intersection of applied AI, complex-situation analysis, and human decision-making under pressure. He founded CASi Labs after two decades of research, UN leadership, and field deployments in crisis, humanitarian, and policy contexts — where the reasoning gap between available information and defensible judgment kept showing up as the problem no tool was solving.

Before founding CASi Labs, Bartel was Director at UNU-MERIT (United Nations University), Professor in Policy Analysis at Delft University of Technology, and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Harvard Kennedy School. Bartel holds a PhD in Mathematics from Ghent University, Belgium. Earlier, as an assistant professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, he worked with Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz — pioneers of computer-mediated communication and emergency-management information systems — a lineage CASi Labs builds directly on.

He is the author or co-author of some fifty journal articles and a hundred conference papers, and the editor of twelve volumes. Among them is “The coordination–information bubble in humanitarian response” (Comes, Van de Walle & Van Wassenhove), Production and Operations Management, 2020.

He previously served on the board of directors of VITO, the Flemish institute for technological research, and as staff advisor to the Flemish Minister of Innovation.

Dr. Jennie Phillips is a leader in research, education, and practice with over 15 years of experience working across humanitarian, disaster, global health, political, climate, and technology systems. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the Munk School of Global Affairs), where her doctoral research examined resilience in online crisis response networks, and a Master's in Educational Technology from Concordia University.

She was a doctoral fellow at the Citizen Lab and has held a research fellowship with the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health. She has taught in York University's Disaster & Emergency Management program, and directed the Project on Information Ecosystem Resilience at McGill University's Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy. She is currently Co-Director of the Global Centre for Democratic Resilience, a think tank building resilience against digital information threats to democracy.

Her work with governments, international organizations, and civil society — including the Privy Council Office / Prime Minister's Office of Canada, Global Affairs Canada, UN-OCHA, the German Red Cross, CARE Netherlands, and universities including McGill and Dalhousie — centres on knowledge mobilization: building the awareness and understanding of complex systems needed to drive resilience and social change. Most recently this is reflected in a report on foreign interference and cognitive sovereignty in Canada, co-authored with CASi Labs' founder, Bartel Van de Walle.

Martijn van Stratum has spent close to fifteen years in Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), leading transformation programmes that connect business, compliance and technology. He earned his master's in Information Management from Tilburg University in 2005, then began his career as an information analyst and functional designer at Sogeti, before moving through a run of software implementation and consulting roles.

In 2012 he joined BWise, a Dutch GRC scale-up later acquired by NASDAQ (its GRC business is now part of SAI360), as Lead Consultant GRC and Academy Trainer. There he grew into the role of GRC Business Architect, executing and managing implementations of its GRC platform for more than 60 organisations worldwide, with long-term postings in Sydney and the Nordics. As experienced trainer and mentor, he trained partners, clients and colleagues along the way.

Since 2017 he has run Stratosfear.Consulting, his own independent practice specialising in Strategic GRC/IRM advisory — and in the disciplines that decide whether such programmes actually land: business process improvement, requirements lifecycle management, and delivery under pressure. In 2022 he also co-founded Control Rebels, serving as Director of New Business Development and helping organisations lift their GRC maturity.

He moved to Oslo early 2024 to join DNB, Norway's largest financial institution, where he helped advance its GRC strategy and operations. He recently returned to the Netherlands. Martijn is known for operational clarity, integrity and stakeholder alignment, and for building strategic orchestration inside complex, high-stakes organisations.

Over the past 12 years, David has held roles in data, research and development for the United Nations, GIZ, and Fraunhofer Institute and obtained a PhD in data-driven crisis decision-making with a focus on cognitive and data bias. His work included collaborations in Indonesia, The Philippines, Algeria and Tanzania, and he has worked in The Netherlands, Germany, and the US.

Thematically, David's work has always been about building better data processes and tools for organizations that have to make high-stakes decisions in time-critical environments. He has built production systems that have accelerated the work with conflict and crisis data through automated data engineering and tailored integration of AI functions. His tech stack is Python, SQL, JavaScript, Linux.

For CASi Labs, David focuses on the technical development, supporting the reliability of CASi's AI solutions.

From Kabul to Geneva to Palo Alto, Joel Myhre has led technology engagement efforts for public health, environmental, and disaster response entities for over two decades. His geospatial endeavors include Membership in the UK Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS) and co-chair of the UN Information Management Working Group for GIS.

He currently leads GIS innovations for the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR), having previously furthered open data for the State of California. Previous collaborations include advising the EOC-NET at WHO and advancing humanitarian AI innovation with the Danish Refugee Council in Copenhagen and the Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) in Hawaii.

Daniel Chovanec is a PhD candidate at the Department of Crisis Management, Faculty of Security Engineering, University of Žilina, Slovakia, where his research focuses on the application of artificial intelligence in crisis management to support decision-making processes. His broader research interests include information systems, risk assessment, decision support, critical infrastructure protection, and the use of modern technologies in the security domain.

Throughout his studies, he has gained extensive international experience, having completed several long-term stays abroad in Portugal, France, and the Czech Republic, as well as a three-month internship at the Azores Regional Civil Protection and Fire Service. He has also taken part in numerous international summer schools, training courses, and study visits across Europe and beyond, which have shaped his multidisciplinary perspective on solving complex problems in crisis management.

Daniel has practical experience in project management from the private sector, where he worked throughout his bachelor's and master's studies, and has been working with the Žilina Regional Authority as a junior data analyst on a climate-related project. He also cooperates with national public administration bodies on issues related to the implementation of artificial intelligence and crisis management, and has been involved in expert activities in the field of national critical infrastructure risk assessment.

He is a co-author of several scientific publications indexed in Web of Science and has been involved in international projects under schemes such as Horizon Europe and Erasmus+.