About
Hi! I’m Kimberly! I’m a robotics engineer, originally from the Netherlands but currently living in Sweden. I finished my PhD at the TU Delft, MAVlab in 2019 and currently I’m a developer at Bitcraze.
Here is the extended version of my biography:
The first thing you should know about me is that I’m Dutch. I grew up in the Netherlands, which is a small little country that has fought for eternity against the sea and still managed to exist. If you do visit and would appreciate some impressive pieces of Civil Engineering, don’t linger around in Amsterdam but visit the “Delta werken” in the province of Zeeland or the ‘Afsluitdijk” in the north. But if you don’t like to take your chances near our oceans, ‘Utrecht’, ‘Groningen’ and ‘Maastricht are really nice to visit too! Probably my last name already gave it away, but I’m also half-American and I visit California almost once a year.
So, let’s talk about hobbies! I have played tennis for almost all my life (started when I was just 6 years old), and I’ve played competitively in tournaments and team-based competitions. You can also find me skiing on some mountains at least once per year. In general, I really love visiting other countries and to experience the culture and, most importantly, the food. During my studies I’ve managed to go on extended stays abroad: I’ve spent a half a year in Santa Barbara, 3 months in Liverpool, a half a year in Tokyo. Talking about the latter: I’m a huge fan of pretty much everything related to Japan. All their food, Ghibli studios and other Japanese productions, the culture and people, and I do admit that I’m quite the karaoke addict. Moreover, I love going to the movies, playing videogames, and enjoying Dutch coziness, a.k.a. “gezelligheid”, with friends.
To show in a slice of my educational background: for my Bachelor studies at the Delft University of Technology, I started out at Industrial Design Engineering. Here I learned everything there is to know about product development, from analyzing market-trends, creating concepts to finally to the full production process. For my Masters I was leaning more towards the technical side. After a bridging course to Mechanical engineering I went to do an M.Sc. in BioMecanical design with a specialization in Bio-Robotics (currently known cognitive robotics). I ended developing a cerebellum-based stabilization system for a binocular robotic head (google “jaguar chicken commercial”:) ). After this, I came across a project at the MAVlab where I was allowed to work with tiny MAVs called pocket-drones, and the first thing I thought was ‘awesome!!’, however, that was before I realized that working with tiny MAVs was not a piece of cake. I’m glad that the inner-geek in me kept me excited for 4 years straight, which is a crucial element or any PhD I believe, or any job! The result of my PhD ended up with a Science Robotics publication, but I might be even more proud about the fact that my work was featured in a long running Dutch children science show (‘Klokhuis’) that I used to watch when I grew up!
Now I am a robotics engineer at Bitcraze in Sweden, where I work on improving the robotic integration of the Crazyflie (the drone I worked with during my PhD) so that researchers can interact with it more easily for their papers or R&D efforts.