a brief introduction
Hi! 👋 My name is Bram, and here I share what I think might be interesting for others. I do so because I enjoy the process, but also because I believe it's good habit to share knowledge. By being open, I hope that we realize that in the end all of us are human. Silly and wonderful. Trying to make the best out of the life they are given.
Besides writing, I enjoy spending time with the people I love, exercising bouldering or running, or listen to music. Also, I like birds! And I'm sure, if you attend for a bit, you will do to.
I'm located in Eindhoven the Netherlands. I am in the beautiful winter of my twenties.
In 2024 I graduated, and since then I've been working full-time. I started my career as a co-founder and director of Dembrane. I strongly belief in the project's purpose to make democracy work for all. I'm also learning tons about what it means to operationalise a mission and a team (in business context).
My Vision: A world where humanity is sustainably enlightened, living in a blossoming homeostasis with all other Life on Earth.
My Mission: Living a present, loving, cooperative, and wise life. With joy! ✨
CV
Professional
- [2024 → current] Co-founder & director of Dembrane. Growing the team from 3 → 10, the revenue from €30k → €600k, and building the organisation while responsible for anything ops/admin/organisation related.
- [2020-2023] Personal assistant → Project manager at ROER. Got the honour to be mentored by Frank van Summeren on how to be a great professional (❤️).
- [2014-2023] Tutor/educator in many forms. E.g., 1-1 homework guidance for high-school students, group tutoring of classes, 1-year student-life mentoring
- [2012-2023] Tennis coach in many forms. From individual high-performance to large group recreational and from 6 to 70 years old.
Educational
- [2021-2024] Master Data Science & Entrepreneurship @JADS, with specialisation in machine learning. Thesis: Artificial Morality: Incorporating Moral Concepts into Artificial Intelligence – Exploring the potential of Iris Murdoch’s ethical theory to increase the moral decision making of a large language model (8.5)
- [2017-2021] Bachelor Applied Physics @TU/e, with specialisations in classical mechanics and machine learning for physicists. Thesis: Exploring Neural Networks to Replace Slow DFT Calculations (8). Strong culture connection! I love myself some nerds.
- [2015-2017] College Tennis in USA with double bachelor chemistry & math. Left prematurely because I was not connecting with the culture. But I did learn tons on how to work hard, about the world outside Oss, and on the value of going your own way, even if your environment does differently.
- [2009-2015] High-school with technical profile, lots of tennis on the side. Learned how to be social and how to practice consistently at a high level.
Projects
[2023] Master’s thesis on AI (LLM) alignment through AI ethics
Artificial Morality: Incorporating Moral Concepts into Artificial Intelligence
Exploring the potential of Iris Murdoch’s ethical theory to increase the moral
decision making of a large language model
Supervised by Gunter Bombaerts
The societal motivation of the thesis
Recent developments in large language models (LLMs) have catapulted the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, yet research into ensuring ethical behaviour of these models has been lacking. As autonomous AI systems are becoming progressively embedded in areas of society where ethical considerations are paramount, such as autonomous disease detection or vehicle control, there is a pressing need to ensure moral behaviour by these systems. There is little to none research on the impact of architectural decisions (based on ethical philosophy) that could lead to more moral behaviour. Since 1) ethical philosophers have thought for millennia about ethical human behaviour, and 2) modern AI systems are heavily inspired by the human brain; it is logical to explore the effectiveness of using these ethical theories for so-called ‘top-down’ (ethical behaviour by design) ethics into the Transformer – the mathematical architecture of the LLM.
Summary of the core idea of the thesis
Murdoch’s ethical insights on human attention can be applied to the design of the transformer’s attention mechanism to encourage ethical behavior according to Murdoch’s standards. This can be achieved by manipulating the attention mechanism to promote a selfless and morally-focused attention pattern.
Murdoch’s view on attention is that it is a central aspect of moral behavior, and that by training one’s attention on external objects and individuals, one can develop a more accurate and selfless understanding of the world, leading to more moral behavior.
The transformer’s attention mechanism is a mathematical function that allows the model to focus on specific parts of an input sequence when generating output. In other words, it is a mathematical representation of the model’s attention.
By modifying the attention mechanism to focus on information that promotes selfless and morally-focused attention, one could induce more ethical behavior in the transformer’s auto-regression. This could be achieved by, for example, weighting the attention mechanism towards information that is relevant to the needs and wishes of others, rather than information that is self-serving or focused on personal gain.
[2017-2023] Various volunteering committees at student associations
- Data Science (master) study association | Pattern/JADS
- Future student outreach
- Intro committee | ‘founder’
- Physics (bachelor) study association | vdWaals
- Future student outreach
- Gala committee | Chair. Dealt with large group stakeholder management during the emotional period of the first Covid lockdowns.
- Activity committee | Chair
- Intro committee | External affairs and co-chair
[2015] Build a DIY drone with a friend
This was fun! 🙂 – Shout out to my boy Doktor Doktor Bruce!
Here is my LinkedIn.
Personality lists
Characteristics: Open; Connecting; Analytical; Hard-working; Adaptive; Quick-learner; Calm; Change-maker; Inspirator.
Top 1% at: Defining my own trajectory, and leading through this; Connect and learn quickly with all variety of people and subjects; being curious; being smart / analytical / strategical; determined to work hard; self-awareness.
Weak spots (and their prevention mechanism): Perfectionism: I have a high and theoretical bar. (I try to always and actively aim for an 8; which in my mind is often feels like a 7); Being slow: I often need time to process / heat up. (I try to use my instinct more and more). Being overly verbose. (I aim to only communicate delta’s, and not what is already known).
Desired learning path: Managing a meaningful operation by bringing people and structure together; Educating in general; Analytical thought and decision making; Dialogue and negotiation.
My latest public observations
My latest short essays
- Always take people along in the process. Skipping steps while working with people will create friction and unexpected results.
- The Snap
- On Using Stoicism as a Daily Operating System
My latest lessons
- Always take people along in the process. Skipping steps while working with people will create friction and unexpected results. Work May 2026