The Center for Applied Public Economics (CAPE) at the UCLouvain Saint-Louis - Bruxelles was created at the end of 2018, and works on various research topics in public finance, with a particular attention for labor market policy, mobility, environmental issues and socio-economic inequalities. At the core of CAPE’s research activities is the Beamm project, an effort to build a comprehensive online, open-access tax-benefit microsimulation model. Besides scientific research, CAPE also helps public administrations, policy makers and other interested parties with public policy evaluations, socio-economic impact analyses, spending reviews and other methodological support. CAPE chooses to work with all researchers in a closely knit team, with all team members closely working together on a highly collaborative research project.
Tom is a professor of public economics at the UCLouvain Saint-Louis - Bruxelles. He is director of the Center for Applied Public Economics (CAPE) and a member of the Center for Research in Economics (CEREC). Tom’s research interests are in public economics, data science, tax design, transport economics and environmental economics. Former research topics include game theory, auction theory and economic history.
Gilles holds a Ph.D. from the UCLouvain (2010). He then obtained a post-doc scholarship from the FNRS and is now assistant professor at University Saint-Louis-Bruxelles since 2016. He is a member of the Center for Applied Public Economics (CAPE) and the Center for Research in Economics (CEREC).
Hélène is assistant professor in Economics at the UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles, as well as Chargée de Recherche CNRS. She obtained her PhD in Economics and Management Sciences from the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in 2010. She is currently director of the Center for Economic Research (CEREC), and member of the Center for Applied Public Economics (CAPE). Her domains of expertise are Macroeconomics, International Economics and Economic Growth.
Cedric Heuchenne holds a Master’s degree in Applied Sciences and a Ph.D. in Statistics from the Catholic University of Louvain (2005). He is now working as a Statistics/Data Science professor at the University of Liège. His research concerns different applied and theoretical fields like survival or duration data analysis, nonparametric statistical inference, machine learning, statistical process control, anomaly detection, quality management, or risk modeling.
Koen is an Assistant Professor in Economics at UCLouvain – Saint-Louis Bruxelles. He obtained his PhD in 2016 at KU Leuven. After his PhD, he continued as a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven and UCLouvain.
Natalia is a postdoctoral researcher in labor economics at UCLouvain Saint-Louis Brussels. She holds an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s degree in Quantitative Economics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and UCLouvain and obtained her PhD from UCLouvain and Ghent University. Her research interests include microeconometrics and labor economics.
Callum is turning BEAMM into a reliable, professional-grade platform — leading and coordinating its software engineering across the cloud infrastructure, the core engine, and the in-development synthetic-data pipeline that will power future releases.
He also helps shape how the team works, establishing the shared development practices, documentation, and collaborative culture that hold a multidisciplinary group of economists, statisticians, and engineers together.
Before BEAMM, Callum earned a PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Leeds (UK) studying computational perception and motor control, and worked at The Alan Turing Institute (UK) as a research data scientist on data privacy, synthetic data, and digital identity. He brings a product-orientated approach to building dependable, data-driven software systems.
Hugues Annoye is a researcher in statistics and machine learning. He holds a PhD in science from UCLouvain, after completing a thesis in statistics titled - Statistical matching and data generation - under the supervision of Cédric Heuchenne. Hugues also holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and two research master’s degrees (one in mathematics and one in statistic), all from UCLouvain. His research interests include statistics and data science, particularly statistical matching and synthetic data creation.
Alexandre holds a double Master’s degree in Economics from UCLouvain and Bocconi University (Milan), and a Master’s degree in Statistics from UCLouvain. He defended his PhD thesis in Statistics in June 2023, entitled « Lorenz regressions, a statistical contribution to the quantification of explained inequality ». Alexandre joined CAPE as postdoctoral researcher and member of the TAXFAM project in September 2023. He is mainly interested in the development of statistical procedures to better quantify and evaluate socioeconomic inequality.
Antoine Soetewey is a postdoctoral researcher in statistics at UCLouvain Saint-Louis Brussels and HEC Liège. He contributes to the Beamm project, which focuses on economic policy simulation, and the ODALON - Open multimodal Data for Automated Local News - project, which leverages data science to enhance journalism and enable the partial automation of local news. Antoine obtained his PhD in statistics from UCLouvain, focusing on survival analysis and biostatistical methods applied to cancer patients. He also holds a Master in Economics from KU Leuven and a Master in Econometrics from Maastricht University. His research interests include bio-statistics, data science, and the development of methods to analyze complex datasets. Passionate about making statistics accessible to everyone, Antoine leverages open-source statistical programming languages like R to democratize the use and understanding of statistical tools.
Francesco obtained his PhD in Economics from the UCLouvain. His research interests are: Labor Economics and Economic Geography.
Daniel Coppens d’Eeckenbrugge holds a Bachelor’s in business engineering from the UCLouvain and a double Master’s degree in economics and political sciences from the Economics School of Louvain (UCLouvain) & the University of Milan (UNIMI).
Daniel’s research interests are mainly about public economy issues. He is currently orienting his research project towards tax-benefit systems and their distributional impacts through taxation.
Jean Paul Madrigal holds a Master in Economics, with an emphasis on Public Intervention, from the Université Catholique de Louvain. He has worked in applied research for the Mexican Association of Pension Funds, as well as in more academic settings such as El Colegio de México and the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research - LISER.
Rory holds an Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters Degree in Quantitative Economics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, UCLouvain, and Ca' Foscari University of Venice. After graduating, Rory began to work at University Saint-Louis-Bruxelles as a full-time teaching assistant with plans to complete his PhD in Economics. His research interests are focused on but not limited to labor and public economics, more specifically the labor market conditions in the gig economy.
Maxime holds a Bachelor’s degree in economics and business management, a Master’s degree in management sciences, a Master’s degree in law, and a specialized Master’s degree in tax law, all obtained from the University of Liège. He contributes to the Beamm project as a taxation specialist. In addition to this role, he is a teaching and research assistant at the University of Liège’s Tax Institute, with a particular focus on family taxation.
Aron holds a Master’s degree in Economics from KULeuven (2024) and a joint Master’s degree in Civil Engineering from VUB and ULB (2019). He has worked in the dredging industry, in secondary education and worked as an intern in the development of the microsimulation model EUROMOD at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Seville. Throughout his academic life, Aron was active in multiple non-profit organizations such as OSD VUB and IAESTE and he is presently secretary of VC Zavath. His research interests lie in public economics, tax-design, policy evaluation and political economy.
Astrid graduated with honors from a Master in Economics at the Université Catholique de Louvain in 2020 and from a Bachelor in Economics and Management with an Architecture minor in 2018. During her Master, she participated in the Erasmus+ Program for one semester at the Bocconi University in Milan. Her research interests are public economics and more precisely mobility and its impacts on the population. She also has experience in Spending Reviews.
Emilia completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Economics and Management at UNamur. She started her PhD in Economics in 2021. Her research interests include health economics, social health protection, income inequalities, and disability.
Laure holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and management from Saint-Louis University Brussels and a double master’s degree in Economics from the Economics School of Louvain (UCLouvain) and from Maastricht University. She started a PhD in October 2023 and joined cape in September 2024. Her research interests are public and labor economics.
Léa Jacquet holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Engineering and a Master’s degree in Data Science and Statistics from UCLouvain. During her Master’s program, she studied at McGill University in Montreal for one semester, gaining valuable international experience. Throughout her academic journey, Léa was actively involved in organizations such as AIESEC and Alterékot. In September 2023, she began to work as a full-time research assistant with plans to pursue a PhD in economics. Her research interests lie in family economics, public economics, and econometrics.
Soufiane holds a master’s degree in business engineering from ULB (Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management) and an AESS from the same institution. After completing his master’s, Soufiane worked in secondary education before joining the University of Saint-Louis-Brussels.
Tom earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Saint-Louis University in Brussels and a master’s degree in economics from UCLouvain. Subsequently, he combined a teaching assistant role in economics at UCLouvain while pursuing a master’s degree in statistics at the same institution. His research interests include public economics and family economics.
François Meuwissen holds a Bachelor’s degree in business engineering from the UCLouvain and a double Master’s degree in economics and political sciences from the Economics School of Louvain (UCLouvain) & the University of Milan (UNIMI). His research interests are mainly about public economy issues.
Thaddée holds two Master degrees in Economics and Data Science from Université Libre de Bruxelles. He has worked several years as an economist for trade unions and as a statistician in the Public Employment Service of the Brussels’ region. He joined CAPE in 2025 and is pursuing a PhD with interests in quantitative methods.
Fanny Vanrykel holds a doctoral degree in law. She specializes in fiscal law, with a particular attention for environmental and mobility problems.
Malka is an Assistant Professor in Economics at Liège University - HEC Liège. She obtained her PhD from the Paris School of Economics in 2018. After her PhD, she joined the ETH Zürich as a postdoctoral researcher for three years. She is a public economist studying on the redistributive and predistributive impact of the tax system on income distribution. Her topics of interests include the taxation of the rich, the taxation of households versus individuals, and the financing of charities and political parties.
Willem is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor with tenure) in the Economics Division of the University of Stirling, and affiliated at KU Leuven (Department of Economics), University of Edinburgh (Center on Constitutional Change), UCLouvain (CEREC & JURI) and CESifo (Munich). His research spans the fields of public economics and political (behavioural) economics, with a specific focus on political attitudes, public finance and (fiscal) federalism.
Julie is the administrative manager of the Center for Applied Public Economics (CAPE) and of the Center for Research in Economics (CEREC).