Joël M. H. Karel (S'04–M'08) was born in 1978. He received the “Kandidaat Informatica” degree in computer science from Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium, in 1999. In the same year he attended a special four week track on knowledge engineering and computer science at Baylor University, Waco, TX. He received the Doctoraal (M.Sc. degree) in knowledge engineering from the Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands, in 2001, after completing his thesis on modeling atrial fibrillation at the Medtronic Bakken Research Center. He then obtained a joint position at the Maastricht University and MaTeUM b.v. on simulation. He started the Ph.D. degree in the field of biomedical signal processing and systems theory with application for cardiac pacemakers in 2004 at the Department of Mathematics on the BioSens project, Maastricht University. He received the Ph.D. degree after defending his thesis titled “A wavelet approach for cardiac signal processing for low-power hardware applications” from Maastricht University in 2009. Since 2007, he has combined his Ph.D. research with a part-time position as an Assistant Professor and since 2008 he has been a full-time Assistant Professor in the Department of Knowledge Engineering, Maastricht University. His research interests are in the field of biomedical engineering, signal processing, wavelet theory and linear systems theory.