Luc Steels studied linguistics at the University of Antwerp and computer science/Artificial Intelligence at M.I.T. (US). He has been active in university education (as a professor of AI at the Free University of Brussels, VUB), academic research (as founding director of the VUB Artificial Intelligence Laboratory), and industrial research and management (as founding director of the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris). 

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He is an elected member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Sciences and Arts and the European Academy of Sciences and is a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, Goldsmiths College in London, the European Center for Living Technologies in Venice and the Catalan Institute for Advanced Studies (ICREA) in Barcelona, Spain.

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Besides his scientific work, Steels is a composer of operas working with neuroscientist Oscar Vilarroya as librettist. Their first opera Casparo premiered at the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona in 2011 and their newest opera Fausto.