Nele is a researcher in the Interactive Intelligence group at TU Delft. Using her background in machine learning and especially reinforcement learning, she researches how we can support people in accomplishing their long-term goals. Specifically, she is interested in adapting digital behavior change support to people and their situations over time. For example, by creating adaptive support in a conversational agent that helps people quit smoking and become more physically active as part of the NWO-funded Perfect Fit project.

Nele defended her PhD thesis Psychology-Informed Reinforcement Learning for Situated Virtual Coaching in Smoking Cessation, supervised by Dr. ir. Willem-Paul Brinkman and Prof. dr. Mark Neerincx, in 2025. Prior to her PhD, Nele graduated summa cum laude with a BSc. in Computer Science from Fordham University, USA (2018) and obtained her MSc. in Computer Science from TU Delft with distinction (2020). Her four years in the USA were fully funded by a swimming scholarship.