Kaat is a PhD student within the Robot-Assisted Surgery (RAS) group at KU Leuven under the supervision of Prof. Emmanuel Vander Poorten. She obtained her BSc and MSc degree in Electromechanical Engineering at KU Leuven in 2022. As part of her degree she studied a semester at Seoul National University (SNU) in South Korea. Her master research focused on bio-impedance sensing for distance measurement and physiological motion compensation using a model-based approach. She started her PhD that same year with the aim of contributing to the development of autonomous robotic assisted spine surgery using multi-robot control.