↓Skip to main content

Research

I am a postdoctoral researcher in data science and statistics at UCLouvain, working on issues related to mortality under the supervision of Prof. Catherine Legrand and Prof. Michel Denuit. More specifically, I work on the construction of mortality tables for the Belgian market based on statistics from the National Bank of Belgium (NBB).

During my first postdoc, from September 2024 to September 2026, I contributed to the ODALON (Open multimodal Data for Automated LOcal News) and Beamm (Belgian Arithmetic Microsimulation Model) projects at ULiège and UCLouvain Saint-Louis Brussels. The ODALON project aims to develop a platform that leverages data science to partially automate the production of local news, while the Beamm project aims to develop a microsimulation model to simulate the impact of policy measures on the Belgian population.

Before that, I obtained a PhD in statistics from UCLouvain, also under the supervision of Prof. Legrand and Prof. Denuit. My thesis focused on survival analysis and biostatistical methods applied to cancer patients, in order to estimate the time since diagnosis after which these patients can be considered cured, and to quantify their potential excess mortality so as to adapt the actuarial pricing of life insurance products.

My research interests lie in (bio)statistics, data science, and predictive modeling, using a wide range of methods from traditional statistical models to advanced machine learning techniques. I develop rigorous analyses tailored to the specificities of the data studied, with particular attention paid to the interpretability of the results and their practical application.

In this perspective, and driven by the idea of making statistics accessible to everyone, I use open-source programming languages, such as R, to promote their use and understanding among a wider audience.

Below, you will find a list of my scientific publications and communications, as well as my academic affiliations and service.

Publications

Peer-reviewed papers

  • Truong, H.C., Pham, Q.D., Phan, T.V., Vo, D.T.T., Nguyen, P.D., Nguyen, H.T., Le, N.N.T., Trinh, T.H., Nguyen, Q.D., Nguyen, N.T., Lam, T.T., Soetewey, A., Nguyen, T.V., Nguyen, T.V. and Speybroeck, N. (2026). Effectiveness of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines against invasive pneumococcal disease in Vietnamese children prior to national introduction: A matched case-control study. Vaccine, 77, 128349. [doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2026.128349]
  • Soetewey, A., Heuchenne, C., Claes, A. and Descampe, A. (2026). AssociationExplorer: A user-friendly shiny application for exploring associations and visual patterns. SoftwareX, 33, 102483. [doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2025.102483]
  • Soetewey, A., Legrand, C., Denuit, M. and Silversmit, G. (2025). Semi-Markov modeling for disease incidence risk and duration. Biostatistics & Epidemiology, 9(1). [doi.org/10.1080/24709360.2025.2517916]
  • Soetewey, A., Legrand, C., Denuit, M. and Silversmit, G. (2025). Right to be forgotten for mortgage insurance issued to cancer survivors: Critical assessment and new proposal. European Actuarial Journal, 15, 15-43. [dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13385-024-00403-6]
  • Houben, J.J., Carpentier, Y., Paulissen, G., Van Snick, G. and Soetewey, A. (2023). Impact of a Food Rebalancing Program Associated with Plant-Derived Food Supplements on the Biometric, Behavioral, and Biological Parameters of Obese Subjects. Nutrients, 15(22):4780. [doi.org/10.3390/nu15224780]
  • Truong, H.C., Van Phan, T., Nguyen, H.T., Truong, K.H., Do, V.C., Pham, N.N.M., Ho, T.V., Phan, T.T.Q., Hoang, T.A., Soetewey, A., Ho, T.N.L., Pham, Q.D., Luong, Q.C., Vo, D.T.T., Nguyen, T.V. and Speybroeck, N. (2023). Childhood Bacterial Meningitis Surveillance in Southern Vietnam: Trends and Vaccination Implications from 2012 to 2021. Open Forum Infectious Diseases (p. ofad229). Oxford University Press. [doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofad229]
  • Soetewey, A., Legrand, C., Denuit, M. and Silversmit, G. (2022). Semi-Markov modeling for cancer insurance. European Actuarial Journal, 12, 813-837. [doi.org/10.1007/s13385-022-00308-2]
  • Soetewey, A., Legrand, C., Denuit, M. and Silversmit, G. (2021). Waiting period from diagnosis for mortgage insurance issued to cancer survivors. European Actuarial Journal, 11, 135-160. [doi.org/10.1007/s13385-020-00254-x]

Working papers

  • D’Haegeleer, T., Heuchenne, C. and Soetewey, A. (2026). Partial Association Explorer: Comparing Marginal and Conditional Dependence Structures in Mixed Social-Science Data. Submitted to Social Science Computer Review. [hdl.handle.net/2078.5/280291]
  • Moury, J., Vandevelde, V., Soetewey, A., Thys, F. and Bulpa, P. (2026). Comparaison des prises en charge des urgences préhospitalières par des équipes paramédicalisées et médicalisées. In press, Revue Médicale de Liège.
  • Chevalier, N., Soetewey, A., Matthys, H. and Depecker, M. (2026). Serum amyloid A concentrations in horses with acute equine piroplasmosis caused by Babesia caballi or Theileria equi. Submitted to Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation. [hdl.handle.net/2078.5/279293]
  • Soetewey, A. and Marie, J. (2026). kindling: A Higher-Level torch Interface for Generating, Training, and Tuning Neural Networks in R. Submitted to The Journal of Open Source Software. [doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.03832]
  • Soetewey, A. (2026). Statistics 101, 201, and 202: Three Shiny Apps for Teaching Probability Distributions, Inferential Statistics, and Simple Linear Regression. In press, The Journal of Open Source Education. [doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.28274]

Books

  • Soetewey, A. and Heuchenne, C. (2026). Advanced Descriptive Analysis of Tabular Data: Methods and Tools for Exploratory Analysis. Under review at Springer Nature.

PhD thesis

  • Soetewey, A. (2024). Waiting period from diagnosis for mortgage insurance issued to cancer survivors. UCLouvain, Belgium. [hdl.handle.net/2078.5/263052]
For a detailed list of publications see my Google Scholar, ORCID or ResearchGate profile.

Talks & posters

  • 2nd international Beamm conference on public finance and public policy evaluation (2026). UCLouvain Saint-Louis Brussels, Belgium [slides]
  • 1st international Beamm conference on public finance and public policy evaluation (2025). UCLouvain Saint-Louis Brussels, Belgium [poster and video]
  • 92nd Acfas congress: In search of automated media: thinking about the role of "artificial intelligence" and algorithms in media communication today (2025). École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Canada [slides]
  • One-day symposium: "Statistics, data science, artificial intelligence - Shaping the future together" (2024). Brussels, Belgium [slides]
  • Hackathon of the 30th annual meeting of the Royal Statistical Society of Belgium (RSSB) (2023). UCLouvain, Belgium
  • Workshop on behalf of the 30th anniversary of the UCLouvain's Institute of Statistics: "Statistics and its role in societal challenges" (2022). UCLouvain, Belgium [poster]
  • Hackathon of the 28th annual meeting of the Royal Statistical Society of Belgium (RSSB) (2021). ULiège, Belgium [slides]
  • Young researchers day (2021). UCLouvain, Belgium [slides]
  • 15th clinical epidemiology conference (EPICLIN) (2021). Marseille, France [poster, awarded best poster by the scientific committee]
  • Scientific exchange day: "Cure models: estimating the recovery time to improve access to insurance" (2020). French National Cancer Institute (INCa), France [slides]
  • Workshop: "How can we predict the evolution of Covid-19 in Belgium?" (2020). UCLouvain, Belgium [slides]
  • 26th annual meeting of the Royal Statistical Society of Belgium (RSSB) (2018). Domaine des Hautes Fagnes, Belgium [poster]
  • Young researchers day (2018). UCLouvain, Belgium [slides]
  • Workshop: "Insurability of people who have had cancer" (2018). UCLouvain, Belgium [slides]
  • Joint PhD seminar in statistics, actuarial and financial mathematics (2018). University of Oldenburg, Germany [slides]

Student supervision

PhD student

  • Thaddée D’haegeleer (2025 – present, co-supervision with Prof. Cédric Heuchenne)

Master students

  • Carnot Dongmo Mbane (2025 – 2026, co-supervision with Prof. Cédric Heuchenne and Dr. Hugues Annoye)
  • Saunier Blainda Juenang Payong (2025 – 2026, co-supervision with Prof. Cédric Heuchenne)

Academic service

  • Reviewer for Open Forum Infectious Diseases (OFID), SoftwareX, The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS), Scientific Reports and BMC Cancer (2024 – Present)
  • Doctoral student representative at the Thematic Doctoral School of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences, F.R.S.-FNRS and at the Louvain School of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (LSBA), UCLouvain (2020 – 2024)

Grants & funding

  • FWO and F.R.S.-FNRS, under the Excellence of Science (EOS) program, project EOS 40007517 (2017 – 2024 & 2026 – 2027)
  • The Walloon Region and the Service public de Wallonie (SPW) Recherche, under the ODALON research project, project Win2Wal 2023 Num. 2310019 ODALON3 (2024 – 2026)

Press & media

  • Can the right to be forgotten in insurance be improved? (UCLouvain) [link]
  • Research: a profession with expertise and passion (UCLouvain) [link]
  • The right to be forgotten - Are we all equal when it comes to insurance? (UCLouvain) [link]
  • How can we predict the evolution of COVID 19 in Belgium? (UCLouvain) [link]