Jurgen Silence is a Senior Project Manager working for the Flemish Government (since 2019). He holds two Master’s degrees in ecology and a PhD in Medical Sciences. After his studies, he founded his own company and delivered large-scale projects for organisations including the European Union, UEFA and KU Leuven University (Research & Development), as well as six departments of the Flemish Government.
Jurgen was selected as a coordinating expert for the Horizon projects POLIVISU, DUET, COMPAIR, URBANAGE and URBREATH, and for the Digital Europe Programme project x-CITE. His work covers end-to-end project delivery (business, functional and technical design, including UI/UX), big data (collection, management, analysis and visualisation), tool development, and participatory co-creation.
In URBREATH (launched January 2024), he leads the Living Labs work package, supporting nine pilot cities across four climate zones to set up and run Living Labs that co-design, deploy and monitor Nature-Based Solutions for urban climate resilience, supported by tools including a digital twin for scenario assessment.