The AIMS research group grew out of the CIME research unit (not yet recognized as a research group). CIME stands for “cognition and modeling”, and was not abbreviated as COMO because that research group already existed in the Faculty of Science at the time when CIME was founded. CIME is part of NEUR. Given the growth of CIME, and after consultation with the chairman of NEUR, we started with the recognition application as a research group of CIME. Due to the evolution of CIME's activities, “cognition and modeling” no longer fully covers the load. That is why we suddenly propose a name change from CIME to AIMS, where AIMS stands for “artificial intelligence supported modeling in clinical sciences”.

CIME is already interdisciplinary. Guy Nagels was trained as a doctor at the VUB (1992), and subsequently as a civil engineer in applied computer science, also at the VUB (2012). Senior Research Fellow Jeroen Van Schependom, who is 50% affiliated with ETRO and 50% affiliated with CIME, is a civil physics engineer (UGent 2011), and a doctor in medical sciences (VUB 2015) and in psychological sciences (Umons 2015). The four PhD students who are primarily associated with CIME have basic diplomas such as experimental psychologist (Ugent), civil engineer in biomedical engineering techniques (VUB), physiotherapy (KUL) and medicine (VUB). Guy Nagels is also a co-supervisor of doctoral students in the groups of Kurt Barbé (mathematician VUB) and Sebastiaan Engelborghs (three doctors VUB). A new collaboration on AI is now being started with the group of Romain Meeusen, the PhD student in that project is a movement scientist graduated from the VUB. An aspiring FWO application was submitted for this, on which Guy Nagels is co-supervisor.