About us
From university research to real-world projects
Usidistrib is a FIRST Spin-Off project launched in May 2013, based on the UsiXML project and funded by the Walloon Region. It builds on a user-interface distribution technology developed in Jérémie Melchior's PhD thesis at the Université catholique de Louvain.
About Jérémie Melchior
The son of a technician and all-round tinkerer who worked for the country's largest telecom company, Jérémie Melchior grew up surrounded by computers and electronic devices. From an early age, he developed a gift for technology, electronics and programming.
In 2002, he passed the civil engineering entrance exam, then turned to his passion, computer science. After graduating as a computer science engineer in 2008, he was offered a PhD position by one of his professors.
From September 2008, he worked on the European SELFMAN project (Self-Management for Large-Scale Distributed Systems). Within a few months, he built a distributed system letting applications communicate between Windows and Linux computers and iOS and Android phones. At the project's final review, he demonstrated a drawing application for Windows, Linux and Android where drawing happens in real time, free from network delays.
Betting early on smartphones and tablets, he embraced the unification of Windows across devices from 2010 and became one of Belgium's most active developers on Windows Phone (16 apps) and Windows 8 / 8.1 (24 apps). The distributed system he built became Usidistrib and the core of his thesis.
He also worked on the UsiXML project, which aims to standardise a language for developing cross-platform, multimodal applications from models.
In 2012, he decided to become an entrepreneur. After the Boostcamp programme (November 2012 – March 2013), he launched the Usidistrib FIRST Spin-Off project in May 2013, mentored by experienced sponsors: Bruno Wattenbergh (Brussels Enterprise Agency, now hub.brussels), Lieve Goedhuys (formerly Microsoft Belgium) and Xavier Marichal (UCLouvain spin-off expert).
Today, Usidistrib designs and maintains custom websites and platforms for companies, non-profits and sports clubs.
Our values
- Human qualities: listening, empathy, relationships.
- Innovation: observation, a taste for experimentation, vision and the will to innovate.
- Teamwork: transparency, sharing, communication and learning.