[1][2] He is the co-founder of IRIS (Image Recognition Integrated Systems), a leading company in the information management industry.
He received a civil engineering Degree in Electronics from the Université Catholique de Louvain in 1981 and a PhD in Applied science in 1987, from the same university.
A prototype of a complete OCR system was also built in the University labs, based on a new generation of custom Image Processing ICs.
He also established strategic agreements with international partners in the US, Europe and Asia such as HP, Canon, Kodak, Adobe, Fujitsu and Siemens.
Until the end of 2015, de Muelenaere remained President & CEO of IRIS and focused on the development of new technological and commercial partnerships with Canon.
He has also started new projects such as the Yncubator (www.yncubator.be, the incubator for students-entrepreneurs at the Université Catholique de Louvain) and is a member of the investment committee at the QBIC Venture Capital fund (www.qbic.be, a fund financing spin-offs of several Belgian universities) He was the president and CEO of IRIS Group until the end of 2015, and a member of the board of several companies, including BSB,[3] Proximus,[4] and Pairi Daiza.