Michaël Brands is CEO and co-founder of Consono, a technology company with its headquarters in Antwerp, Belgium, and the inventor of a patented data harmonization engine which, uniquely, is able to blend structured and unstructured data in the same environment.

Michaël has re-defined the way massive quantities of disparate data, created and stored in diverse formats and according to different models, can be used in harmony, by focusing on what links data, rather than what makes it different.

A masters graduate in literature and linguistics from Belgium's largest and highest-ranked university, the Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Michael first went into industry as a language specialist at Lernout and Hauspie, working on text-to-speech solutions.

He earned a postgraduate degree in Computer Linguistics at the FLV Flanders Language Campus and was for a while a lecturer in applied linguistics at the Vlekho Business School in Brussels. He is currently a lecturer in the Big Data Programme of Professor Guy De Tré at the University of Gent.

His first company, i.Know, used his patented linguistic analytics to help alleviate the problem of information overload. That company was bought by American database management platform vendors, InterSystems, in 2010, who integrated the technology into their own platform.

He created Consono in 2014.

Overall, Michaël is the holder of multiple patents relating to his work at i.Know and Consono.