Ilja is associate professor of Educational Sciences at the Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he leads the Amsterdam Center for Learning Analytics (ACLA). He has a background in Education Economics and explores how causal and predictive modeling techniques can be utilized in improving the effectiveness and impact of interventions and policies in education, health and other domains of public policy. He is one of the initiators of the Driven. Within Driven, he supervises the research projects aimed at better understanding the relationships between mental health, education, and labor market participation of deaf and hard-of-hearing people and people with visual impairments.