Lara Verheyen studied the Master of Linguistics at KU Leuven (Belgium). After graduation in 2018, she completed an Advanced Master in Artificial Intelligence with a specialization in Speech and Language Technology. Currently, Lara is a PhD student at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Katrien Beuls. Her PhD research focusses on building truly intelligent systems that interact with humans about their shared environment. Specifically, the goal of these systems is to hold coherent and meaningful conversations with humans. To achieve this, these systems build up knowledge during the conversation and ground the conversation in the shared environment and the acquired knowledge. Lara is particularly interested in operationalizing these systems through a hybrid approach that combines symbolic and subsymbolic techniques.