Peter Boncz (CWI) received a grant of 207,000 euros in the Vrije Competitie of NWO Exacte Wetenschappen in April 2009 for his proposal "Querying while Transforming Large Graph Databases". His research is about intelligent queries in databases, for example digital crime data. The subject was assessed as very innovative.

This project is about large amounts of data, in the order of terabytes, which should be queried. These data form a graph (network): a jumble of pieces of information connected to each other in various ways. In data analysis it is often the clue to figure out whether and how certain pieces of information are connected. This project examines ways to store data using database technology and devise certain techniques (database query optimization and index recheck techniques) to make the search in very large and continuously changing graphs practically possible. The fact that the graphs change ('updates' in the graph database) makes it impossible for the existing index methods. Although index structures themselves make the searching fast, is it very time-consuming to make and adapt them to changing data structures. A possible application of this research is to discover and analyse social networks.

CWI has been working together with the Nederlands Forensisch Instituut (NFI) for the application of advanced data analysis techniques in digital forensic research. The aim is to apply the results of this project to these techniques.

Sander Bohte (CWI) also received a grant in the Vrije Competitie for his proposal "Teaching and Learning in Multi Agent Systems”.

More information about the research of Peter Boncz:

homepages.cwi.nl/~boncz/ www.nwo.nl/ew