The Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam has been housing COMMIT director Arnold Smeulders since 1 September 2011. COMMIT is a programme with various research projects from universities, research institutions, social institutions such as university hospitals, and both large and small companies. It will run for 4 or 5 years. The total size of the programme is a hundred million euro, of which fifty million subsidy.
Almost all Dutch universities take part in the program. Other participants are, for instance: Philips Research, Logica, TNO, the Rijksmuseum, Beeld en Geluid (Sound and Vision), Ilse Media, KLPD Elsevier and Hyves. They co-define research questions and they are the first ones to apply the results.
COMMIT brings researchers together who realize a leading role of the Netherlands in search engines, parallel computing, databases, interaction in context, embedded systems and knowledge technology – topics that are important for many application areas. COMMIT enables the transfer of new scientific insights into products and services by public-private partnership. As a result, the Netherlands strengthen its position in the international competition.
Jan Karel Lenstra, general director of CWI, said: “Innovation starts with science, that’s why CWI thinks it is important to house COMMIT. Our research questions are often inspired by society, so in that respect our connection is logical. As a cornerstone in the European IT and mathematics research CWI can strengthen COMMIT's network – and vice versa.”
Source: NWO
More information: http://www.commit-nl.nl/
