In our current information society more digital information than ever is available. Users on Twitter are sending 175 million Tweets per day, 250 million photos are uploaded every day on Facebook. Companies are challenged to search useful information in their avalanche of corporate data. Knowledge is also hidden in Petabytes of scientific data. Big data is the basis of scientific breakthroughs in areas such as astronomy, seismology and medical research.

Data has not only increased in quantity but has also become much more complex and dynamic. The data explosion challenges many dimensions of computer science. How can lay users and organizations find relevant and compact information in this flood of speech, photo, video, text and business data?

There is a significant need for models, methods and techniques that allow us to access, organize, manage and search this (scientific) data, and present it to the end-user. The expertise of CWI covers the entire information chain and focuses for instance on the development of new storage structures, database languages, research into human-information interaction and new infrastructures that support privacy and the personal integrity of end-user content.

Research at CWI is applied in the domain of cultural heritage, open data, marine biology and geo-spatial and astronomy databases and are carried out in collaboration with a large number of industry and research partners and content providers such as TNO, Spinque, Actian,  Beeld en Geluid, ANP, Rijksmuseum, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg and the National Applied Research Laboratories (Taiwan).

At CWI the following research groups investigate information from different perspectives:

• Database Architectures
• Distributed and Interactive Systems
• Information Access

Please contact Information theme coordinator Lynda Hardman for more information.