Courses

CWI highly values education. CWI researchers not only supervise and inspire the CWI PhD students, but also aim at contributing to teaching Master's students at universities. See the overview of CWI's current involvement in teaching courses in the Netherlands below.

Contribution to education

CWI is a research institute and does not have education as an institutional task. However, many of the senior researchers of CWI contribute to education via an affiliation or part-time appointment at one of the Dutch universities. CWI conveys the knowledge of the scientists employed at our institute to the new generation of mathematics and computer science students. Our staff contributes by e.g. teaching a university course or supervising MSc thesis projects carried out by university students. They also supervise PhD students at CWI, who defend their thesis at one of the Dutch universities after their employment at CWI. All courses can be found below in alphabetical order. You can also open the pdf for a complete overview.

Neural Dynamics and Deep Learning

URL
Focus

In this course, we will cover advanced methods for analysis and simulation of neural systems looking at both biophysical and cognitive perspectives.

Type
Course
Organisation
CWI educators
CWI group
Other educators
  • dr. J.F. Mejias (Coordinator)
Period
27 Oct 2025 – 19 Dec 2025
Location
UvA
Level
MSc
ECTS
6.00

Network Models, Representation and Consciousness

URL
Focus

This course gives a broad overview of neural network models of the brain up to and including mechanistic theories of conciousness.

Type
Course
Organisation
CWI educators
CWI group
Other educators
  • prof. dr. C.M.A. Pennartz (Coordinator)
Period
27 Oct 2025 – 19 Dec 2025
Location
UvA
Level
MSc
ECTS
6.00

Performance of Networked Systems

Students will gain experience in modelling, engineering and planning performance of networked systems, and will learn how to tackle performance problems arising in today's information and communication systems.

URL
Focus

We focus on performance modeling, traffic management, QoS provisioning and capacity planning for both wired and wireless/mobile communication networks (such as WiFi, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G networks, and mobile ad-hoc networks).

Type
Course
Organisation
CWI educators
CWI group
Period
27 Oct 2025 – 19 Dec 2025
Level
MSc
ECTS
6.00

Multi-Agent Systems

In Multi-agent systems (MAS) one studies collections of interacting, strategic and intelligent agents. These agents typically can sense both other agents and their environment, reason about what they perceive, and plan and carry out actions to achieve specific goals. In this course we introduce a number of fundamental scientific and engineering concepts that underpin the theoretical study of such multi-agent systems.

Focus

We will cover the following topics: ''Agents: Typology and examples, strategic versus learning agents'', ''Introduction to non-cooperative game theory'', ''Introduction to coalitional game theory for teams of selfish agents'', ''Principles of Mechanism Design'', ''Exploration versus Exploitation'', ''Markov Decision Processes'', ''Reinforcement learning for a single agent'', and ''Introduction to multi-agent reinforcement learning''.

Type
Course
Organisation
CWI educators
CWI group
Other educators
  • Hindriks, K.V. (Instructor)
Period
27 Oct 2025 – 19 Dec 2025
Other urls
Level
MSc
ECTS
6.00

Algorithms in Sequence Analysis

URL
Focus

In this course we focus on the most important algorithms for biological sequence analysis that can be applied to real scientific problems in biology.

Type
Course
Organisation
CWI educators
CWI group
Period
27 Oct 2025 – 19 Dec 2025
Level
MSc
ECTS
6.00

Stochastic decision theory

URL
Focus

The goal of the course is to familiarize students with the basic mathematical concepts and computational techniques for stochastic decision and optimization problems, and illustrate the application of these methods in various scenarios.

Type
Course
Organisation
CWI educators
CWI group
Other educators
  • dr. J. Sanders, MSc (Instructor)
Period
3 Nov 2025 – 2 Mar 2026
Level
MSc
ECTS
5.00

Software Language Engineering

Software Language Engineering (SLE) is concerned with the principled techniques and concepts for the construction of software languages. Software languages come in many shapes and sizes, including programming languages, modeling languages, data format languages, specification languages etc.

URL
Focus

In this course you will get acquainted with the basic techniques and concepts of language engineering, and acquire the basic skills to define the syntax and semantics of software languages, as well as know the relevant tools and techniques for implementin

Type
Course
Organisation
CWI educators
CWI group
Period
10 Nov 2025 – 1 Feb 2026
ECTS
5.00

Selected Areas in Cryptology

URL
Focus

The goal of this course is to provide insight into cryptography secure against quantum computers (post-quantum cryptography) as well as various methods for the mathematical cryptanalysis of cryptographic systems.

Type
Course
Organisation
CWI educators
CWI group
Period
2 Feb 2026 – 29 May 2026
Location
Universiteit Utrecht, De Uithof
Level
MSc
ECTS
8.00