Below an overview of past CWI lectures.
In 2025, the CWI Lectures were dedicated to the future of secure computation. How we can harness data while protecting privacy and confidentiality? This event served as a prominent forum for cutting-edge talks and in-depth discussions, bringing together top researchers from around the world, exploring foundational and emerging approaches to secure computation in the data-driven era.
The 2024 CWI Lectures were held in conjunction with the presentation of the Dijkstra Fellowship to Marcin Żukowski. The former CWI researcher was recognised for his pioneering contributions to the development of database management systems with significant societal impact, as well as for his successful entrepreneurial career.
The CWI Lectures of 2023 were dedicated to digital cultural heritage, as a forum for discussion between practitioners and academics.
The importance of arts and cultural heritage is unquestionable, helping citizens to develop emotional and cognitive processes. The cultural sector faces a number of challenges, from digitalization of their collections to create digital surrogates, to curation and interpretation, to showcasing and exhibition. The lectures provided insights about the current challenges and opportunities, including speakers from the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Spain, The British Museum in the UK, the Philipps University Marburg in Germany and the eScience Center in the Netherlands.
The 2022 CWI Lectures were devoted to novel solution methods that combine dedicated algebraic and geometric approaches and sophisticated computational tools from mathematics and computer science. During the event, CWI celebrated Monique Laurent’s appointment as a CWI Fellow for her contributions to research in the area of Semidefinite and Polynomial Optimization. The theme was chosen in honour of Monique’s work. More information on the speakers.
Should we offer this client a mortgage? How much money do I need in my pension fund? What is the best vaccination strategy? In many diverse situations, we need to make tactical, operational or strategic decisions with a lack of full information. The CWI lectures in 2021 presented a diverse set of topics on the theme of making decisions under uncertainty, ranging all the way from the micro to the macro-level. Four world-leading speakers presented their perspective on the theme, from their background in machine learning, operations research, public health and climate research. More information on the speakers.
The 2020 edition of the CWI Lectures revolved around database research and the work of the late CWI research fellow Martin Kersten. He joined CWI in 1985 and established a world-renowned database research group before retiring in February 2020. More information on the speakers.
The 2019 Lectures were aimed towards a general academic public and the program committee consisted of Ronald Cramer (CWI, Leiden University) and Dick Bulterman (CWI, VU Amsterdam). The event took place against the backdrop of the Dijkstra Fellowships, which were awarded to David Chaum and Guido van Rossum. More information on the speakers.
