Professor of Applied Mathematics Rob van der Mei (CWI and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and VU Professor of Business Analytics Sandjai Bhulai were being interviewed in the live radio show 'Spraakmakers' on NPO Radio 1 on Thursday 14 October. They were invited as the joint winners of the 2021 Huibregtsen Award, which they recently won for their research project on ‘Mathematics for a safer and healthier Netherlands’.
In the interview Van der Mei and Bhulai explained how mathematics can help to improve ambulance arrival times and waiting times in elderly care, rapid news identification on social media, and, for instance, to help suicide prevention. The jury of the Huibregtsen Award said that the direct feedback the researchers get from the field was one of their success factors. Rob van der Mei: "For example, when we started the ambulance project, our computer program recommended many ambulance relocations to get the optimal setting, which was not convenient for personnel driving the ambulances. When we knew this, we designed a kind of brake on the number of relocations. This kind of feedback helps us to continuously improve the system".
In radio show Spraakmakers, Van der Mei and Bhulai were interviewed by presenter Ghislaine Plag, together with former minister Jet Bussemaker, chair of the Council for Health and Society RVS (Raad voor Volksgezondheid & Samenleving).
You can listen to the interview (in Dutch) on the web page of Spraakmakers (14 October 2021, 11.00-11.30h).
More information
- News item on the Huibregtsen Award ceremony on 4 October 2021
- Rob van der Mei (CWI and VU)
- Sandjai Bhulai (VU)
- Radio show Spraakmakers
- CWI spin-off company Stokhos, which was mentioned in the radio interview
- CWI's Stochastics research group
- Amsterdam Science park video with Rob van der Mei on ambulance-planning
- Universiteit van NL lecture by Rob van der Mei
