CWI-researcher Ronald de Wolf has won the 2003 Cor Baayen Award. He is the first Dutch scientist to win this ERCIM award for the most promising European researcher in computer science or applied mathematics.
The award ceremony took place on November 5, 2003 during the ERCIM Meeting in Luxemburg. The prize, EUR 5000, was introduced in 1995. It is named after former CWI-director Cor Baayen who was the first ERCIM president.
De Wolf works at the Quantum Computing and Advanced Systems Research group (INS4). His research focuses on quantum computing, the investigation of the properties of a computer based on quantum mechanics. Whereas current 'classical' memory bits are either 0 or 1, quantum bits can be a combination of these two states. De Wolf and his co-authors proved various limitations on quantum computers. He also contributed some quantum algorithms that are better than classical, and showed how quantum computing techniques can be used as a tool to prove new theorems about 'classical' computers.
Additional information can be found on www.cwi.nl/ins4 or homepages.cwi.nl/~rdewolf/
Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad featured an interview with de Wolf on Saturday October 4, 2003. The article can be found on the paper's website www.nrc.nl under the title De kracht van het abstracte (accessible to subscribers).
