2017 News
ERCIM News 110 focuses on Blockchain Engineering
ERCIM News No. 110 is now available on ERCIM News website. The focus of this issue is on Blockchain Engineering, with a contribution by CWI's Eric Pauwels.
CWI PhD student Jasmijn Baaijens wins Best Talk Award at the ISMB-HitSeq conference
Jasmijn Baaijens, PhD student from CWI’s Life Sciences and Health group, has won the Best Talk Award at ISMB-HitSeq, the world's leading conference on high-throughput genomics.
Veni grants for CWI researchers Tim Baarslag and Stacey Jeffery
NWO has awarded Veni grants to Tim Baarslag and Stacey Jeffery. The funding allows these researchers, who have recently obtained their PhD, to conduct independent research and develop their ideas for a period of three years.
CWI and Google research team wins Pwnie Award for Best Cryptographic Attack
Researchers at CWI and Google have won the Pwnie Award for Best Cryptographic Attack at the BlackHat USA security conference. They were awarded the prize for being the first to break the SHA-1 internet security standard in practice.
Marc Stevens’ project awarded funding in ‘Big Data: real time ICT for logistics’ programme
NWO has granted five applications within the ‘Big Data: real time ICT for logistics’ research programme. CWI’s Marc Stevens is the main applicant of one of the five granted research projects: 'Secure scalable policy-enforced distributed data processing'.
DIS contributes to MPEG’s work on Point Cloud Compression
The Distributed and Interactive Systems group has been a core contributor to the effort of Moving Picture Experts Group on 3D point cloud compression technologies. This effort aims at providing efficient representation of static objects and scenes, as well as dynamic objects and real-time acquisition environments. It has resulted in a call for proposals from MPEG.
Instable blood supply may help healthy cells compete with tumor cells
Researchers of CWI’s Scientific Computing group have found that instabilities in the blood supply in cancerous tissue can, surprisingly, lead to a less favorable environment for tumor cells. Their findings shed light on the potential negative side effects of current treatments that aim to actually normalize the blood supply in cancerous tissues.
Paper by Tim Baarslag and Michael Kaisers selected as visionary paper AAMAS 2017 Workshops
A paper by CWI researchers Tim Baarslag and Michael Kaisers has been selected as one of the most visionary papers of the AAMAS 2017 workshops, the largest and most influential conference in the area of agents and multi-agent systems.
‘Startimpuls’ funding for eight research projects Dutch National Research Agenda
NWO has granted ‘Startimpuls’ (Initial Boost) to eight routes of the Dutch National Research Agenda. CWI and QuSoft are involved in two of the awarded programmes.
Comparing medical images better
Together with the radiation oncology department of AMC, Peter Bosman of CWI’s Life Sciences and Health group has been awarded 1.4 million euros for a project in NWO’s Open Technology Programme for the research and development of a new medical image registration method. This project is co-funded by companies Elekta and Xomnia.
CWI spin off Stokhos nominated for Computable Award: vote now!
CWI spin off Stokhos has been nominated for a Computable Award in the category 'Best ICT project in healthcare 2017'. You can vote for Stokhos as of now. The winning project is determined for 50% by jury and 50% by public voting.
CWI Database Architecture researchers awarded with best paper runner up award at SSDBM
Researchers of CWI's Database Architecture group have been awarded with a best paper runner up award at 29th International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management (SSDBM 2017) in Chicago. The researchers received the award for their paper 'Multi Hypothesis CSV-parsing' by authors Till Döhmen, Hannes Mühleisen and Peter Boncz.
A puzzle with a million pieces: assembling viral genomes from sequencing data
Researchers from CWI’s Life Science and Health group have developed a new computational tool, SAVAGE, for reconstructing the genomes of the different virus strains that affect an infected person. SAVAGE makes it possible to reconstruct the different strains – of which there can be plenty in an infected person – even when so called reference genomes are not available
CWI researcher simulates complex financial developments, from interest rates to the possibility of bankruptcy
PhD student Alvaro Leitao Rodriguez proposes new methods to tackle complex problems in the financial sector. With these methods, Leitao Rodriguez successfully simulates the movements of the interest rates in the Foreign eXchange (FX) markets and evaluates corresponding risks.
DIS researchers receive Excellence in DASH Award at MMSys 2017
Jan Willem Kleinrouweler of CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems group has received the Excellence in DASH Award at ACM Multimedia Systems 2017 in Taipei, Taiwan.
Sung-Shik Jongmans wins IPA Dissertation Award 2016
Research school IPA awarded Sung-Shik Jongmans with the IPA Dissertation Award 2016. The jury wrote: “The thesis contains theoretical contributions, novel ideas, and practical implementation results. The results have been impactful and are deemed to be of high quality and significance.”
Steven Pemberton wins 2017 Best Demo Award at XML London
On 10 June 2017 Steven Pemberton won by acclamation the Demo Award at the XML London conference for his demonstration 'XForms Game'. XForms is a web technology and W3C standard, co-designed by Pemberton, originally intended for handling forms on the web. It now has been generalized to allow the description of more general applications.
Best Doctoral Consortium Paper Award for Jan Willem Kleinrouweler at TVX 2017
On 14 June Jan Willem Kleinrouweler of CWI’s DIS group has been awarded with the Best Paper Award at the the ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for Television and Online Video (TVX 2017) . He received the award for his paper “Enhancing Over-the-Top Video Streaming Quality with DASH Assisting Network Elements”.
Harry Buhrman and Yfke Dulek give ‘Paradiso lecture’ on artificial intelligence and quantum computers
On 18 June, Harry Buhrman and Yfke Dulek will give a ‘Paradiso lecture’. These lectures, which take place in music venue and cultural centre Paradiso in Amsterdam, are intended for a broad audience. Harry Buhrman is leader of the Algorithms and Complexity group, director of QuSoft and professor at the University of Amsterdam. Yfke Dulek is a PhD student in the A&C research group. Their lecture will focus on artificial intelligence and quantum computers. Buhrman and Dulek will address the question: will computers take over in the future?
CWI researchers selected as ACM Future of Computing Academy members
CWI researchers Tim Baarslag and Wouter Koolen have been selected as members of the of the ACM Future of Computing Academy (FCA).
Researchers develop robot friend to support children
A team of researchers led by CWI will investigate the use of robots in order to emotionally support children that suffer from cancer. The robots must act as a personal, social friend for the children at times their parents cannot be around.
Nanda Piersma appointed Professor by Special Appointment in Urban Analytics
The Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) has appointed Nanda Piersma as a Professor by Special Appointment in ‘Urban Analytics’. Her new research group strengthens the collaboration between both the AUAS Technology and Digital Media and Creative Industry faculties and CWI in Amsterdam, where Piersma will work part-time (50%). Urban Analytics focuses on big data analysis as a basis for new products and services that can contribute to solutions for the many challenges that Amsterdam is facing in the 21st century. Piersma will start her work at CWI on 1 September 2017.
Vidi grant for Enrico Camporeale’s space weather research
CWI researcher Enrico Camporeale received a Vidi grant from NWO for his proposal 'Real-time forecasting of killer electrons on satellite orbits' in May 2017. He received the 800,000 euro grant to develop his own innovative line of research and to set up his own research group within five years. Camporeale will develop a technology to forecast space weather events that could harm satellites, power networks and communication systems. This forecast would allow to take countermeasures.
Distinguished paper Award for CWI researchers Davy Landman and Jurgen Vinju
At the ICSE 2017 (39th International Conference on Software Engineering) in Buenos Aires CWI researchers Davy Landman and Jurgen Vinju in collaboration with Alexander Serebrenik (TUE) have been awarded with the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award for their paper "Challenges for Static Analysisof Java Reflection - Literature Review and Empirical Study".
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica launches world-class 3D lab
On Thursday 18 May 2017 demissionary state secretary Sander Dekker opened a new research facility that belongs to the top of the world league at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica. With the new scanner of this lab, it will be made possible for the first time to look inside objects in 3D during the scanning process and to adjust or zoom in while scanning.
Quantum Software Consortium receives 18.8 million euro in the Gravitation Programme
The Ministry for Education, Culture and Science has awarded a Gravitation grant for large-scale research on quantum software. This grant of 18.8 million euro unites researchers from QuSoft, CWI, Leiden University, QuTech, TU Delft, UvA and the VU in pursuing state of the art research programmes in this new field.
DIS at CHI 2017
The Distributed and Interactive Systems group from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) will be present at CHI 2017 showcasing their research on social media and semantics, and smart textiles and environments. CWI contributes with a long and a WiP papers, an interactivity demo, and a workshop paper.
Monique Laurent elected as Fellow of SIAM
CWI researcher Monique Laurent is elected as a Fellow of the international Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics – SIAM. This prestigious Fellowship honours SIAM members who have made outstanding contributions to these fields. Laurent, who is a member of the management team of CWI and a professor at Tilburg University, receives the fellowship for her contributions to discrete and polynomial optimization and revealing interactions between them.
QuSoft launches new collaboration with French and Latvian partners
On April 28th, QuSoft, the Paris Centre for Quantum Computing (PCQC) and the University of Latvia will sign a memorandum of understanding, to jointly push the frontiers of quantum information theory and develop quantum software for the future quantum computer.
CWI and Databricks launch new collaboration in the presence of Minister Kamp
On April 25 2017, CWI and big data analytics and data science software company Databricks launched a new collaboration. The launch took place in the presence of Minister Kamp of Economic Affairs, at the Hannover Messe.