The GNGH, the Dutch Society for the Advancement of Science, Medicine and Surgery, awarded the Andreas Bonn medals 2018 to Florian Speelman (CWI and QuSoft), Remco Molenaar (AMC) and Edwin van der Pol (AMC) on 16 November 2018. The Andreas Bonn medals are presented once every five years for original work in the scientific fields of Natural Sciences, Physical Sciences and Medicine & Dentistry, for PhD defences that took place at the UvA or VU University Amsterdam. Besides the medal, the winners received 1000 euro. A total of 18 young researchers were nominated for the prize.
The jury said: “The subjects of Speelman's thesis, entitled ‘Position-based Quantum Cryptography and Catalytic Computation’, connect the three disciplines of mathematics, physics and computer science in a very natural and original way. What is special about Speelman's thesis is that, in addition to profound and highly innovative insights into quantum security, it also contains groundbreaking and innovative work in classical complexity theory”.
Speelman conducted his research at CWI and got his PhD in 2016 at the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Prof. H.M. Buhrman. Five years ago, another CWI researcher also won an Andreas Bonn medal: Jop Briët, from the same research group Algorithms and Complexity of CWI.
More information
- Earlier news item on Florian Speelman's PhD research at CWI (2016)
- Earlier news item on Jop Briët's Andreas Bonn medal
- CWI research group Algorithms and Complexity
- Genootschap ter bevordering van Natuur-Genees en Heelkunde (GNGH)
- Overview Andreas Bonn medal winners
Source: news item GNGH (in Dutch)
