News — CWI Amsterdam

Better estimation of financial risks possible with maths

Due to the recent financial crisis, the requirements imposed on banks have been made stricter. Banks must model the credit risk of the counterparties now in their portfolios, for instance. A measure for this is the credit value adjustment (CVA): the difference between the value of a portfolio without credit risk and the value if a possible bankruptcy of the counterparty is included. Qian Feng modelled CVAs and designed a new algorithm that can help banks estimate the risks precisely, so they can take appropriate measures if necessary.

Cécile Pierrot wins Cercle K2 Cybersecurity Trophy 2017

Cécile Pierrot from the Cryptology research group at CWI won the first Cybersecurity Trophy granted by Cercle K2. This French think tank awards prizes in 22 topics every two years. It aims at stimulating interdisciplinarity and promoting young researchers. The Cybersecurity Trophy 2017 rewarded Pierrot’s PhD thesis, which she defended at UPMC in Paris on 25 November 2016. The jury praised her for both theoretical and practical impacts of her results.

CWI develops new algebraic filter for reconstruction of X-Ray images

CWI PhD student Linda Plantagie of the Computational Imaging research group has introduced a new algebraic filter for the use of reconstructing X-Ray images. Linda Plantagie will defend her thesis 13 April at Leiden University.

The Netherlands’ smallest supercomputer is here

A team of Dutch scientists has built a supercomputer the size of four pizza boxes. The Little Green Machine II has the computing power of 10,000 PCs and will be used by researchers in oceanography, computer science, artificial intelligence, financial modeling and astronomy. CWI researchers Joost Batenburg and Kees Oosterlee, who were part of the development team, will use the machine for computational imaging and machine learning for time series respectively. The computer is based at Leiden University (the Netherlands) and developed with help from IBM.

National Blockchain Coalition Presents Action Agenda

On 20 March, Minister of Economic Affairs Henk Kamp received the action agenda of the National Blockchain Coalition. The agenda is a joint initiative of over 20 organizations active in the logistics, energy and financial sectors, as well as governments and research institutes - Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) being one of them. With this initiative, the Netherlands aims to be an international leader in the application of blockchain technology.

CWI researcher makes higher turnover in hotel bookings possible

With a new mathematical method, hotels can receive on average 5% more turnover in the long term when taking online reviews into account. Dirk Sierag, PhD student of CWI, analysed with historical data the behaviour of consumers booking rooms. Based on the results he designed mathematical models that can support hotels in determining optimal prices of hotel rooms. The research results can also be applied on movies, concerts, sporting events and, for example, Uber taxi rides.

ERC Advanced Grant for CWI cryptographer Ronald Cramer

CWI cryptographer Ronald Cramer has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million euro for his proposal 'Algebraic Methods for Stronger Crypto'. He leads the Cryptology Research group at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam and is a full professor at the Mathematical Institute of Leiden University. The European Research Council awards these most prestigious personal grants to outstanding, well-established scientists with novel ideas towards high-risk, groundbreaking research that impacts both science and society at large.

CWI & Databricks: Big Data in Amsterdam

Amsterdam wants to play a leading international role in the development of data science research. In Big Data Amsterdam, Financieele Dagblad journalist Job Woudt interviews Amsterdam Data Science researchers on the functioning of the ecosystem where companies and knowledge institutions in Amsterdam collaborate in the area of Big Data.

Cells’ own contractions stimulate growth orientation

During the growth of embryos cells align with forces from the surrounding tissue. These forces originate from differences in growth rates, muscle contractions or gravity. Mathematicians at the CWI research centre in Amsterdam now showed for the first time that active cell contractions can accelerate and facilitate this reorientation of cells. Their research was recently published in the leading Biophysical Journal (112).

CWI DIS group in Red Bull doc 'This is the Future'

The CWI Distributed and Interactive Systems group cooperated in a revolutionary tech project called 'Red Bull Playrooms' during ADE 2016. Red Bull has now published a documentary that gives insight to the unique elements and the work of all partners including our DIS group regarding this project. In the documentary you will see our researchers in action, together with other contributors to the project.

CWI and Google announce first collision for Industry Security Standard SHA-1

'Industry deprecation proved to be too slow' Today, Thursday 23 February 2017, researchers at the Dutch research institute CWI and Google jointly announce that they have broken the SHA-1 internet security standard in practice. This industry standard is used for digital signatures and file integrity verification, which secure credit card transactions, electronic documents, GIT open-source software repositories and software distribution.

Making a tedious search a breeze: parallel query execution in multi-core systems

When you request information from a huge database, you might want to grab a cup of coffee and sit back, because your request may take a while. How can we optimize searches for information, specifically in a multi-core processing unit? The answer may lie in parallel queries, which run simultaneously on different processors.

CWI researcher contributes to new combination of W3C and IDPF in Digital Publishing

On 1 February W3C announced that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) will combine their organizations to set up a new roadmap for Digital Publishing. Ivan Herman, researcher at CWI, has played a seminal role in this combination.

CWI develops strategies for compression and transmission of reconstructed 3D data

Internet is used for communication via video conferencing, voice calls, chatting, photo sharing, online gaming and virtual reality. These technologies are changing our daily lives and the way we interact with each other. Highly realistic reconstructed 3D representations that combine real and synthetic contents in a virtual world will be part of this online interaction more and more.

WISE tenure track position for Stacey Jeffery

Four women have been given a position in the first round of the NWO Women In Science Excel (WISE) programme, including Stacey Jeffery from CWI.

Harry Buhrman appointed Distinguished Research Professor

Prof. dr. H.M. Buhrman has been appointed as Distinguished Research Professor at the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam. In this position Harry Buhrman will function as the figurehead of the QuSoft research center and be committed to further development of the institute.

Rob van der Mei in TV programme Universiteit van Nederland

Stochastics researcher Rob van der Mei has made an appearance in an episode of the TV programme 'Universiteit van Nederland'. He contributed to a series of 5 episodes themed 'Disasters'. Rob's talk focuses on how the ambulance can get to your house even faster.

ERCIM News 108 on Computational Imaging co-coordinated by Joost Batenburg

In January 2017, ERCIM News No. 108 was published: http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en108. It features a special theme on Computational Imaging, coordinated by guest editors Joost Batenburg (CWI) and Tamas Sziranyi (MTA SZTAKI).

Cryptology researcher Marc Stevens awarded with Google research prize

CWI researcher Marc Stevens of the Cryptology research group has been awarded the Google Security Privacy and Anti-abuse applied award.

Better ranking for big data using seriation solution

The recent availability of large data sets leads to the challenge of identifying patterns and structures in them. These patterns can be deployed to improve the user experience

Martin Kersten appointed ACM Fellow

CWI fellow Martin Kersten has been appointed as one of the 2016 fellows of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).

CWI DIS researchers speak at Xinhuanet Forum

In November 2016 Pablo César and David A. Shamma spoke at the first Intelligent Valley Forum in Nanjing, China.

David A. Shamma named ACM Distinguished Member

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named CWI researcher David A. Shamma as one of the 45 Distinguished Members 2016 in the subcategory ‘distinguished engineers’.

NWO Complexity grant for Stochastics researchers

A consortium led by CWI researcher Rob van der Mei (Stochastics) has been awarded a grant within the Complexity in Transport & Logistics programme. Elenna Dugundji of CWI is one of the co-applicants an project manager of the research project. In total 15 proposals were submitted, of which 7 were granted. The available budget for this programme is a maximum of € 3.5 million and is provided by the NWO divisions of Social Sciences (MaGW) and Physical Sciences (EW) and the NWO governing board.

NWO TOP grant for Peter Grünwald

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded a Physical Sciences TOP grant 1 for curiosity driven research to Peter Grünwald of CWI.

Yfke Dulek awarded with Ngi-NGN master thesis Information prize

On 28 November Yfke Dulek (University of Amsterdam) will receive the Ngi-NGN master thesis Information prize for Informatics & Computer Science (5000 euro) at the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen in Haarlem.

ERCIM News 107 on Machine Learning co-coordinated by Sander Bohte - extra Open Access section

In October 2016, ERCIM News No. 107 was published: http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en107. It features a special theme on current trends and new paradigms in Machine Learning, coordinated by the guest editors Sander Bohte (CWI ) and Hung Son Nguyen (University of Warsaw).

Dick Bulterman new head of department Computer Science VU University

He succeeds Guus Schreiber, who will in December start as the new dean of the science faculties of VU University. Dick is endowed Professor of Distributed Multimedia Languages & Infrastructures at VU University and CWI fellow. He is appointed for a period of two years.

Informs award for CWI Stochastics researchers

Researchers Bert Zwart (ST) and former PhD student Arnoud den Boer have been awarded the INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section Award at the INFORMS Annual Meeting 2016 in Nashville.

New attacks on location-based quantum cryptography

For secure communication of classified information, researchers want to deploy the sender’s location, so a receiver can be sure that a message is, for instance, really coming from the White House. Classic location-based methods are shown to be unsafe but location-based quantum cryptography seemed to have a chance.