News — CWI Amsterdam

Cum laude for 3D modelling of pulsed discharges in air

PhD student Jannis Teunissen from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has made major progress in modelling the early stages of electric discharges as they occur in lightning, high voltage electricity nets and plasma technology. He received a 'cum laude' predicate for his thesis '3D Simulations and Analysis of Pulsed Discharges', which he defended on 12 November 2015 at Eindhoven University of Technology.

CWI reduces perturbations in tomography

Researcher Folkert Bleichrodt of CWI has developed new methods to improve the applicability of tomography. These methods reduce unwanted perturbations. This allows for applying tomography on a very small scale or based on a small number of measurements.

Cum laude for PhD student Jurriaan Rot

Infinite data structures can be studied with a simplified technique, thanks to research done by PhD student Jurriaan Rot. He received his PhD degree with honours (cum laude) for his thesis ‘Enhanced Coinduction’ at Leiden University on 15 October 2015. This thesis belongs to the 5% best dissertations in the field of computer science.

TCS journal honours Jan Rutten

Jan Rutten from CWI’s Formal Methods research group was recently awarded by the journal Theoretical Computer Science (TCS) for his much cited article Universal Coalgebra – a theory of systems, on the occasion of the journal’s 40th anniversary.

Efficient method to make changes in compressed database

PhD student Sándór Héman from CWI developed a new method to compress a large database, allowing for a much faster transport of data from storage to processor. Furthermore he developed efficient algorithms to make changes within such a compressed storage layout.

CWI and VU develop algorithms for pharmaceutical research

In their search for new drugs, researchers increasingly use computer simulations to discover and test new molecules for pharmaceutical use. This does not only increase the chance of finding new or better drugs, but also prevents wasting resources on unsuccessful experiments.

Arjen P. de Vries appointed Professor of Information Retrieval at Radboud University

Arjen P. de Vries is appointed full-time Professor of Information Retrieval at Radboud University Faculty of Science per 1 November 2015. He is currently group leader of the Information Access group at CWI. He will be succeeded as group leader by Jacco van Ossenbruggen.

Jannis Teunissen wins GEC15 Student Award of Excellence

Jannis Teunissen from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, won the Student Award of Excellence of the GEC for his talk 'Advances in the three-dimensional simulation of streamer discharges' at the joint meeting of the

First book on quantum-secure multi-party computation

Ronald Cramer (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica), Ivan Damgard and Jesper Nielsen (Aarhus University) recently published the first book ever on information-theoretically secure multiparty computation (MPC) – a subfield of cryptography that describes security systems that cannot even be broken by quantum computers or unlimited computing power.

Lynda Hardman President Informatics Europe

Today, Lynda Hardman, member of the management team at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, has been elected President of the Board of Informatics Europe, the European association of computer science departments and research laboratories.

Researchers urge: industry standard SHA-1 should be retracted sooner

An international team of cryptanalysts urges the industry today that SHA-1 internet security standard should be retracted sooner, since the cost of breaking it is significantly lower than previously thought.

Vision on Quantum-Safe Encryption in WIRED and Quanta magazine

Research results of CWI cryptologists Ronald Cramer and Léo Ducas on quantum-safe encryption were discussed in an article on WIRED on 19 September 2015.

New network model can learn to remember past events

Scientists understand how neurons, the smallest computational units of the brain, behave during tasks, but how brains learn to make efficient choices is unknown, in particular when the brain’s working memory is involved.

More accurate climate predictions

Predicting the future climate is a grand mathematical challenge. Our climate is a chaotic dynamical system in which minor disturbances can have a major impact in the longterm. Researcher Keith Myerscough of CWI has developed new simulation methods to improve the accuracy of such long term predictions.

Tracing Stars with MonetDB in the Cloud

The Dutch database technology company MonetDB Solutions and CWI will develop new techniques to facilitate the storage and analysis of the vast data volumes from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope. The project will be funded by a grant in the AstroCompute in the Cloud program of the SKA Organization (SKAO) and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Hannes Mühleisen in media about insecure wifi in trains

Hannes Mühleisen, a postdoc researcher at CWI, recently found that he could see too much information from the wifi network in NS trains, which are passing close by his home - a houseboat in Amsterdam near Central Station. The network information is not encrypted.

ERCIM News 102 on Trustworthy Systems of Systems published

In July 2015 ERCIM News No. 102 was published at http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en102

CWI to improve ICT for radiotherapy

CWI launches a research project with the Academic Medical Center (AMC) and the company Elekta Brachytherapy to improve the ICT that is used in radiotherapy for cancer patients. In the next years, researchers of these organizations will investigate the improvement of medical software and instruments that are used for internal radiation.

Veni grants for Daniel Dadush and Hannes Mühleisen

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Veni grants to Daniel Dadush and Hannes Mühleisen of CWI. 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.

Daniel Dadush receives A.W. Tucker Prize 2015

Daniel Dadush of CWI's Networks & Optimization group has been awarded the A. W. Tucker Prize 2015. He received the prize for his doctoral thesis that he completed at Georgia Tech in 2012.

Lex Schrijver receives EURO Gold Medal 2015

Researcher Lex Schrijver of CWI has been awarded the EURO Gold Medal 2015. This prize is considered the highest European distinction in Operational Research (OR) and is awarded by the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO).

Lodlam Open Data Prize for Polimedia

Researchers from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), VU University (VU), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vison have been awarded the Lodlam Open Data Prize for the Polimedia research project.

Cooperative behaviour is not instinctive, but learnt

Cooperative behaviour is not an instinctive impulse or deliberate choice, but a learning process. Researchers of CWI and LUISS Guido Carli in Rome showed in an experiment that people living in a low-trust society intuitively choose non-cooperation in games. However, after playing several times their intuitive choices become more cooperative.

Start of lightning explained: hail and cosmic particles

For the first time researchers demonstrate how lightning is started: by a combination of hail and high energy particles from space, originating from exploding stars. A cosmic ray produces a shower of electrons.

Spinque and Institute for Sound and Vison launch CultuurLINK

Spinque, a spin off company of Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) for advanced search technology, and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision have launched CultuurLINK, a new public service for cultural heritage organizations.

CWI PhD's visit NIOZ colleagues at Texel

Each year the PhD’s from CWI organize a weekend trip. This year the young mathematics and information technologists of the national research institute chose Texel.

Rare events in sustainable energy grids simulated

The transition to renewable energy sources poses new challenges to the reliability of power grids. As renewable energy is very variable, rare combinations of factors might lead to instabilities and even black-outs. Wander Wadman of Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) developed new simulation methods that can determine the probability of such rare events.

Bayesian statistics not as robust as commonly thought

The widely used method of Bayesian statistics is not as robust as commonly thought. Researcher Thijs van Ommen of Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) discovered that for certain types of problems, Bayesian statistics finds non-existing patterns in the data. Van Ommen defends his thesis on this topic on Wednesday 10 June at Leiden University.

"Remembering ARRA: A pioneer in Dutch Computing"

On 4 June, the premiere of the short internet movie "Remembering ARRA: A pioneer in Dutch Computing" took place at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI).

Jurgen Vinju and Tijs van der Storm at Bits & Chips conference

Today, CWI researchers Jurgen Vinju and Tijs van der Storm (from the research group Software Analysis and Transformation) participate in the Bits&Chips software engineering conference.