News — CWI Amsterdam

Efficient Abstractions for Visualization and Interaction

Interactive systems with appealing visualizations are the hallmark of todays, mostly web-based, systems. Under the hood, the implementation of such systems leaves much to be desired which makes them hard to extend and maintain. Atze van der Ploeg, PhD student at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam,

Bert Zwart receives Van Dantzig Prize

Researcher Bert Zwart of CWI has been awarded the Van Dantzig Prize. This prize is considered the highest Dutch award in statistics and operations research and is awarded once every five years.

AMC, KiKa and CWI join forces in new research project

The Foundation Children Cancer free (Stichting Kinderen Kankervrij), the Department of Radiation Oncology of the Academic Medical Center (AMC) and the research group Life Sciences of Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) join forces in a new research project to survey radiation-related long-term effects more accurately than ever before.

Researchers develop neural model for working memory

Neuroscientists of Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN) have developed a biologically plausible neural network model that can learn to remember past events in order to use them in the future. The researchers developed their model by combining theoretical principles from machine learning with insights from neuroscience.

25 Years of Python at CWI

At the ACM website an interview was published with Guido van Rossum on 25 years of Python.

European consortium starts research on financial risk models

A European consortium of partners in academia and industry from the Netherlands, Italy and Spain has been granted 1,5 million euro for the Horizon 2020 research project WAKEUPCALL. The project, which is coordinated by the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, combines academic expertise in financial mathematics with experience from partners in the finance and insurance industries.

Inaugural lecture Roeland Merks at Leiden University

Java Bug Fixed with Formal Methods CWI

Researchers from CWI fixed a bug in the widely used object-oriented programming language Java in February 2015. They found an error in a broadly applied sorting algorithm, TimSort, which could crash programs.

Network analysis reveals new information on tax treaties

Mathematical analysis of a data set collected by Centraal Planbureau (CPB), the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, revealed new information on how bilateral tax treaties can be exploited to form ‘tax routes’ that minimize profit taxes.

Vici grant for Bert Zwart

Researcher Bert Zwart of CWI has been awarded a Vici grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for his proposal ‘Rare Events: Asymptotics, Algorithms, Applications’. With the 1.5 million euro grant, Zwart can develop his own line of research and research group in the next five years. It is one of the largest research grants in the Netherlands.

Cum laude for thesis on financial mathematics

Marjon Ruijter graduated with honours ('cum laude') on her thesis on Fourier methods for finance and economics. She defended her thesis on Friday 6 February 2015 at Delft University of Technology.

CWI spin-off MonetDB Solutions teams up with Numascale

CWI spin-off company MonetDB Solutions and the Norwegian appliance company Numascale have joined forces to develop database appliances that enable companies and organizations to perform easier and more affordable big data analytics.

CWI on Belgian TV

CWI could be seen on the national Belgian TV, in the programme 'Iedereen beroemd' - 'Everybody Famous'. The item was broadcasted on Tuesday 3 February 2015 on channel Eén at 19.40h - and again after the late news. Broadcaster VRT visited CWI on 22 January.

Bert Zwart appointed professor at TU/e

Bert Zwart has been appointed professor of Stochastic Operations Research at the Eindhoven University of Technology's (TU/e) department of Mathematics and Computer Science

Marie-Colette van Lieshout appointed professor in Spatial Stochastics

Starting 1 February 2015, Marie-Colette van Lieshout of CWI has been appointed Professor of Spatial Stochastics at the University of Twente, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science.

Arnoud den Boer wins Gijs de Leve prize

Arnoud den Boer, former PhD student of CWI, has been awarded the Gijs de Leve Prize. The prize was awarded last week at the annual congress of the LNMB, the Dutch Network on the Mathematics of Operations Research.

The week of quantum computing

Starting 12 January 2015, the Universiteit van Nederland publishes five public lectures by Harry Buhrman, head of the research group quantum computing at CWI. The series of lectures features the do's and don'ts of the computer of the future. From Monday through Friday, a new lecture will be available on the site of the Universiteit van Nederland each day.

ERCIM News 100 - Simulations Show how Lightning Creates Antimatter

ERCIM News 100 features the article 'Simulations Show how Lightning Creates Antimatter' written by Ute Ebert and Christoph Köhn from CWI.

CWI joins two large-scale energy projects

Researchers of CWI will participate in the projects ‘Smart Energy Systems in the Built Environment’ and ‘Excellence in Uncertainty Reduction of Offshore Wind Systems (EUROS)’ of the STW Perspective research programmes that were recently awarded.

Jos Baeten appointed professor at the UvA

Jos Baeten has been appointed professor of Theory of Computing at the University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Science. It is a part-time appointment that Baeten will combine with his directorship of CWI.

Lynda Hardman appointed Distinguished Scientist ACM

Lynda Hardman, senior researcher and scientific staff member at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam has been named Distinguished Scientists by ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery.

Stieltjes Prize 2013 for Benjamin Sanderse

Benjamin Sanderse, former PhD Student of CWI, has been awarded the Stieltjes Prize 2013, the prize for the best PhD thesis in mathematics in the Netherlands in 2013. In March 2013 Sanderse defended his thesis 'Energy-conserving discretization methods for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations' at Eindhoven University of Technology under the supervision of Prof. dr. ir. Barry Koren.

Fewer errors in software features by using delta modelling

When new features are being written into software code, errors can easily be made. This is due to the fact that feature code often interacts in many different places in the software.

CWI and Xinhuanet sign cooperation agreement

CWI and Chinese online news provider Xinhuanet signed a cooperation agreement to develop a user experience research program. Jos Baeten (director CWI) and Tian Shubin (Xinhuanet CEO) signed the agreement last week at the China Holland Business Summit 2014 in Beijing.

CWI researchers on Utility Week Amsterdam

Researchers from the Intelligent Systems group of Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam, and SENSE Lab of TU Berlin join forces on the European Utility Week, the leading knowledge and innovation event for the smart energy industry in Amsterdam, from 4 – 6 November 2014.

Honorary mention for Linked TV News

At the Ibero American Biennial of Design (BID) in Madrid, researchers Lilia Perez and Michiel Hildebrand from the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, have been awarded a honorary mention in the category Digital Design for the concept and interaction design of Linked TV News.

CWI co-coordinates ERCIM News 99 on Software Quality

CWI researcher Jurgen Vinju co-coordinated a special issue of ERCIM News on Software Quality: http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en99.

Creation of antimatter from lightning simulated for the first time

In severe thunderstorms electric fields can become so high, that high energy radiation – such as X-rays and gamma rays - can be generated. Even antimatter can be formed. The highly complex interactions between high electric fields and particles in thunderstorms were not well modelled yet. Christoph Köhn, PhD student from research centre Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, modelled and simulated these processes in a new way.

Stefan Manegold appointed professor at Leiden University

Starting from 15 September 2014, Stefan Manegold, of the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, has been appointed Professor for Data Management at the Faculty of Science of Leiden University.

Computer simulations show mechanisms behind vascular development

The vascular system continuously forms new capillaries throughout the life of an organism. This is necessary for growth and healing. The same process is also involved in various pathological processes, such as tumour growth and eye diseases. Computational biologist Margriet Palm of CWI used simulated experiments to investigate vascular development.