News — CWI Amsterdam

Leo Ducas wins 2016 Internet Defense Prize

Léo Ducas of CWI's Cryptology group has won the 2016 Internet Defense Prize. He was awarded the prize last night with his co-authors Erdem Alkim (Ege University), Thomas Pöppelmann (Infineon Technologies AG) and Peter Schwabe (Radboud University) for their paper 'Post-Quantum Key Exchange Offers New Hope' on post-quantum security.

Best Paper Award for DIS researchers at PhyCS 2016

CWI researchers Chen Wang, Xintong Zhu, Thomas Roggla, and Pablo Cesar of CWI's Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group were awarded a prestigious Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Physiological Computing Systems (PhyCS 2016).

CWI develops energy sharing platform for housing cooperative Amsterdam

Researchers in the European Grid-Friends project will launch a pilot for sharing renewable energy between households in the Amsterdam building project Schoonschip. By coordinating energy supply and demand between the houses, the entire neighborhood aims to be energy neutral.

Talk by Tijs van der Storm at Curry On conference (video)

On 18 July 2016, CWI researcher Tijs van der Storm gave a talk at the Curry On conference in Rome. The full recording of this talk, titled 'Rascal: the Swiss Army Knife of Meta Programming' can be found below.

Veni grants for Léo Ducas and Johannes Köster

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Veni grants to Léo Ducas and Johannes Köster of CWI.

Dick Bulterman appointed CWI Fellow

Prof. Dick Bulterman has been appointed CWI Fellow per 1 July 2016. This distinction is given to prominent researchers at CWI for their contribution to CWI's research and administration. Bulterman is member of the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group at CWI, which he headed from 2002 to 2014.

Shape instructs future fate of cells in Nature Communications

How does a cell make a decision about his future, on what type of cell it will be after the cell division? This process is described by Roeland Merks and Cong Chen of the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam in an article in Nature Communications that was published on 28 June, together with a Japanese team of biologists.

Jurriaan Rot wins IPA Dissertation Award 2015

The Dutch research school IPA has awarded former LIACS PhD student Jurriaan Rot with the IPA Dissertation Award 2015.

Farhad Arbab honoured by Sharif University of Technology

CWI researcher Farhad Arbab was honoured by Sharif University of Technology in Iran as one of its fifty most outstanding alumni over the past fifty years. The alumni were selected for both their technical achievements and service to the society.

Balancing supply and demand in future energy systems

Dynamic pricing can be used to balance future energy grids which depend on renewable energy. CWI researcher Nicolas Höning developed several market mechanisms and pricing strategies which are useful for planning and balancing electricity supply and demand.

Four million euro for EU SAINT network on thunderstorm research

In May 2016 the EU 'SAINT' Innovative Training Network in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Programme was awarded a 4 Million euro grant. SAINT stands for ‘Science and Innovation with Thunderstorms’. Its 19 partners come from both academia and non-academia, such as NASA, PLASMAT and Airbus.

Annual Report 2015 available

Our Annual Report 2015 is available now!

Mathematical models for optimal coverage of emergency services

Providing proper care in time in emergency situations. This is what emergency services stand for. On 6 June mathematician Pieter van den Berg defends his PhD thesis at TU Delft. He developed models for optimising the logistics of emergency response vehicles.

András Gilyén wins second prize in Microsoft Quantum Challenge

András Gilyén has won second prize in the Microsoft Quantum Challenge for his entry ‘Testing quantum state engineering protocols via LIQUi|> simulations”.

Martin Kersten receives 2016 SIGMOD Systems Award

Martin Kersten is the recipient of the 2016 SIGMOD Systems Award for the design and implementation of MonetDB, a pioneering main-memory database system based on a columnar data organization.

Increased call center efficiency by identifying redialers

Call centers should base their staff planning on the number of unique callers instead of the total number of calls. Furthermore, introducing a system that gives redialers priority over fresh callers both reduces the average waiting time and improves the fairness of the system. This can be concluded from a study on call center management conducted by CWI.

Best Paper Award for CWI researchers at ACM MMsys 2016

New theorems for probabilistic systems in a random environment

PhD student Halldora Thorsdottir of CWI has developed new theorems for probabilistic systems which are influenced by a random environment, such as biological cell mechanisms or data transfer over the internet.

Firefighters better in position with mathematical model

How could firefighters position themselves even better in a region? If multiple stations are busy fighting a major fire, where should vehicles of other fire stations go to for optimal coverage?

Lynda Hardman appointed Professor of Multimedia Discourse Interaction

Lynda Hardman has been appointed professor of Multimedia Discourse Interaction at Utrecht University. It is a parttime appointment that Hardman will combine with her position as researcher in the Information Access group and Management Team member at CWI, and President of the Board of Informatics Europe.

Faster computation of high-quality 3D images

PhD student Daniël Pelt of CWI has developed new algorithms for computer tomography (CT) for fast computation of high-quality three-dimensional images. This increases the practical use of this technology in areas such as material sciences and biomedical research.

First top level domain .nl celebrates its 30th anniversary

On 25 April 2016, the first national top level domain, .nl, celebrated its 30th anniversary. On 25 April 1986, CWI took care of registering the NL top level domain in the framework of its international and national networking activities.

1 billion euros for Quantum Flagship

The European Commission has proposed to invest one billion euros in a Quantum Flagship, a large-scale European research program for quantum technology. Within the Quantum Flagship, researchers from various fields will further knowledge on quantum mechanics and bring new applications to the market.

Dealing with uncertainties in simulations

Understanding uncertainties is crucial when designing computer simulations. Incorporating such uncertainties in simulations and mapping the bandwith of possbile values is the central topic of the inaugural lecture of Daan Crommelin at the University of Amsterdam on Thursday 21 April 2016.

ERCIM News 105 on Planning and Logistics co-coordinated by Rob van der Mei

In April 2016, ERCIM News No. 105 was published: http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en105. This issue features a special theme on Planning and Logistics, coordinated by guest editors Rob van der Mei (CWI and VU) and Ariona Shashaj (SICS).

All quantum communication involves nonlocality

Researchers of CWI, Gdansk University, Gdansk University of Technology, Adam Mickiewicz University and the University of Cambridge have proven that quantum communication is based on nonlocality. They show that whenever quantum communication is more efficient than classical communication, it must be possible to find a nonlocal correlation somewhere.

Best Paper Award for SWAT researchers at ICPE2016

Michael Steindorfer and Jurgen Vinju of CWI's Software Analysis and Transformation (SWAT) group were awarded a Best Paper Award at the 7th ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE 2016).

Programme director NWO Transition to become vice president KNAW with effect from 1 September 2016

Wim van Saarloos will be appointed as vice president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) with effect from 1 September 2016 and will succeed José van Dijck as president of the KNAW on 1 June 2018. With effect from 1 January 2017 he will resume his appointment at Leiden University as professor of theoretical physics.

Former CWI PhD student wins Presidential Award for Scientists

Ton Dieker, former PhD Student (2002-2006) in CWI's Stochastics group, has received a 2016

Cum laude for new method making parallel programming easier

Due to the increase of multicore processors used in smart phones, game consoles and other computers, parallel programming has become increasingly important. To prevent software errors, concurrent calculations must always exactly be executed in the correct order. This is not easy, because existing programming techniques for enforcing such orders - interaction protocols - are very hard to use. PhD student Sung-Shik Jongmans of Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and Leiden University investigated a new programming method to simplify this.