News — CWI Amsterdam

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.

Improved throughput of sensor networks with maths

PhD student Martijn Onderwater (CWI and VU) optimized the throughput of ZigBee sensor networks with mathematical techniques. This is important, as the number of sensors is growing and their networks become more crowded.

Vici grant for Joost Batenburg

Researcher Joost Batenburg of CWI has been awarded a Vici grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for his proposal 'Real-Time 3D Tomography'. With the 1.5 million euro grant, Batenburg can develop his own research line in the next five years.

Getting to grips with software quality

There is an urgent need for new, automated techniques to analyze software and to guarantee its quality, argues part-time professor of Automated Software Testing and CWI group leader Jurgen Vinju in his inaugural speech at Eindhoven University of Technology on Friday 12 February.

CWI celebrates 70th birthday

On 11 February 2016 Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) celebrates its 70th anniversary.

CWI spin-off MonetDB Solutions helps building ExaNeSt platform

In a new EU project MonetDB Solutions helps to showcase the future generation ExaNeSt platform, which consists of up to 10 million of low-cost and low-energy ARM processors. The CWI spin-off will evaluate the platform with extremely compute-intensive big data analytics applications.

ERCIM News 104 on Big Data in Life Sciences co-coordinated by Roeland Merks

ERCIM News No. 104 was published in January 2016 at http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en104

CWI Congratulates W3C with Emmy® Award for Timed Text

W3C received a 2016 Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for its work on the Timed Text Mark-up Language standard that makes video content more accessible with text captioning and subtitles.

Emmy® Award for W3C Standards Work on Accessible Video Captioning and Subtitles

W3C will receive a 2016 Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for its work on the Timed Text Mark-up Language standard that makes video content more accessible with text captioning and subtitles. In the past, CWI researchers Dick Bulterman and Kees Blom contributed to the W3C Timed Text Working Group and CWI is still very active in W3C standardization research.

Netherlands eScience Center grants two projects at CWI

CWI develops new techniques for studying vascular growth

Blood vessels are essential for efficient transport of oxygen and nutrients throughout the body, and play a crucial role in tumor growth and wound healing. Sonja Boas, PhD student in CWI's Life Sciences group, developed new techniques to study vascular growth computationally.

TimoTimo computes the fastest biological routes

PhD student Timo Maarleveld of CWI has developed new computer algorithms that improve the speed and acurateness of biological computer simulations. He defends his thesis on Thursday 17 December at the VU University Amsterdam.

Unique experiment during 'War Horse' play in Shanghai

The National Theatre of China, Chinese news agency Xinhuanet and CWI performed a unique sensor experiment during a series of theater performances of 'War Horse' in Shanghai. During the experiments, volunteers were equipped with bio-sensors which recorded the body response data throughout the performance.

QuSoft in the media

On 3 December 2015 the new QuSoft research center for quantum software was launched during the CWI Lectures 2015 event. It is a joint initiative of CWI, UvA and VU, and will be located at Amsterdam Science Park.

Inaugural speech Marie-Colette van Lieshout

On Thursday 3 December 2015 dr. Marie-Colette van Lieshout (CWI and UT) held her inaugural lecture as a full professor of Spatial Stochastics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Twente. Her inaugural speech was titled 'Chances in Space and Time'.

QuSoft research center for quantum software launched

Today, on 3 December 2015 QuSoft, the first research center dedicated to quantum software, is launched. It is a joint initiative of CWI, UvA and VU, and will be located at Amsterdam Science Park.

FACS Best Paper Award for Formal Methods researchers

During the FACS2015 conference three researchers associated with the CWI Formal Methods research group were awarded the Best Paper Award for their article ‘Composing Constraint Automata, State-by-State’. The conference was held in Niterói, Brazil, from 14-16 October 2015.

Call for nominations Van Wijngaarden Award 2016

Every five years Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam presents the Van Wijngaarden Award to a mathematician and computer scientist of special significance. At least one of them is a woman. The next award ceremony will take place in 2016, the centenary of Van Wijngaarden.

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.