News — CWI Amsterdam

CWI merges with NWO Institutes Organisation

With effect from 1 January 2018, CWI will merge with the NWO Institutes Organisation, NWO-I. The other institutes that join the merger are ASTRON, NIOZ, NSCR and SRON. The institutes AMOLF, ARCNL, DIFFER and Nikhef are already part of NWO-I.

CWI participates in new NWO Perspectief programme

In the coming years almost a hundred researchers are going to develop innovative technologies together with industry and social organisations. That will happen in six new Perspectief programmes, which have been given the green light by NWO, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, on 21 November 2017. CWI's Machine Learning group participates in the programme Efficient Deep Learning Systems.

Tim Baarslag in ‘Universiteit van Nederland’

Tim Baarslag, who is part of CWI’s Intelligent and Autonomous Systems research group, has given a lecture for the 'Universiteit van Nederland'. The lecture can now be viewed online.

CWI and ProRail predict railway incidents

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and ProRail recently started a research collaboration in the area of the handling of incidents at the Dutch railways. It concerns a public private partnership between CWI and ProRail striking up a four year period. The research is aimed at prevention and handling of a broad spectrum of railway incidents, like disturbance of the railway infrastructure, people walking on the tracks and collisions.

In Memoriam Willem Hundsdorfer

With sadness, we let you know that our colleague Prof. Willem Hundsdorfer passed away on Friday 10 November, at the age of 63. Since 1984 Willem had been affiliated with CWI; first in the Numerical Mathematics department, where he built up an international reputation. Since 2002, he had been part of the Multiscale Dynamics research group, where he shared his expertise for developing simulations of electric discharges that by now are widely recognized.

NEWSGAC project kicked off

The NEWSGAC project, acquired by Laura Hollink and Jacco van Ossenbruggen, has kicked off last week week. Researchers of this project aim to open the 'black box' of machine learning in this joint project with the eScience Centre, the University of Groningen, the National Library of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

First CWI thesis on web archiving

Thaer Samar successfully defended his PhD thesis "Access to and Retrievability of Content in Web Archives" on 30 October 2017

Tim Baarslag Winner of the 2017 Cor Baayen Young Researcher Award

Tim Baarslag (CWI) won the 2017 ERCIM Cor Baayen Young Researcher Award. This European prize is awarded each year to a promising young researcher of outstanding quality in computer science and applied mathematics.

CWI participates in impact study North/Southline

The North/Southline is the largest operation in Amsterdam’s public transport in decades. That is why the municipality of Amsterdam will start an extensive impact study together with knowledge institutions, the transport region Amsterdam and GVB (public transport company Amsterdam). Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) will act as one of the main research partners.

Jos Baeten elected ERCIM president

Jos Baeten, General Director of CWI, is elected as president of ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) for a period of two years.

Lightning produces afterglow of gamma radiation

Ionizing radiation due to lightning shines for much longer than presumed before: up to 10,000 times longer. This was demonstrated for the first time by computer simulations of CWI researchers. Their work was published on 22 October in Geophysical Review Letters.

CWI will host EIT Digital's new innovation space

EIT Digital is opening a new innovation space at the offices of Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam on 2 November. With this top location in the financial heart of the Netherlands, EIT Digital wants to boost the development of FinTech, together with its partners in the Netherlands and Europe.

In Memoriam Lorike Hagdorn

It is with great sorrow that we announce the passing of Dr. Lorike Hagdorn, member of the CWI Governing Board. Lorike Hagdorn passed away on Monday 9 October 2017. With her passing, CWI has lost a driven and competent board member, and the Dutch research field of logistics has lost one of its most prominent scientists.

Alexander Schoenhuth appointed Professor Genome Data Science

Starting 1 October 2017, Alexander Schoenhuth of Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam is appointed Professor ‘Genome Data Science’ at the Faculty of Science of Utrecht University. It concerns a part-time appointment for one day a week.

Large H2020 grant for optimisation research project ‘MINOA’

Recently, the EU granted the Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Optimisation Applications (MINOA) project, as part of the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Programme. The project is a collaborative European Training Network, with 12 research partners, CWI being one of them.

Software Renovation by Reverse Engineering Source Code

Currently, software renovation is a hot topic, because our society is depending more and more on aging software. By renovating software we refresh aging software to better match the current technical and business environment. In his thesis CWI PhD candidate Davy Landman studied the automation of software renovation by using Reverse Engineering.

Best Paper Award for Training DevOps engineers

Researchers from CWI's Formal Methods group won the Best Paper Award in the 6th European Conference on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing (ESSOC) in September 2017. They were awarded the prize for their work on 'Human-in-the-Loop Simulation of Cloud Services'. The researchers are one of the first to carry out live, interactive simulation of DevOps engineers inside simulated cloud environments.

Jaap Akkerhuis admitted to Internet Hall of Fame

Monday evening 18 September 2017 in Los Angeles, the Internet Society (ISOC) announced that Jaap Akkerhuis of NLnet Labs was to be admitted to the Internet Hall of Fame. Akkerhuis began his career at the Mathematical Centre, which is now CWI.

CWI and Meyn Food Processing start joint research project on non-destructive 3D spectral Imaging

CWI’s Computational Imaging group and Meyn Food Processing will collaborate in a joint research project with the goal of developing novel 3D spectral imaging techniques that will be applied in the poultry industry. The research will be executed by using the technology made available in CWI's ’FleX-ray’ lab.

Hans van den Berg receives international Lifetime Award

Hans van den Berg has been granted the 2017 Arne Jensen Lifetime Achievement Award for his extensive, outstanding contribution to the field of performance, control and reliability of communication networks.

KIEM funding for developing a smart urban jacket

CWI's DIS group led by Pablo Cesar has been awarded KIEM funding by NWO Humanities. The funding will go to "Project Cairo: an intelligent soft-robotic jacket". DIS will work on this project together with two partners: Borre Akkersdijk (Byborre) and Bas Overvelde (Amolf).

CRYPTO 2017 Best Paper Award for breaking SHA-1 security standard

A team of researchers from CWI and Google have won the CRYPTO 2017 Best Paper Award for being the first to break the SHA-1 internet security standard in practice. Marc Stevens (CWI) explained this research during a plenary talk at CRYPTO 2017 in Santa Barbara (USA).

Quantum revolution at Lowlands

Quantum experts Harry Buhrman (CWI, QuSoft and UvA) and Ronald Hanson (QuTech, TU Delft) showed a glimpse of their scientific minds at the Lowlands pop festival 2017, discussing the quantum revolution.

ERCIM News 110 focuses on Blockchain Engineering

ERCIM News No. 110 is now available on ERCIM News website. The focus of this issue is on Blockchain Engineering, with a contribution by CWI's Eric Pauwels.

CWI PhD student Jasmijn Baaijens wins Best Talk Award at the ISMB-HitSeq conference

Jasmijn Baaijens, PhD student from CWI’s Life Sciences and Health group, has won the Best Talk Award at ISMB-HitSeq, the world's leading conference on high-throughput genomics.

Veni grants for CWI researchers Tim Baarslag and Stacey Jeffery

NWO has awarded Veni grants to Tim Baarslag and Stacey Jeffery. 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.

CWI and Google research team wins Pwnie Award for Best Cryptographic Attack

Researchers at CWI and Google have won the Pwnie Award for Best Cryptographic Attack at the BlackHat USA security conference. They were awarded the prize for being the first to break the SHA-1 internet security standard in practice.

Marc Stevens’ project awarded funding in ‘Big Data: real time ICT for logistics’ programme

NWO has granted five applications within the ‘Big Data: real time ICT for logistics’ research programme. CWI’s Marc Stevens is the main applicant of one of the five granted research projects: 'Secure scalable policy-enforced distributed data processing'.

DIS contributes to MPEG’s work on Point Cloud Compression

The Distributed and Interactive Systems group has been a core contributor to the effort of Moving Picture Experts Group on 3D point cloud compression technologies. This effort aims at providing efficient representation of static objects and scenes, as well as dynamic objects and real-time acquisition environments. It has resulted in a call for proposals from MPEG.

Instable blood supply may help healthy cells compete with tumor cells

Researchers of CWI’s Scientific Computing group have found that instabilities in the blood supply in cancerous tissue can, surprisingly, lead to a less favorable environment for tumor cells. Their findings shed light on the potential negative side effects of current treatments that aim to actually normalize the blood supply in cancerous tissues.