News — CWI Amsterdam

Call for nominations: Van Wijngaarden Awards 2021

With the Van Wijngaarden Awards, CWI honours mathematicians and computer scientists who have made important contributions to their research field. A call for nominations is now open for the 2021 awarding.

Cells ‘walk’ to firm ground

A new mathematical model may explain how body cells get their shapes and what makes them move within a tissue. The model provides fundamental knowledge for applications in tissue engineering, amongst other things. The research was executed by Roeland Merks and Lisanne Rens, who were previously affiliated with CWI's Scientific Computing group.

Insight in Wood: dating wooden objects with 3D CT imaging

Together with the Rijksmuseum, researchers of CIW's Computational Imaging group investigate art objects with the help of our state of the art FleX-ray scanner. PhD student Francien Bossema explains how they proceed.

Léo Ducas wins ERC Starting Grant for quantum-safe cryptography

Léo Ducas from CWI's Cryptology Group is awarded an ERC Starting Grant of 1.5 million euro for research on quantum-safe cryptography. Most of today’s cryptographic methods will not be secure against attacks based on possible future quantum computers.

Best Poster Prize for Allard Hendriksen

Allard Hendriksen, researcher at CWI’s Computational Imaging group was awarded the Best Poster Prize at the “Mathematics of Machine Learning” symposium.

Ton de Kok appointed new director of CWI

The board of NWO-I, the institute organisation of NWO, appoints Prof. Ton de Kok as director of CWI. On 1 October 2020, De Kok will succeed the current director, Prof. Jos Baeten, who has led the institute since 2011 and will retire.

Gearing up for QCrypt 2020

The latest top results in quantum cryptography will be shared during the upcoming tenth anniversary edition of the QCrypt conference. Welcoming hundreds of visitors from science and industry, QCrypt 2020 will take place as an online event, jointly organized by CWI and the University of Amsterdam.

CWI researchers develop new mathematical framework to explain the emergence of large blackouts

The study shows that the statistical distribution of blackout sizes can be linked to city sizes. Bert Zwart and his colleagues indicate that it might be more effective to help consumers react to a blackout instead of performing network upgrades.

Leo Ducas (CWI Cryptology Group) involved in NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Finalists

In its process to develop the first cryptographic standard to protect sensitive electronic data against the threat of quantum computers, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced the finalists. Léo Ducas from CWI's Cryptology group is involved in several finalists of this standardization process.

Daniel Dadush and Samarth Tiwari receive Best Paper Award at CCC'20

Daniel Dadush and Samarth Tiwari from CWI's Networks and Optimization research group receive the Best Paper Award at the Computational Complexity Conference 2020 for their work 'On the Complexity of Branching Proofs'.

Balancing uncertainties in future electricity markets

The steady embrace of sustainable energy brings along new challenges. For example, the supply and demand of energy will fluctuate much more than with energy from fossil sources. PhD student Georgios Methenitis designed several ways to find a balance in this, providing building blocks of future energy markets that guarantee efficient outcomes for all users.

In Memoriam Willem van Zwet (1934-2020)

Prof. Willem van Zwet from Leiden University was advisor to the Mathematisch Centrum (now called CWI) from 1965-1984, chair of CWI’s Science Committee and Member of the Board. Throughout his career, Van Zwet played a key role in academic mathematical statistics in the Netherlands.

EU Horizon 2020 grant award for realtime CT imaging project ‘xCting’

Project ‘xCTing’ from CWI’s Computational Imaging (CI) group and partners, has been awarded a grant from the EU Horizon 2020 Marie Curie Innovative Training Networks programme.

CWI develops New Techniques for Real-time Tomographic Reconstruction

Jan-Willem Buurlage of CWI's Computational Imaging group introduces various techniques that significantly reduce the time it takes to run conventional tomographic reconstruction algorithms without aﬀecting image quality. He will defend his thesis at 1 July.

CWI introduces new design methodology for reliable and trustworthy software

To make the development process of software quick, efficient, reliable and automated, researcher Vlad-Nicolae Şerbănescu (CWI and LIACS) studied how to unify modelling and programming languages for reliable and trustworthy software.

ICT research after corona

In an interview with the Dutch ICT magazine AG Connect, CWI director Jos Baeten outlines how the corona crisis affects ICT research. Besides the difficulties and downright misery that result from Covid-19, there’s an upside, says Baeten. “It has a positive aspect: everyone is committed to resolve this crisis.”

TONG XUE, JIE LI AND PABLO CESAR (DIS) AWARDED BEST DEMO AWARD AT ACM IMX 2020

On June 19th 2020, the demo paper “A Social VR Clinic for Knee Arthritis Patients with Haptics” was awarded the Best Demo Award at the ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experience (ACM IMX) 2020.

Jack Jansen (DIS) Awarded Best Demo Award at ACM MMsys 2020

On June 11th 2020 Jack Jansen of CWI's DIS group won the Best Demo paper Award at the ACM MMSys 2020 conference.

Marie Curie ITN grant awarded to ALPACA network

Recently, CWI and others were awarded an EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN) consortium grant for ALPACA –'Algorithms for PAngenome Computational Analysis'. The research project involves a total funding of 3.67 million euros.

Innovation fund North Holland supports CWI startup Photosynthetic B.V.

Photosynthetic B.V., a new CWI startup, has received a convertible loan of €300.000 from Innovation Fund North Holland. Photosynthetic is a deep-tech startup working on a hardware solution for the microfabrication industry.

Integrating data science and relational systems

Data scientists have largely overlooked relational database systems, even though these could greatly help their research. The systems did not gain traction, because combining them with databases proved to be slow and cumbersome. Now CWI researcher Mark Raasveldt bridges that gap. In his thesis, he proposes several novel techniques that make database management systems easier to use and more efficient.

Quantum.Amsterdam: The new quantum innovation hub

CWI, the University of Amsterdam, and QuSoft have jointly established a new innovation hub for developing quantum software and applications. The Quantum.Amsterdam hub aims to connect the ambitions of leading knowledge institutes and industry partners.

CWI designs algorithms for the improvement of Genetic Programming

Marco Virgolin of CWI’s Life Sciences & Health group has researched ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Genetic Programming (GP). He defends his thesis ‘Design and Application of Gene-Pool Optimal Mixing Evolutionary Algorithms for Genetic Programming’ on Monday 6 June.

Can CT Scans Be Used to Quickly and Accurately Diagnose COVID-19?

CWI’s Computational Imaging group joins research collaboration focusing on improving the accuracy of CT scan diagnosis

Stefan Manegold wins 2020 SIGMOD Contributions Award

CWI researcher Stefan Manegold has been awarded the 2020 SIGMOD Contributions Award. The award recognizes his innovative work in the data management community to encourage scientific reproducibility.

Guidelines for accessible websites, online documents and apps now available in Dutch

The official translation into Dutch of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1), required for all public sector body websites as of 23 September 2020, is now online. Many stakeholders, including Accessibility and the W3C Benelux Office (hosted by CWI), contributed to this.

CWI’s 25th spin-off develops software of the future

Swat.engineering generates new and transforms existing software based on domain knowledge.

New lectorate Applied Quantum Computing

CWI and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences jointly establish a new special lectorate in Applied Quantum Computing. The lectorate supports QuSoft in bridging the gap fundamental quantum research and quantum applications.

CWI’s DIS Group Organized the ACM CHI2020 Social VR Workshop on VR Platform during COVID-19

Jie Li and Pablo Cesar, from the Distributed Interactive Systems group (DIS) at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), have successfully organized the ACM CHI2020 Social VR Workshop on a social VR platform called Mozilla Hubs.

Making the invisible visible

CT machines are becoming the standard tool for looking inside objects of all kinds in research and industry. The FleX-ray Lab at CWI is making this type of imaging more accessible to math and computer science researchers. It's also drawing interest from the art, history, and the social sciences community.