News — CWI Amsterdam

Monitoring the Engagement of Groups with Sensors

The PhD thesis of CWI PhD student Chen Wang of the Distributed and Interactive (DIS) group reports on research to design a GSR system that can support and enhance actors’ awareness of remote audiences in a distributed theatrical environment.

Readers can increase retrievability of documents in the National Library collection

Crowdsourcing can help decrease the bias of the search engine of the ‘Koninklijke Bibliotheek’, the National Library of the Netherlands. CWI researchers will present that finding at the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries in Texas, which takes place on 4 June 2018.

Bart Kamphorst finds best possible scheduling policy for servers in information-scarce settings

Nobody fancies a long wait between requesting some kind of online service and actually receiving that service. Therefore, in many situations, ICT-specialists aim to design their servers in such a way that their customers are served in an efficient manner. Research of CWI PhD-student Bart Kamphorst contributes a number of performance analyses of blind algorithms and moreover identifies a blind algorithm that is in some sense optimal.

Female members of European Parliament more likely to be featured on Wikipedia

Researchers from CWI have found that female members of the European Parliament are slightly more likely to be featured on multiple Wikipedia language editions than their male counterparts. However, the variations between language editions are large: while 10 editions over-represent women, 13 editions over-represent men.

Debarati Bhaumik developed models that can help make the energy grid ‘renewables-proof’

On 30 May 2018, CWI PhD student Debarati Bhaumik will publicly defend her thesis at the University of Amsterdam. Her work focuses on computational techniques for assessing the reliability of power grids that are integrated with renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

Symposium celebrating life and achievements of Farhad Arbab

On Friday 25 May 2018 CWI organizes a farewell symposium on the occasion of the retirement of Farhad Arbab, ‘It's All About Coordination’. Farhad Arbab has been a researcher at CWI for 28 years and a professor at Leiden University since 2004. He is most known for his work on coordination languages in software engineering, particularly Reo, and in concurrency and software composition.

How to share sensitive information safely?

“Data protection is now in the news more often than ever before”, Thijs Veugen, a senior researcher at TNO and part-time seconded in CWI’s Cryptology group says in his recent TNO Time column. “What should a company do if it wants to share information?" "Organizations can use secure multi-party computation to securely link the most sensitive databases together.”

AIDA: Exploring space with Artificial Intelligence

The EU H2020 project 'AIDA' on using artificial intelligence in space physics was signed in May. The Multiscale Dynamics Group at CWI is one of the eight research partners involved. The ultimate goal is to create an intelligent system that enables new scientific discoveries in space.

More efficient ambulance planning with new mathematical models

In serious life-threatening situations a fast ambulance response is required. Late arrivals can have a serious impact on the well-being of the patients and can also have consequences regarding policy making. In practice, providing a fast ambulance response time is not always possible. PhD candidate Martin van Buuren of CWI has developed mathematical models that can help to realize fast response times.

Tim Baarslag finalist for New Scientist Wetenschapstalent 2018

Tim Baarslag, researcher at the Intelligent and Autonomous Systems group at CWI, is one of the five finalists for the ‘New Scientist Wetenschapstalent 2018’ prize. This prize is awarded annually by New Scientist to a young researcher with a high scientific and social impact who reaches a broad audience through his or her outreach activities.

Tackling messy blood vessels to fight cancer

With a Vici grant of 1.5 million euro, Roeland Merks (CWI and UL) looks for ways to fix messy and leaky blood vessels in tumours. To do so, he combines mathematical simulations and lab experiments in a unique way.

ADS & Insight PhD position at CWI

Amsterdam Data Science, in which CWI participates as a partner, recently announced that 3 PhD projects will shortly commence, fully funded by Science Foundation Ireland (an award of around 0.5M€).

MediaSync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization published

Recently, "MediaSync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization" edited by DIS members Pablo Cesar and Jack Jansen has been published by Springer.

Sander Bohté, professor by special appointment of Cognitive Neurobiology at UvA

Sander Bohté (1974) has been named professor by special appointment of Cognitive Neurobiology, specialising in Computational Neuroscience, at the University of Amsterdam (UvA)'s Faculty of Science. The chair was designated on behalf of the Science Plus Foundation (Stichting Bèta Plus). He will be combining his professorship with his position as senior researcher at CWI's Machine Learning group.

Vote for Tim Baarslag as ‘New Scientist Wetenschapstalent 2018’

CWI's Tim Baarslag has been nominated for the ‘New Scientist Wetenschapstalent 2018’ prize. This prize is awarded annually to a young researcher with a high scientific and social impact, who reaches a broad audience through his or her outreach activities.

CWI unveils real nature of Eilenberg-type correspondences

After almost forty years, a well-known theorem in algebra about 'Eilenberg-type correspondences' is finally fully understood. Julian Salamanca, PhD student at CWI in Amsterdam, made a unified theory that explained their real nature. He defends his thesis 'Coequations and Eilenberg-type correspondences' on 24 April 2018 at Radboud University in Nijmegen.

Arunachalam presents findings on quantum algorithms and machine learning

On 25 April 2018, CWI PhD student Srinivasan Arunachalam will defend his thesis at the University of Amsterdam. In his thesis, Arunachalam analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the quantum computer for a number of problems.

CWI researcher Monique Laurent elected as KNAW member

Researcher and MT member Monique Laurent from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) was elected as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). The KNAW announced this on 19 April 2018. KNAW members are prominent scientists who are nominated by fellow researchers within and outside the Academy.

CWI develops software that can manage itself

The increase of cloud technology has put a strain on developers and IT administrators to manually manage cloud software services and hardware infrastructure. Nikolaos Bezirgiannis (CWI) explored letting cloud software ‘manage itself’. He defends his PhD thesis 'Abstract Behavioral Specification: unifying modeling and programming' on 17 April 2018.

Peter Bosman appointed part-time professor Delft University of Technology

Recently, Peter A.N. Bosman, senior researcher in the CWI Life Sciences and Health (LSH) group, has been appointed part-time professor Evolutionary Algorithms in the department of Software Technology of the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) of Delft University of Technology.

Inaugural lecture Nanda Piersma: urban analytics for smart cities

On 17 April 2018, Nanda Piersma will give her inaugural lecture titled ‘Through the clouds, urban analytics for smart cities’. Piersma is part of CWI’s Intelligent and Autonomous Systems research group and professor by special appointment at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

In memoriam MC pioneers Blaauw, Kriens and Verhoeff

In March 2018 three former colleagues sadly passed away: Gerrit Blaauw, Koos Kriens and Koos Verhoeff. They did pioneering research at the Mathematisch Centrum (MC) in Amsterdam, currently called CWI.

CWI researchers simulate how ‘coherent structures’ affect solar wind heating

CWI researchers have further developed our understanding of how solar wind particles get accelerated and heated. In particular, they discovered how ‘coherent structures’ in the solar wind, places where the magnetic fields and electrical currents are enhanced, affect the energy transfer responsible for heating. The results were published in Physical Review Letters on 19 March 2018.

DIS at CHI 2018

The Distributed and Interactive Systems group from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) will be present at CHI 2018 showcasing their research on a case-study of developing a multi-sensory clubbing experience during Amsterdam Dance Event 2016, designing preproduction tools for multiscreen TV viewing, and classifying news media sympathy on Twitter after crisis events.

Better simulations for lightning and high-voltage technology

Until recently, it was not clear how lightning could start. CWI PhD student Casper Rutjes modelled and simulated the origin of lightning and ionizing radiation from storm clouds and explained the physics of these phenomena. On 15 March he defended his PhD thesis. His results are important for lightning research, high-voltage technology and nuclear medicine models.

Arrival of iconic Electrologica X8 computer celebrated with symposium

On 24 March Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, UvA, CWI and TU/e organize a public symposium around the Electrologica X8 computer from the sixties. The iconic X8 computer was developed and built entirely in the Netherlands by CWI's first spin-off Electrologica.

CWI research quality, relevance to society and viability rated ‘excellent’

An international evaluation committee has rated CWI as excellent, or world leading, in terms of its research quality, its relevance to society and its viability. The evaluation covered the institute’s work in the 2011-2016 period.

Vici grants for Nikhil Bansal and Roeland Merks

CWI researchers Nikhil Bansal and Roeland Merks have been awarded Vici grants from NWO. With the 1.5 million euro grant, Bansal and Merks can develop their own research lines in the next five years.

Radio telescope LOFAR shows how lightning grows

Dutch radio telescope LOFAR can observe the creation of lightning flashes at an unprecedented one-metre resolution, which may lead to better lightning protection. The results were published by an international scientific team with RUG, ASTRON, CWI, RU and VUB on 16 February 2018 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Computational Imaging group and Rijksmuseum project awarded with NICAS funding

The Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art and Science (NICAS) has announced which proposals have been awarded in the call "An Integrated Approach to the Scientific Study and Conservation of Art", organised by NWO.