News — CWI Amsterdam

Krzysztof R. Apt appointed CWI Fellow

We are happy to announce that Krzysztof R. Apt is appointed CWI Fellow on 1 April 2008. This title is given to outstanding members of CWI's research staff and offers them full freedom in research. Krzysztof Apt has an excellent service record. At CWI Apt is member of the research group Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization. He is also Professor at the Institute of Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam. In 2006 he was appointed member of the Academia Europæa. He is founder and past Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions in Computational Logic.

Barry Koren appointed professor of Numerical Mathematics

On 1 March 2008 Barry Koren was appointed professor of Numerical Mathematics at Leiden University. He will combine this position with his work at CWI as head of the research group Scientific Computing and Control Theory, and temporarily still with his work as professor of Computational Fluid Dynamics at TU Delft.

Dick C.A. Bulterman appointed professor of Distributed Multimedia Languages and Infrastructures

On 1 March 2008, CWI researcher Dick Bulterman was appointed professor of Distributed Multimedia Languages and Infrastructures at the VU University Amsterdam (VU). At the VU Bulterman will work within the Business, Web and Media research group of the Computer Sciences Department, which is part of the VU's Faculty of Sciences. His research concentrates on the development of synchronization languages and interactive infrastructures for supporting a broad range of dynamically distributable multimedia applications on mobile and personal devices.

Cryptography in a quantum world

Cryptography is the art of secrecy. Nearly as old as the art of writing itself, it concerns itself with one of the most fundamental problems faced by any society whose success crucially depends on knowledge and information.

Frank de Boer appointed professor of Software Correctness

On 15 February 2008 CWI researcher Frank de Boer has been appointed professor of Software Correctness at Leiden University. At the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) he is part of the research cluster Foundation of Software Technology. De Boer's research concentrates on the integration of testing and verification techniques for the validation of component-based and object-oriented software. He will also be active in the organization of the BSc in Computer Science at Leiden University.

Bert Gerards appointed Adjunct Professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada

From 1 January 2008 till 31 December 2012 Bert Gerards is appointed as Adjunct Professor at the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization of the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario. It's an honorary position.

Keeping fairness alive. Design and format verification of optimistic fair exchange protocols

In his PhD thesis, Keeping fairness alive. Design and format verification of optimistic fair exchange protocols, Mohammad Torabi Dashti studied two aspects: the design and the verification of optimistic 'fair exchange protocols'.

New Dutch train timetable made more robust with help of CWI

The 2007 Dutch train timetable, which started on 10 December 2006, has been made more robust with help of CWI researcher Lex Schrijver and programmer Adri Steenbeek. This was pointed out by Leo Kroon from Erasmus University and NS Reizigers on the annual day for relations of CWI on 16 November, 2006.

Tuesday November 28: Research Vox Populi on Noorderlicht Radio

Stefano Bocconi (PhD defense November 30 at TU/e) will be interviewed by Noorderlicht Radio on Tuesday November 28 2006. He will talk about the Vox Populi system which automatically generates video documentaries from semantically annotated media repositories.

Amsterdam Researchers Win International Semantic Web Challenge

The MultimediaN E-culture Project has won the first prize at the Semantic Web Challenge at the 5th International Semantic Web Conference held in Athens, Georgia, USA. This international competition aims to advance our understanding of how explicit, machine processable descriptions of data can be exploited on the Web. To qualify, applications should integrate, combine, and deduce information from heterogeneous and distributed sources in an open environment to assist users in specific tasks, potentially unforeseen by the original authors of the underlying Web content.

Kuhn Award for Leen Stougie

Shane Dye (Univ. of Canterbury, New Zealand), Leen Stougie (TU/e and CWI) and Asgeir Tomasgard (SINTEF and NTNU, Norway) received the 2006 Harold W. Kuhn Award during the INFORMS annual meeting in Pittsburgh on 5-8 November 2006 for their article 'The Stochastic Single Resource Service-Provision Problem', published in the journal Naval Research Logistics in 2003. This award is presented annually to the best paper published in the journal in the previous three years.

New BRICKS website online

During the BRICKS Project and Advisory Board meeting on 3 October 2006 the new BRICKS website www.bsik-bricks.nl has officially been launched. The website offers all sorts of background information on BRICKS, and provides an overview of the 33 research projects and its people involved. Also publications and research highlights can be found.

New upper bounds for kissing in higher dimensions

Christine Bachoc (Université Bordeaux) and Frank Vallentin (Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam), have found new upper bounds for 'kissing' in higher dimensions. In geometry the kissing number is the maximum number of non-overlapping unit balls that can simultaneously touch a central unit ball. In two dimensions the kissing number is six. You can clearly see this if you group euro coins around one central euro coin. The kissing number is only known for the dimensions 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 and 24.

Jan van Eijck appointed NIAS Fellow

Jan van Eijck has been appointed NIAS fellow on 1 September 2006. For five months he will be engaged in research on Games, Action and Social Software at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in Wassenaar. During this period, scientists from different disciplines - philosophy, logic, computer science, psychology, and economics - collaborate in an intensive interactive setting to find a more unified view of social mechanisms.

Gödel Prize winner Saxena appointed at CWI

Computer scientist Nitin Saxena will start as a postdoc researcher at CWI on 1 September 2006. Saxena is well known as co-author of the article 'PRIMES is in P', which received a lot of media attention the last few years. Together with Manindra Agrawal and Neeraj Kayal he won the 2006 Gödel Prize for this 'outstanding journal article in theoretical computer science' in April and, by that, is the youngest Gödel Prize winner ever. He also won the 2006 Fulkerson Prize.

Better internet connections possible by means of formal methods

A reliable internet connection − that is what users are looking for. Bahareh Badban, PhD student at CWI, studied methods to improve TCP, one of the most important protocols for Internet applications. She will defend her thesis 'Verification Techniques for Extensions of Equality' on 7 September 2006 at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Dion Gijswijt nominated for prestigious Tucker Prize

Dion Gijswijt, former PhD student of Lex Schrijver, was nominated for the A.W. Tucker Prize by the Mathematical Programming Society. The jury announced this during the International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP) 2006 in Rio de Janeiro on 31 July. The Tucker Prize is awarded every three years for 'an outstanding paper or thesis solely authored by a student'. Gijswijt was one of the three international finalists for his thesis, called 'Matrix algebras and semidefinite programming techniques for codes'. He was seconded at CWI from 2002 until 2005.

Invited lecture Bert Gerards at ICM 2006

Bert Gerards will give an invited lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) 2006 on 28 August in Madrid. It is a great honour to speak at ICM, the most important conference for mathematicians in the world with thousands of participants. The conference is organized every four years by the International Mathematical Union. Bert Gerards is cluster leader at CWI and part-time professor at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven.

FOCUS and GLANCE subsidy for CWI

NWO granted two FOCUS subsidies to CWI researchers. FOCUS is the open part of the Bsik programme BRICKS, which has been developed by CWI and NWO Physical Sciences to stimulate fundamental computer science research. The programme will deliver important building blocks for the computer of the future.

Ute Ebert member of Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities

Ute Ebert has been invited to become a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen) in Haarlem, the oldest academic society in the Netherlands. Established in 1752, the society aims at promoting science by awarding prizes and stipendia. Nowadays, it aspires to bridge the gap between science and society.

Peter Boncz wins ICTRegie Award 2006

Analyzing complex databases in record time - for his searching techniques Peter Boncz (CWI) won the ICTRegie Award 2006 on May 16. Martin Rem, chair of the jury said: "The challenges for Peter Boncz were not only scientific. The real art was coupling research results to a convincing business model. And he succeeded. With the developed knowledge CWI could launch a successful spin-off company: Data Distilleries, now taken over by SPSS. Boncz showed that the actual application of scientific knowledge in the field of computer science can lead to impressive results."

Mathematics of swimming bacteria - lecture Jens Timmer at CWI

How can bacteria find their way towards a source of sugar? This was the topic of the lecture 'Design Principals of a Bacterial Signalling Network' of Professor Jens Timmer of the University of Freiburg in Germany. He spoke at CWI during the first seminar in the Seminar Series Systems Biology of the Bio Centrum Amsterdam, on Monday 8 May 2006.

Fokker F27 Friendship wins 2006 Best Dutch Design Election

The Fokker F27 Friendship won the Best Dutch Design Election on May 5 2006, organized by the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad together with the Premsela Stichting. At the time, the Mathematisch Centrum - now CWI - made so-called flutter computations for the wings on one of the first computers in the Netherlands. Flutter is a vibration which can vary from a light 'buzz' to serious damage or destruction of the aircraft. With the computations the form of the wing could be adapted to minimize flutter. Over five thousand people chose the F27 design from 25 nominees.

Krzysztof Apt elected as Member of the Academia Europaea

Prof. dr. Krzysztof Apt (CWI and Universiteit van Amsterdam) has been elected as Member of the Academia Europaea in the Informatics Section on April 26, 2006. This section has 66 members of whom seven scientists come from the Netherlands. Other new members of this section are Prof. dr. Jan Bergstra (Universiteit van Amsterdam and Utrecht University) and Prof. dr.

First .nl domain cwi.nl celebrates 20th anniversary

The first .nl domain in the Netherlands, 'cwi.nl' of the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, celebrates its 20th anniversary on May 1, 2006. On April 25, 1986, CWI took care of registering the NL top level domain in the framework of its international and national networking activities. This first country domain was registered by Piet Beertema (CWI), who played a central role within EUnet - the predecessor of the European Internet. The first domain he registered was cwi.nl.

Better train planning with mathematical models

Better planning for trains with mathematical models - this is the subject of the dissertation of Gabor Maroti of the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI). Maroti studied several optimization models for tactical and operational planning and maintenance routing. He looked at efficiency, robustness (immunity for failures) and service level for clients - their chances to have a seat. With the models, NS can compare these aspects quantitatively and choose a good balance between them.

Peter Boncz nominated for ICTRegie Award 2006

On Monday 10 April 2006, during the opening of the Kennismarkt of the ICT Kennis Congress in Amsterdam, the Minister of Education, Culture and Science Maria van der Hoeven, announced the three nominees for the ICTRegie Award 2006. Amongst them is dr. P.A. (Peter) Boncz, researcher at the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica in the Information Systems research group. The Award will be presented on 16 May 2006.

Mathematics to reveal atomic structure wins first Philips Mathematics Prize

Can physicists obtain a 3D image of the positions of all individual atoms inside tiny crystals?

CWI rated 'excellent' in evaluation

The Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI) is rated 'excellent' by an international evaluation committee. The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO announced this in a press release on March 15, 2006. "The combination of mathematics and computer science and fundamental and applied research gives the institute a strong and unique position in the international research landscape," NWO said. NWO subjected six institutes to an external evaluation: ASTRON, CWI, ING, NIOZ, NSCR and SRON.

Jan Karel Lenstra: 'We need a Minister for Science and Technology'

Jan Karel Lenstra, general director of CWI, pleaded for a Minister of Science and Technology in his speech during the festivities of the 60th anniversary of the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, on February 9, 2006, in Amsterdam. Lenstra: "Simply put: The country needs innovation, so it sets out to turn the brains of today into the money of tomorrow, on a 24-hour basis. True innovation comes from curiosity, serendipity and good conditions, not from pressure or from a law that the Netherlands will be number 1 in five years from now.