News
Life Sciences group news
Best Italian PhD thesis prize for CWI's Giulia Bernardini
On 14 September 2021 the Italian chapter of EATCS awarded a prize for the Best Italian PhD Thesis in Theoretical Computer Science ex aequo to Giulia Bernardini (CWI) and Francesco Dagnino (University of Genova).
JoLEA: new lecture series on cutting-edge research on Evolutionary Algorithms
CWI, Leiden University, Utrecht University and VU Amsterdam proudly present the new Joint Lectures on Evolutionary Algorithms (JoLEA) series: top-quality lectures on EAs.
Three GECCO Awards for AI in healthcare
CWI researchers and partners won three awards for AI in healthcare at the ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation COnference (GECCO) 2021: the Best Paper Award in the Genetic Algorithms track, the SIGEVO Dissertation Award 2021 and a Silver HUMIES Award.
Funding for Explainable Artificial Intelligence for medical professionals
LUMC, Amsterdam UMC, and CWI have received funding from the Gieskes-Strijbis Fund to enhance the understanding of AI by doctors.
NETWORKS consortium awarded €1M from EU COFUND for postdoc programme
After receiving the COFUND grant from the Horizon 2020 programme for 14 PhD positions, NETWORKS has been granted a COFUND grant of €1.0 million to appoint 14 postdoctoral researchers for 2 years.
Best Paper Award for LSH researchers at EMO 2021
Researchers from CWI's Life Sciences & Health group were awarded a Best Paper Award at EMO 2021 for their paper “Local search is a remarkably strong baseline for neural architecture search”.
Evolutionary Algorithms for high-quality solutions
It is not uncommon that the solution obtained by an algorithm is not as desired. To overcome this, Stef Maree's PhD research focuses on optimization algorithms for finding not just one solution, but a set of diverse high-quality solutions.
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.
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.
Peter Bosman awarded grant of 1M euros from NWO’s Open Technology Programme
Peter Bosman’s project proposal DAEDALUS (Distributed and Automated Evolutionary Deep Architecture Learning with Unprecedented Scalability) has been granted by NWO TTW in its Open Technology Programme.
€1.5 million European grant for mathematics consortium NETWORKS
The NETWORKS consortium can now continue growing thanks to a €1.5 million grant from the European Union’s Horizon2020 programme.
Artificial Intelligence by CWI and Amsterdam UMC proposes the best radiation treatment plans in clinical practice for the first time
CWI and Amsterdam UMC have developed software that helps radiation oncologists to make internal radiation treatment plans for prostate cancer. Today, the first patient was treated with a plan made with the help of this new AI technique.
CWI researchers involved in two NWO-Groot grants
In the NWO Open Competition ENW-GROOT programme, four CWI researchers received in total two grants to study machine learning and neural networks: Nikhil Bansal, Monique Laurent, Benjamin Sanderse and Leen Stougie.
Peter Bosman awarded NWO KLEIN grant
Peter Bosman of CWI's Life Sciences & Health group has been awarded a NWO KLEIN grant together with Amsterdam UMC.
Life Sciences and Health group awarded RISE grant
The Life Sciences and Health group have been awarded a Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) grant from the European Commission.
CWI develops unique method for genome-reconstruction of mutated viruses
Jasmijn Baaijens, PhD student in CWI’s Life Sciences and Health group, has developed a new computational tool that can reconstruct genomes of mutated versions of viruses like HIV, Zika and Ebola
Humies Silver award for Peter Bosman and colleagues
CWI researchers Peter Bosman and Hoang Luong, along with colleagues from Amsterdam UMC, have been awarded the Humies Silver award at the GECCO 2019 conference, for their efforts in the automated generation of treatment plans for prostate cancer using brachytherapy.
Three Veni grants for CWI researchers
The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded a Veni grant to Georgios Amanatidis, Marleen Balvert and Christian Majenz. The grant provides them with the opportunity to further elaborate their research ideas during a period of three years.
KWF grant for Peter Bosman together with Amsterdam UMC
Peter Bosman of CWI's Life Sciences & Health group has been awarded a project by the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF) together with the Oncology department of Amsterdam UMC.
ESTRO-Elekta Brachytherapy Award for Anton Bouter
Anton Bouter of CWI's Life Sciences & Health group has been awarded the ESTRO-Elekta Brachytherapy Award at the European SocieTy for Radiation & Oncology (ESTRO 38) conference in Milan, Italy.
Reinforcing the electricity grid with Evolutionary Algorithms
In our modern daily life, many activities require electricity, for example, the use of domestic appliances, manufacturing, communication, and transportation. It is therefore essential to maintain a reliable supply of electricity to ensure the operation of such activities.
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.
Joint eScience and Data Science grant for CWI's Peter Bosman and AMC
Recently, a research proposal that is spearheaded by CWI was granted in the Joint eScience and Data Science programme that was organized jointly by the NWO Domain Science and Netherlands eScience Center (NLeSC). In all projects in this programme, researchers collaborate with eScience engineers of the NLeSC.
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.
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.
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.
Comparing medical images better
Together with the radiation oncology department of AMC, Peter Bosman of CWI’s Life Sciences and Health group has been awarded 1.4 million euros for a project in NWO’s Open Technology Programme for the research and development of a new medical image registration method. This project is co-funded by companies Elekta and Xomnia.
A puzzle with a million pieces: assembling viral genomes from sequencing data
Researchers from CWI’s Life Science and Health group have developed a new computational tool, SAVAGE, for reconstructing the genomes of the different virus strains that affect an infected person. SAVAGE makes it possible to reconstruct the different strains – of which there can be plenty in an infected person – even when so called reference genomes are not available
Researchers develop robot friend to support children
A team of researchers led by CWI will investigate the use of robots in order to emotionally support children that suffer from cancer. The robots must act as a personal, social friend for the children at times their parents cannot be around.
PhD student Lisanne Rens wins H. D. Landahl Mathematical Biophysics Award
CWI PhD student Lisanne Rens has been awarded the 2017 H. D. Landahl Mathematical Biophysics Award. Every two years, the Society for Mathematical Biology gives out this reward in recognition of a scientist who is making outstanding scientific contributions to the advancement of mathematical biology during their doctoral studies.