News — CWI Amsterdam

ELA Best Presentation award for Bernard Zweers

Bernard Zweers of CWI’s Stochastics group has been awarded the best presentation award at the 24th doctorate workshop of the European Logistics Association.

CWI develops models for prevention and reduction of traffic jams

Daphne van Leeuwen of CWI’s Stochastics group focused on the following research question during her PhD: How to design effective control mechanisms to reduce or prevent congestion road networks in the omnipresence of uncertainty?

CWI, EIT Digital, Spirit, and UPM launch Innovation Activity ''G-Moji' - an impressive smartphone application to improve lives of youth at risk

Dutch youth care organization Spirit, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), join forces in the new innovation activity of EIT Digital.

CWI and Stichting 113 use data analytics for suicide prevention

Foundation 113 aims at a society in which nobody dies lonely or desperate because of suicide. To achieve this goal, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and Foundation 113 Suicide Prevention have recently started a research collaboration.

Health Innovation Seed Fund III B.V. invests in Stokhos emergency mathematics

CWI spin-off company Stokhos Emergency Mathematics receives an investment of Health Innovation Seed Fund III. With this financial injection Stokhos aims to further optimize its software called Seconds, to achieve a scale-up and further international expansion.

CWI researchers make power grid more reliable with mathematics

Researchers from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) discovered how large fluctuations in solar and wind energy, combined with the physical network dynamics of electricity, can cause failures in power grids.

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.

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.

Caroline Jagtenberg awarded Rubicon grant

Caroline Jagtenberg, who recently obtained her PhD at CWI, has been awarded an NWO Rubicon grant. With the grant, Jagtenberg will do research at the University of Auckland (New Zealand) for a period of two years.

Stochastics group leader Bert Zwart in 'Economentop 40' of 2017

Stochastics researcher and group leader Bert Zwart is selected to be part of the 'Economentop 40' of 2017, which lists the forty Dutch economists with the highest publication rate in peer reviewed magazines over the past five years.

Caroline Jagtenberg awarded with prestigious Jo van Nunen award

Caroline Jagtenberg, former PhD student of CWI, received the prestigious Jo van Nunen award for her CWI PhD thesis “Efficiency and Fairness in Ambulance Planning” on 30 November. The prize has been awarded by VLM (Vereniging Logistiek Management).

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.

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.

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.

CWI spin off Stokhos nominated for Computable Award: vote now!

CWI spin off Stokhos has been nominated for a Computable Award in the category 'Best ICT project in healthcare 2017'. You can vote for Stokhos as of now. The winning project is determined for 50% by jury and 50% by public voting.

Stokhos and LIS GmbH sign Letter of Intent in presence of state secretary Sander Dekker

On April 24 2017 CWI spin-off Stokhos and German software company LIS Leitstellen Informations System GmbH have signed a Letter of Intent in presence of State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science Sander Dekker. This happened at the Hannover Messe, the largest annual technology trade fair.

Rubicon grants for David de Laat and Alessandro Zocca

CWI researchers David de Laat and Alessandro Zocca both received an NWO Rubicon grant. De Laat will study new techniques to compute optimal packings at MIT for one year, and Zocca will study renewables and uncertainty in future power systems at Caltech for two years. NWO granted these subsidies to 22 young, highly promising research talents to gain international research experience at foreign top institutes.

CWI researcher makes higher turnover in hotel bookings possible

With a new mathematical method, hotels can receive on average 5% more turnover in the long term when taking online reviews into account. Dirk Sierag, PhD student of CWI, analysed with historical data the behaviour of consumers booking rooms. Based on the results he designed mathematical models that can support hotels in determining optimal prices of hotel rooms. The research results can also be applied on movies, concerts, sporting events and, for example, Uber taxi rides.

Rob van der Mei in TV programme Universiteit van Nederland

Stochastics researcher Rob van der Mei has made an appearance in an episode of the TV programme 'Universiteit van Nederland'. He contributed to a series of 5 episodes themed 'Disasters'. Rob's talk focuses on how the ambulance can get to your house even faster.

NWO Complexity grant for Stochastics researchers

A consortium led by CWI researcher Rob van der Mei (Stochastics) has been awarded a grant within the Complexity in Transport & Logistics programme. Elenna Dugundji of CWI is one of the co-applicants an project manager of the research project. In total 15 proposals were submitted, of which 7 were granted. The available budget for this programme is a maximum of € 3.5 million and is provided by the NWO divisions of Social Sciences (MaGW) and Physical Sciences (EW) and the NWO governing board.

CWI launches spin-off Stokhos Emergency Mathematics

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) announces the foundation of its new spin-off Stokhos Emergency Mathematics. Stokhos provides software solutions which enable the proactive relocation of emergency services based on predictions of future demand.

Mathematical models for optimal coverage of emergency services

Providing proper care in time in emergency situations. This is what emergency services stand for. On 6 June mathematician Pieter van den Berg defends his PhD thesis at TU Delft. He developed models for optimising the logistics of emergency response vehicles.

Increased call center efficiency by identifying redialers

Call centers should base their staff planning on the number of unique callers instead of the total number of calls. Furthermore, introducing a system that gives redialers priority over fresh callers both reduces the average waiting time and improves the fairness of the system. This can be concluded from a study on call center management conducted by CWI.

Firefighters better in position with mathematical model

How could firefighters position themselves even better in a region? If multiple stations are busy fighting a major fire, where should vehicles of other fire stations go to for optimal coverage?

ERCIM News 105 on Planning and Logistics co-coordinated by Rob van der Mei

In April 2016, ERCIM News No. 105 was published: http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en105. This issue features a special theme on Planning and Logistics, coordinated by guest editors Rob van der Mei (CWI and VU) and Ariona Shashaj (SICS).

Improved throughput of sensor networks with maths

PhD student Martijn Onderwater (CWI and VU) optimized the throughput of ZigBee sensor networks with mathematical techniques. This is important, as the number of sensors is growing and their networks become more crowded.

Inaugural speech Marie-Colette van Lieshout

On Thursday 3 December 2015 dr. Marie-Colette van Lieshout (CWI and UT) held her inaugural lecture as a full professor of Spatial Stochastics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Twente. Her inaugural speech was titled 'Chances in Space and Time'.

Van Hemelrijk-prize for best master thesis

Rutger Kerkkamp has been awarded the Van Hemelrijk-prize for the best master thesis in 2014 in the field of Statistics and Operations Research in the Netherlands.

Bert Zwart receives Van Dantzig Prize

Researcher Bert Zwart of CWI has been awarded the Van Dantzig Prize. This prize is considered the highest Dutch award in statistics and operations research and is awarded once every five years.

Vici grant for Bert Zwart

Researcher Bert Zwart of CWI has been awarded a Vici grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for his proposal ‘Rare Events: Asymptotics, Algorithms, Applications’. With the 1.5 million euro grant, Zwart can develop his own line of research and research group in the next five years. It is one of the largest research grants in the Netherlands.