News

From 20-22 September 2022 DDQC was organised on the subject of the Management of Service Systems. The objective of this workshop is to highlight and discuss contemporary approaches to the  management of service systems, with a focus on data collection, methodological insights, and analysis of decision making. The recordings of the lectures are now online! 

PACE (the Parameterized Algorithms and Computational Experiments Challenge) is an implementation challenge for algorithms, aimed at students and junior researchers. Each year, the challenge is devoted to a different NP-hard problem. For such problems, it is widely believed that no efficient algorithm exists which finds an optimal solution for all inputs. The theory of parameterized algorithmics is aimed at such problems and investigates how to exploit structure that is present in real-life inputs to solve them more efficiently. The PACE challenge was conceived in 2015 to investigate the practical applicability of algorithmic ideas coming out of parameterized complexity.

On Thursday the 2nd of June "IMAGINARY: beauty and power of mathematics" will open its doors in Leiden. From the 2nd of June and throughout the school year 2022-2023 the exhibition can be visited and experienced. This new IMAGINARY exhibition in The Netherlands is organized by the Dutch Platform for Mathematics, in collaboration with Dutch universities, and supported by partner organisations. The exhibition runs simultaneously in Flanders, where the Flanders Platform for Mathematics is the driving force. 

He was unassuming. He was nice. He could think. He could write. And he knew a lot. He died last Friday, April 1, 2022. His name was Gerhard Woeginger, a prolific computer scientist.

From 21-23 September 2021, NETWORKS co-organised held the inaugural multicontinent workshop on Data Driven Queueing Systems. The program, comprising 18 talks over 2 days across multiple timezones, attracted 300 registrants from 25 countries.

The second multicontinent workshop will be held in April 2022 on the subject of Optimization of Service Systems. 

Margriet Oomen successfully defended her PhD thesis "Spatial Populations with Seed-Bank" at Leiden University on November 18, 2021. Frank den Hollander (Leiden University) and Andreas Greven (Erlangen-Nurnberg University) acted as promotors. The degree was awarded "cum laude". 

On October 21 2021, we received the sad news that Francesca Nardi passed away after a long illness. Francesca has always had a close relationship with the Netherlands, and with Eindhoven in particular. 

On Firday 24th of September Professor Ton Koonen received a royal distinction during the symposium Optican Networks preceding his valedictory lecture: he has been made Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.

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.

Johan van Leeuwaarden (TU/e and UvT) has been awarded an NWO Vici grant for research into algorithms in the 'cloud'. The Vici grant amounts to 1.5 million euros and will enable him to develop an innovative line of research and set up his own research group in the coming five years.