News

Agnieszka Janicka’s poster at NMC (Dutch Mathematical Congress) 2024 received the Silver KWG Poster Prize in the Poster Competition. 

In February 2024, the second Volume of the Random Graphs and Complex Networks book series by Remco van der Hofstad was published. While Volume 1 is aimed at master students in mathematics and related fields, Volume 2 is aimed more towards the research community. This community includes PhD students and researchers, with a mathematical background. 

The book covers recent developments in random graphs theory about the local and global structure of random graphs. It is the first book covering the central notion of local convergence, a method that has had profound consequences in random graph theory. Many properties of random graphs can be understood by linking them to the random graph’s local limit. Further, the book covers global properties, such as the existence of a giant connected component containing a positive proportion of the vertices in the graph, as well as when random graphs are fully connected. Another point of focus are the small-world properties of random graphs. The book closes with an extensive discussion on related random graphs models, discussing models that are directed, have a local or global community structure, or have a geometric structure. The book has some 300 exercises that allow readers to sharpen their familiarity with the topics that are discussed.

The topic of Random Graphs and Complex Networks, and the publication of the book, will be celebrated at EURANDOM on September 2-4, 2024 through a small workshop.

Source: SPOR website

In the vibrant city of Bangalore, India, the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) played host to a discussion meeting titled "Challenges in Networks" from January 29 to February 2, 2024. This event marked a significant milestone in the ongoing exchange program between researchers from India and The Netherlands, focusing on network science and related domains.

On Tuesday, 7 November, the rectores of VU and UvA handed out the second Amsterdam Young Academy (AYA) Recognition & Reward Awards during the inauguration of the new AYA cohort in the Hortus Botanicus. The awards are intended to reward VU and UvA academics who perform exceptionally in the fields of Teaching, Social impact or Academic Community Support. Nicos Starreveld, lecturer at the UvA and outreach coordinator of Networks, received the Award for Teaching. 

Frits Spieksma (TU/e) was recently elected President Elect of EURO - the Association of European Operational Research Societies. He will succeed the current president, Prof. Dr. Anita Schöbel, at the end of her term. 

Onno Boxma, emeritus professor of Stochastic Operations Research at Eindhoven University of Technology, is the inaugural Blackwell Prize winner. This award of the INFORMS Applied Probability Society recognizes fundamental and sustained career contributions within the area of Applied Probability.

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.