CWI has been awarded two NWO TOP Grants in the Networks & Optimization group. Krzysztof Apt and Monique Laurent both received a grant in the module meant for experienced senior researchers in the field. From a total of 76 applications, only 8 projects were granted. The total amount of money in the program is €4 million.
Krzysztof Apt received a grant jointly with Elena Marchiori from the Radboud University for a project on combining machine learning and game theory techniques for cluster analysis. Monique Laurent, in collaboration with Ronald de Wolf from CWI's Algorithms & Complexity group and Nikhil Bansal from the Technical University Eindhoven, was awarded a grant for a project aiming to explore the limits of efficient computation within classical and quantum computing, using semidefinite optimization as a main unifying tool.
Besides the two projects awarded to CWI researchers, the institute is also involved in a third project. Sindo Núñez-Queija and Bert Zwart (both Stochastics group) will participate in a project on queuing and risk awarded to Onno Boxma (TU/e). This project combines probabilistic and analytic approaches to solve several longstanding open problems in two-dimensional random walks.
The TOP scheme is a funding program from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) intended for innovative and risky scientific research in astronomy, computer science and mathematics. The projects should address a question of a high academic standard and great scientific urgency. The TOP scheme is divided into two modules: one for senior researchers and one for junior researchers.
