Projects and Awards

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  The 2023 Gödel Prize awarded to Ronald de Wolf et al.

  The 2023 Gödel Prize is awarded to the paper by Samuel Fiorini, Serge Massar, Sebastian Pokutta, Hans Raj Tiwary and Ronald de Wolf: Exponential Lower Bounds for Polytopes in Combinatorial Optimization. STOC 2012: 95-106. J. ACM, 62(2), 17:1-17:23 (2015).

  Linear Programming and polyhedral methods form the backbone of combinatorial optimization. Associating a polytope to a discrete optimization problem, and characterizing its structure, has long furnished important insights in combinatorics and algorithm design. A basic question is whether the polytopes for classical problems such as traveling salesman and matching admit a small description. Resolving a long-standing question, Fiorini, Massar, Pokutta, Tiwary and de Wolf made ingenious use of techniques from communication complexity (following a framework pioneered by Yannakakis) to show that any extended formulation for the TSP polytope has exponential size.

  For more information, see https://sigact.org/prizes/g%C3%B6del.html or contact Ronald de Wolf at rdewolf at cwi.nl.
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  Gregor Behnke is awarded an Open Competition Domain Science - M grant

  We are pleased to announce that Gregor Behnke has been awarded an Open Competition Domain Science - M grant. This grant will provide funding for one PhD position.

  For more information, see https://www.nwo.nl/en/calls/open-competition-domain-science-m-0 or contact Gregor Behnke at g.behnke at uva.nl.
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  Benedikt Löwe elected to membership of Academia Europaea

  Benedikt Löwe was elected as a member of the Academia Europaea in the Class Humanities, Section Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies.

  The object of Academia Europaea is the advancement and propagation of excellence in scholarship in all academic disciplines, in particular, to promote European research, advise governments and international organisations in scientific matters, and further interdisciplinary and international research. The Academy elects scientists and scholars of international distinction to recognise their sustained academic excellence.

  For more information, see https://www.ae-info.org/ or contact Benedikt Löwe at bloewe at science.uva.nl.
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  Sonja Smets appointed to the National Organisation of Scientific Integrity

  We are pleased to announce that Sonja Smets has been appointed to the National Organisation of Scientific Integrity (LOWI).

  LOWI is an independent advisory body in the complaints procedure for possible violations of research integrity.

  For more information, see https://lowi.nl/ or contact Sonja Smets at s.j.l.smets at uva.nl.
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  Rens Bod appointed KNAW member

  We are happy to announce that Rens Bod has been selected as new member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

  For more information, see https://www.uva.nl/en/content/news/news/2023/04/rens-bod-jeroen-de-kloet-julia-noordegraaf-and-frank-lobbezoo-appointed-knaw-members.html or contact Rens Bod at L.W.M.Bod at uva.nl.
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  ACM PODS'23 best paper award

  The Best Paper Award of 42nd ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS) goes to B. ten Cate, V. Dalmau, M. Funk, and C. Lutz (2023). Extremal Fitting Problems for Conjunctive Queries.

  For more information, see https://2023.sigmod.org/ or contact Balder ten Cate at b.d.tencate at uva.nl.
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  Benedikt Löwe appointed to the advisory board of the UK Academy of the Mathematical Sciences

  The mathematical community in the United Kingdom is represented by a number of separate learned societies; in 2018, the creation of an Academy of the Mathematical Sciences speaking for the entire discipline with one voice was recommended by an external review.

  In 2022, a proto-academy was created with the intent to launch the Academy in 2025. Benedikt Löwe was appointed to serve on the proto-academy's Advisory Board.

  For more information, see https://www.acadmathsci.org.uk/2023/02/28/advisory-board-for-proto-academy-announced/ or contact Benedikt Löwe at bloewe at science.uva.nl.