4 NWO Open Competition Grants for ILLC staff

Four NWO Open Competition Grants have been awarded to ILLC staff this spring: three in the Exact Sciences programme, and one (a collaboration with the University of Leiden) in the Humanities programme. This was a high score, given the number of grants awarded on a national level: 2 of the 11 grants in computer science, and 1 of the 2 multidisciplinary projects.

Harry Buhrman was awarded a grant (Exact Sciences / Multidisciplinary) for his project: Quantum Position-Based Cryptography. This grant will fund a PhD position for four years at CWI. NWO rarely awards grants to multidisciplinary projects, this was one of the two awarded this round and was approved by both the computer science and the mathematics councils.

Khalil Sima'an was awarded a grant (Exact Sciences / Computer Science) for a project entitled: 'Statistical Translation of Novel Constructions'. This grant will fund a PhD position for four years.

Yde Venema was awarded a grant (Exact Sciences / Computer Science) for a project entitled: 'Logic and Automata: a Coalgebraic perspective'. This grant will fund a PhD position for four years.

Jelle Zuidema was co-applicant with Clara Levelt and Carel ten Cate at Leiden University for the project Segments and rules: a comparative study into the computational mechanisms underlying language acquisition (Humanities). The project was awarded 3 PhDs in total, one of which will work for four years on Jelle’s sub-project, Modeling Artificial Language Learning.

For more information, see http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOP_8R5JJ5 and http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOP_8QTKJ5.