Jan van Leeuwen

Professor of Computer Science (em.)

Welcome to my homepage.

Academic information

a compact cv (2007) (pdf)
ISI citation: highly cited (html) , math genealogy (html), wikipedia (entry)
recent honors:
- Dr.h.c. Naturwissenschaften, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany (2008). (Cf. RWTH.)
- Distinguished Lorentz fellow 2009-2010, Lorentz Center for the Sciences / Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study.
vice-president/member executive council of: Informatics Europe (see also wikipedia entry).
member council of: EATCS, ACM Europe.
former vice-dean of natural sciences of : Faculty of Science (until 1-1-2009)
member advisory council of: Netherlands ICT Research and Innovation Authority (ICTRegie, until 31-12-2010).
vice-dean for research (ad interim), Faculty of Science, 2011.
member Foresight Panel, IT University, Copenhagen, Denmark (2008-).
member Advisory Board, School of Science, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland (2011-).
the program committees I serve(d) on: (pdf)
current program committees:
- CiE 2012 - Computability in Europe, Cambridge, June 18-23, 2012.
- MFCS 2012 - 37th Int Symp on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science, Bratislava, August 27-31, 2012.
member Turing Centenary Advisory Committee:
- The Alan Turing Year (2012).
- Semantics and Syntax: A Legacy of Alan Turing (Newton Institute, Cambridge, 9 January - 6 July, 2012)
- Computability in Europe 2012 - Turing Centenary Conference (Cambridge, 18 June - 23 June, 2012).
the Center for Algorithmic Systems , the Center for Philosophy of Computer Science, the Utrecht Research Institute for Information and Computing Sciences.
other professional duties, committees, etc: list1, list2, list3.

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Some Recent Talks and Articles

Slides:
- `Science for the Information Age', at ICT Congress, Delft 2005: (ppt).
- `Moving into the Information Age', at EIT Symposium, Tilburg 2007: (ppt).
- `Research-intensive universities, excellence and teaching', at Nasjonalt fakultetsmote i realfag 2008, Oslo 2008: (ppt).
- `Attracting (more) students to the informatics discipline', IEEIII 2008, Venice 2008: (ppt).
- `What type of computer scientist do we need for the future', at LSI UPC, Barcelona 2009: (ppt).
- `Informatics - Constructing a new world', at Dept of Computer Science, Comenius Univ, 35th anniversary, Bratislava 2009: (ppt).
- `Computation as unbounded process', Workshop `Philosophy of the Information and Computing Sciences, Lorentz Center, Leiden 2010: (ppt).
- `On closer inspection - understanding complexity', at Valedictory Colloquium for P van Emde Boas, March 25, Amsterdam 2010: (pdf)
- `From ALGOL 60 to the things we program now', ALGOL 60 - 50 year anniv. meeting, Museum Boerhaave, Leiden 2010: (ppt) (draft).
- `Convex polygon intersection graphs', GD 2010, Konstanz 2010: (pdf).
- `Strategies of the association of informatics departments and IT research centers in Europe', at ECSS 2010, Prague 2010: (ppt).
- `Informatica, Watson en de screenagers', Universiteitsdag, Utrecht, 2011: (pdf).
- `Watson and the philosophy of computation', IT University, Copenhagen, 2011: (pdf).
- `Computation after Turing', Symposium `Pioneers of Computer Science: From Turing to Harel', TU Eindhoven, 2012: (pdf).
Articles
- `Student enrollment and image of the Informatics discipline': (pdf), Informatics Europe, 2007 (van Leeuwen & Tanca).
- `A fascinating science': (pdf), Utrecht, 2009.
- `Ultieme informatie', NRC, 18 April 2009: (pdf) (in Dutch).
- `Towards a philosophy of the information and computing sciences', NIAS Newsletter 42, 2009: (pdf)
- `Leven in de Infosfeer', DiB, jaargang 2 nr 5, 2010: (pdf) (in Dutch).

Teaching

the courses I taught: (ps) (pdf)
some courses I taught recently:
- Web modeling
- Algorithmic modelling and complexity
- Algorithms, games and the internet (seminar on algorithmic game theory)
masters-theses (co-)supervised (ps) (pdf)
phd-theses (co-)supervised (pdf)
some surveys
- `Approaches to machine learning', at Philips SOIA Symposium: (ps), (pdf).

Research

my research interests: ad-hoc networks, algorithms (design and analysis), algorithms-in-context (e.g. in operations research), algorithmic systems, ambient intelligence, applied algorithmics, computational complexity theory (incl. non-uniform complexity theory), datastructures, discrete optimization, distributed computing, formal methods in computer science, graph-theoretic modeling, graph algorithms, graph theory, information technology, intelligent algorithms, Internet modeling, languages and automata, machine learning, networks and network modeling, network algorithms, parallel computing, philosophy of computing, theoretical computer science, unbounded computation, and more.

Publications and Reports

a list of publications: (pdf).
proceedings, books, and special issues edited: (pdf).
my technical reports issued by ICS
the Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science (1990)
- Vol A: Algorithms and Complexity
- Vol B: Formal Models and Semantics
some old documents
- `Having a Grundy-numbering is NP-complete' (1976): (pdf) .
- `On the construction of Huffman trees' (1976): (pdf) .
- `The complexity of data organization' (1976): (pdf).
- `Untangling a traveling salesman tour in the plane' (1980): (pdf).
- `Trip report SOFSEM 85' (1985): (pdf).
- `Interval routing' (1987): (pdf).
a list of my other professional writings, committee reports etc.

Society memberships

Academia Europaea (European Academy of Sciences).
Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen.
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
Computability in Europe (CiE).
European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS).
Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI, Plus-Mitglied).
Koninklijk Wiskundig Genootschap (WG).
Nederlandse Vereniging voor Theoretische Informatica (NVTI).
NIAS Fellows' Association (NFA).
Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT).

Honors

Member of the `Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen' (1992-).
Series Editor, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag (1994-2004).
Great Golden Medal, Comenius University, Bratislava (1996).
Board member, Schuurman Schimmel-van Outeren Foundation (1998-2010).
Bolzano Honorary Medal, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague (1999).
Vice-president, European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (2002-2006).
Dies speaker, Dies Natalis 2003, Utrecht University (2003), Dies speech.
ISI rating: Highly Cited.
Member of the `Academia Europaea' (2006-), section Informatics (also news).
Board member, Frans-Nederlandse Academie voor Hoger Onderwijs en Onderzoek (Le
Re'seau Franco-Ne'erlandais de l'Enseignement Supe'rieur et de la Recherche) (2006-2009).
Gedenkpenning, Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO Vlaanderen), Brussels (2007).
Dr.h.c. Naturwissenschaften, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany (2008). (Cf. RWTH.)
Distinguished Lorentz Fellowship Prize, Lorentz Center for the Sciences / Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, 2009-2010 (see here).
Order of Orange-Nassau (Officer), Royal honour, April 30, 2009.
Valediction, Utrecht University (2011): speech.

ppt

Editorships and related duties

consulting editor , International Computer Science Series, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company (Europe), 1981-1991.
advisor, European Publishing Program in Computer Science, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company (Amsterdam), 1985-1991.
member editorial board, SIAM Journal on Computing, 1982-1985.
member editorial board, Information and Control, 1982-1987.
member editorial board, Theoretical Computer Science(TCS), 1990-1995.
series editor, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 1994-2004.
chairman editorial council (`redactieraad'), Utrecht University Newspaper (`Ublad'), Utrecht University, 2000-2004.
member advisory panel, book series Theory and Applications of Computability, CiE and Springer-Verlag, 2009-.

Cultural aspects of computer science

Computer science literature (culture)
Research milestones of MIT's Lab for Computer Science (1945 - 1998).
As we may think (Vannevar Bush, 1945), Science - The endless frontier (Vannevar Bush, 1945).
You and your research (Richard Hamming, 1986).
Science matters (Blair, 2002).
BT's technology timeline till 2030 and beyond (version 2002).
History of computer science (Wikipedia).

Recent image

For other recent pictures: see further images.

(Utrecht, 2010)

(from SOFSEM 2007, by Maria Bielikova).

(from EIT Symposium, Tilburg, 2007)

(from SOFSEM 2009, Spindleruv Mlyn)

Disclaimer

We hereby explicitly distance ourselves from the contents of any website this website, or any other website maintained by us, links to outside of our own realm and declare that we do not adopt those contents as our own nor accept any responsibility for them.