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Informatics Institute
Annual Report 2004
FACULTY OF SCIENCE
UN I V E R S I T E I T VA N AM S T E R D A M

Informatics Institute
Annual Report 2004
FACULTY OF SCIENCE
UN I V E R S I T E I T VA N AM S T E R D A M

Contents
Informatics Institute 4
Annual Report 2004
Informatics Institute
04 Contents
05 Chapter 1 Introduction
07 Chapter 2 Fundamental Research
42 Chapter 3 Applied Research and Education
45 Chapter 4 Facts and Figures
47 Appendix 1 Publications
74 Appendix 2 Cooperations and Supporting Institutions
77 Appendix 3 Other Contributions
86 Appendix 4 Contact Information

Chapter 1
Introduction
Introduction
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1 Introduction
The research in the Informatics Institute focuses on interactive complex
information systems, processing large amounts of data in a distributed setting.
This research goal is reflected in the three laboratories of the institute: the
Computing, System Architecture, and Programming Laboratory (CSP), with a
focus on Complex systems, Chair prof. Peter Sloot, the Intelligent Systems
Laboratory Amsterdam (ISLA), with a focus on complex data- and information
structures, Chair prof. Arnold Smeulders, and the Human Computer Studies
(HCS) laboratory, with a focus on interaction in complex systems, Chair prof.
Bob Wielinga.
In 2004 the Human Computer Studies laboratory (HCS) was founded as a
merger of the Social Scientific Informatics group joining us, from the Faculty of
Social and Behavioral Sciences, with the information management and the
machine learning groups of our institute.
The year 2004 was a very good year for the Institute. The result of year-long
investments materialized. The results of the national quality assessment of
computer science made clear that the institute is in good shape. The overall
scores of our institute were very good indeed. The ISIS group of prof. Arnold
Smeulders in ISLA was awarded the highest rank of all groups in the
Netherlands. Other groups of the institute were among the best as well.
The year 2004 was also the year in which two bsik-projects initiated from the
UvA have been awarded. They are VL-e and MultimediaN, of which you will
read more in the report. In addition, the institute participates in a third bsikproject,
ICIS. And, in 2004, two new chairs were appointed in our institute;
Prof Chris Jesshope, the future successor of prof. Bob Hertzberger, on the chair
of system architecture engineering in the CSP-laboratory, and prof. Maarten de
Rijke on the new chair, in ISLA, of Information Processing and Internet.The
first ever VENI-award was awarded to dr. J-M. Geusebroek, ISLA, on the
theme of cognitive vision.
The members of the Institute deliver the majority of courses in the curriculums
of Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Information Systems. The new
Bachelor-Masters structure has required a major effort, by the members of the
institute, in restructuring many of the individual classes, a task they dealt with
aptly.

The institute currently holds 8 full professorships, 7 part-time professorships
and 9 associate professorships. In the institute there were 20 assistant
professors, 37 postdocs, 48 PhD-students, 22 software developers and 1 lecturer.
Many PhD-students and postdocs were funded by the national science
foundation, the royal academy, public-private funding, and industry. Overall,
external funding covers some 50% of our total research.
In 2004, we enjoyed 7 PhD-graduations on diverse topics ranging from An
agent based architecture for constructing Interactive Simulation Systems and
Style characterization of machine printed texts.
The staff members of the institute have generated 61 journal publications and
201 publications in refereed conference proceedings, a total of 262 publications.
The institute has made an effort to popularize computer science by displaying
the fun and results of the institute in television and radio programs such as
covering the topic of road traffic simulation in Vara program "Nieuwslicht" by
prof. Peter Sloot.
The Institute participates in three national research schools: ASCI, the research
school on Architecture and Image Systems (CSP and ISLA), IPA the research
school for Programming and Algorithms (CSP) and SIKS the research school
on Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Based Systems (HCS and ISLA).
All in all 2004 was a good year for the institute with many promising
developments for the future.
Prof.dr.ir. Frans C.A. Groen, Director
Introduction
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Chapter 2
Fundamental Research
Fundamental Research
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Annual Report 2004
The Laboratory for Computing, System Architecture and
Programming
The Computing, System architecture, and Programming Laboratory
(CSP-Lab), integrates three core computer science research questions: How to
build complex computer systems, how to program them and how to process
information on them. The laboratory consists of the groups on Parallel Systems
Architecture, Programming Methods and Environments and Computational
Informatics.
The Parallel Systems Architecture program involves the design and evaluation
of parallel hardware and software architectures as integrated systems with
emphasis on experiments. The project includes applications of distributed
architectures.
The Programming Methods and Programming Environments program focuses
on the one hand on generating programming environments given a formal
language definition, in particular the construction of generic user-interfaces and
the development of generic methods for the textual and graphical representation
of structured objects. On the other hand the program focuses on development
of a process theory and tools that can be used to specify and verify concurrent
communicating or programmed systems.
The program Computational Informatics focuses on how global macroscopic
processes emerge from local microscopic rules and interactions and is inspired
by the paradigm of complex systems. Through modelling and simulation they
seek to discover the way information is being processed in such systems. High
dimensional cellular automata are studied as a representation of the
computation. The applicability of this approach is validated through the
development of high performance problem solving environments for
asynchronous natural processes.

1 Computational Informatics
General information
Contact person : Prof Dr P.M.A. Sloot
Telephone : +31 - 20 - 525 7462
URL : http://www.science.uva.nl/research/scs/
Fax : +31 - 20 - 525 7419
E-mail : sloot@science.uva.nl
Position within the Organisation
"Computational Informatics" is one of the three research groups of the
Computing, System Architecture and Programming Laboratory of the
Informatics Institute of the Faculty of Science.
The Computational Informatics group closely collaborates with other groups
within the University, especially in Mathematics and the Natural Sciences, and
is an important player in the Amsterdam Centre for Computational Science
(ACCS). (See http://www.science.uva.nl/research/accs/) The Section
Computational Science Participates in the Dutch graduate research school
`ASCI'.
Characterization
Nature has a very efficient way to process information. Most natural processes
are inherently parallel. We seek to discover, describe and use the way
information is being processed in natural systems. We adopt the notion of
complex systems to study how (global) macroscopic processes emerge from
(local) microscopic rules and interactions. High dimensional cellular automata
are used as a representation of these computational processes. The applicability
of this approach is validated through realistic, high performance simulations of
natural processes.
Key Words
Problem Solving Environments and Metacomputing; Distributed and Grid
Computing; Interactive Algorithms; Modelling and Simulation of Complex
Systems; Parallel Discrete Event Simulation, Self-organized criticality.
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NOAG-I -Themes Modelling, Simulation and Visualization; Parallel and
Distributed Computing.
Main themes
Our research on how global macroscopic processes emerge from local
microscopic rules and interactions is inspired by the paradigm of complex
systems. Through modeling and simulation we seek to discover the way
information is being processed in such systems. High dimensional cellular
automata are used as a representation of the computation. The applicability of
this approach is validated through the development of high performance
problem solving environments for asynchronous natural processes.
Modelling and Simulation
Nature is inherently asynchronous: Hubermann, PNAS, 1997
Modelling and simulation requires mapping of (natural) phenomena onto a
model, mapping the model onto a parallel solver, and finally mapping the
parallel solver to the computing resource. We do not follow the conventional
partial differential equations approach in modelling, rather we try to model by
directly mapping natural phenomena on (intrinsically parallel) solvers. For this
we adopt the concept of Cellular Automata (CA). CA are spatio-temporal
discrete, decentralized, finite state systems consisting of a large number of
simple identical components with local connectivity. The research focuses on
the information processing in asynchronous CA's and their execution
behaviour on distributed systems.
Problem Solving Environments and Visualization
Progress in natural science comes from taking things apart, progress in
computer science comes from bringing things together: W.D. Hillis, MIT, 1982.
We strongly believe in experimental validation of theoretical work. We
investigate the mapping of Cellular Automata (CA) to parallel, distributed and
hybrid architectures. Both architectural design and parallelisation of CAmodels
for these designs guide our research. The usability, efficiency, stability,
and the correctness of our models are tested through their use in interactive
Problem Solving environments. We adopt the common software-component
architecture approach to obtain inter operable, modular PSE's that integrate

modelling, simulation, interaction and visualization on Grid-like distributed
compute systems.
2004 Results
Introduction
Within each of the two main themes in our research, a number of projects are
being pursued. Sometimes these projects intersect both themes. We will start
this section with the one thesis defended in 2004, by Z. Zhao, and then move on
to a thematic report on the projects that were active in 2004. 2004 also saw the
publication of the assessment of the Computer Science research institutes in the
Netherlands, performed by a team of scientists of international renown on
behalf of the Quality Assurance Netherlands Universities (QANU). In this
report our research received the qualification "very good" on all scores.
Theses
After the four theses defended in 2003, 2004 saw only a single thesis defence, by
Z. Zhao. In his thesis "An agent based architecture for constructing Interactive
Simulation Systems" he describes an architecture for ISS that separates the control
of the integrated from low-level communication infrastructure. In this manner
existing components can be flexibly reused, without repeated reprogramming
or restructuring of the basic software. The system can be seen as a system
supporting a flexibly reconfigurable workflow between the constituent components.
Modelling and Simulation
AMCG
People involved J.A. Kaandorp, J. Cui.
The bioinformatics group of Amsterdam Genomics Center (AmGC) is a
collaboration between researchers from SILS-UVA, IvI-UvA and Academic
Medical Center Amsterdam working on bioinformatics. The bioinformatics
group is coordinated by Antoine H.C. van Kampen (Academic Medical Center
Amsterdam) and Jaap Kaandorp (Section Computational Science, UvA). One of
the major current research themes within the AmGC is the analysis and modelling
of biological networks. The bioinformatics of biological networks involves
a broad range of research and approaches. This research includes topics like
identification of common regulatory elements for genes in a pathway, the
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Annual Report 2004
modelling and simulation of pathways, the reconstruction of pathways from
experimental data, the visualization of pathways, and the representation of
pathways in graphs and databases. To accelerate our understanding of the
(dynamics of) biological networks, it is imperative that these efforts are
combined. Subsequently they have to be applied to real biological problems.
Recently three projects related to modelling and simulation of biological
networks have been started up within the Section Computational Science
(Mesoscale simulation paradigms for biological systems, Simulation of
developmental regulatory networks, Mathematics and Computation for the
System Biology of Cells). In March 2004 the bioinformatics group organised
an international symposium on networks in bioinformatics.
Mesoscale simulation paradigms for biological systems
People involved J.A. Kaandorp, J. Cui.
Project funded by the Applied Mathematics programme of the Dutch Science
foundation, duration 2003 - 2007, total value Eur 329000
In this proposed project we want to develop and compare computational
models of parts of the living cell that can calculate in detail system properties
from experimentally obtained molecular and physical-chemical data. Such a
model is as close as possible to the biological experiments and therefore can be
used not only for understanding the principles of function but also to steer
further biologicalexperiments.
Simulation of developmental regulatory networks
People involved J.A. Kaandorp, Y. Fomekong Nanfack, B. Leskes
Funded by Computational Life Sciences programme of the Dutch Science foundation,
duration 2003 - 2007, total value Eur 328000
In this project we will develop a model for simulating regulatory networks that
are capable of quantitatively reproducing spatial and temporal expression patterns
in developmental processes. The model is a generalization of the standard
connectionist model used for modelling genetic interactions. The model will be
coupled with a biomechanical model of cell aggregates and used to study the
formation of spatial and temporal expression patterns of gene products during
development in cellular systems (sponges and scleractinian corals).
Mathematics and Computation for the System Biology of Cells (Cell.Math.)
People involved J.A. Kaandorp, J. Vidal Rodriguez
Project funded by Computational Life Sciences programme of the Dutch
Science foundation, duration 2003 - 2007, total value Eur 487000
The aim of the project is to develop, implement, and validate mathematical and

computational techniques for the systems biology of the cell. Biologists and
mathematicians together will formulate realistic mathematical models of
metabolic and regulatory networks including intrinsic spatial non-homogeneity.
Depending on the cellular phenomenon considered, models and methods of
appropriate temporal and spatial scales will be developed and can then be
applied: models in the form of ordinary differential equations and methods for
system reduction; multi-adaptive computational methods for partial differential
equations (PDEs) for moderate spatial and temporal variability within a cell or
an organelle; particle models describing the interaction of individual molecules
and computational methods for the evaluation of the dynamic behavior; and
methods for integration of these different approaches into a single simulation.
Modelling and Ananlysis of Growth and Form of Sponges and Scleratinian Corals
People: J.A. Kaandorp, R.M.H Merks
In the bio-informatics field our research in the area of marine biology also
continues. Understanding external deciding factors in growth and morphology
of reef corals is essential to elucidate the role of corals in marine ecosystems, and
to explain their susceptibility to pollution and global climate change. A model
has been developed for simulating the growth and form of a branching coral and
simulated morphologies have been compared to three-dimensional images of the
coral species Madracis mirabilis. With this model it is possible to generate
morphologies that are virtually indistinguishable from the three-dimensional images
of the actual colonies. Such models can be used to test hypotheses on mass transfer
t h rough boundary layers and the impact of the physical environment on coral gro w t h .
BMI
People: P.M.A. Sloot
In the BMI project, we work on the modelling of HIV infections and drug
therapy of HIV-infected patients in collaboration with C. Boucher of the
University of Utrecht and A.V. Boukhanovsky and A.B. Degtyarev of the IHP-
CIS in St. Petersburg. In 2003 significant results describing the Stochastic
Modeling of Temporal Variability of HIV-1 Population were published.
Nato SfP
People: A.G. Hoekstra, M Yurkin, K. Gilev, K. Semianov
In the context of the Science for Peace program of Nato we collaborate with
institutes in Minsk (Belarus) and Novosibirsk (Russian Federation) on new
sensitive methods for cytological analysis of heamatological samples. We
concentrate on the computational science aspects and HPC simulations in the
field of computational electromagnetics of the project.
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LBM
A.G. Hoekstra, L. Abrahamyan
The work on mesoscopic modeling and simulation concentrated on adapting
the LBM method, and specifically the L-BGK method, for unsteady flow, and
to apply this to modeling flow of blood during a full heart beat in the lower
abdominal aorta. We also initiated research to adapting the models to take
advantage of state of the art (parallel) numerical algorithms (such as multi grids).
Moreover we studied fluid-structure interaction in LBM, and have
demonstrated that for 2D time-harmonic flow coupled to a simple elastic wall a
theoretical expression for a dispersion relation is recovered, thus demonstrating
the correctness of our model.
PECVD
Involved: V.K. Krzhizhanorskaya, P.M.A. Sloot
In this project a grid-based PSE to study the plasma enhanced chemical vapour
deposition of thin films is being developed. Internally funded project in close
collaboration with the IHPCIS in St. Petersburg. The research was conducted
with financial support from the Dutch National Science Foundation NWO and
the Russian Foundation for Basic Research under grants number 047.016.007
and 047.016.018, and with partial support from the CrossGrid EU project IST-
2001-32243.
Cluster of Grapes
People involved: S. Portegies Zwart, A. Gualandris, M.S. Sipior, E. Gaburov, B.
Bastijns, P.M.A. Sloot, G.D. van Albada + collaboration with the Pannekoek
Astronomical Institute
One of the other research areas in which the SCS group is active, is
computational astronomy. "A Cluster of Grapes", a joint NWO proposal with
the astronomical institute "Anton Pannekoek" to NWO was honoured in 2001.
The research covers a wide range of subjects on the boundary of Astronomy
and Computational Science. As an example, Gualandris, Tirado-Ramos and
Portegies Zwart studied the performance of a parallel astrophysical N-body
solver on pan-European computational grids. It was demonstrated that esp
ecially for large problems grids constitute a suitable computational
environment. Sipior is working to merge the "Kira integrator" with the
GADGET tree code developed at MPI Garching. The end result will allow us
to make use of the unique advantages of each numerical approach – the high
precision of Kira for studying the dynamics of a large stellar cluster, and the
computational speed of a tree code, used to simulate the galaxy in which the
cluster is embedded. The first stage of this effort is now completed and undergoing
testing.

Problem Solving Environments and Visualization
CrossGrid
People: A.G. Hoekstra, E.V. Zudilova, A. Tirado Ramos, R. Shulakov, D.
Shamonin, P.M.A. Sloot, G.D. van Albada, M. Scarpa
In the CrossGrid project, we participate in a large European collaboration of 21
partners in the development of interactive applications in a Grid environment.
These environments are characterized by the participation of multiple, geographically
distributed organizations, sharing computational resources and data.
This gives an improved access to these resources and data, at a cost in network
and scheduling delays. In CrossGrid, we provide an application aiming to support
vascular surgeons in pre-operative planning. 2004 was a consolidation of a
consortium-wide integration of grid support tools and applications. The result
is a fully integrated virtual vascular surgery on the grid, which will be demonstrated
live during the European Grid Conference 2005 in Amsterdam.
Fig.1 CrossGrid
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Token2000
People: A.G. Hoekstra, P.M.A. Sloot, E.V. Zudilova, M. Scarpa, L. Abrahamyan
Token2000 is a nationally funded project (NWO), where we collaborate closely
with the Universities of Leiden and Twente on the development of an
interactive medical application, somewhat similar to the work in CrossGrid.
This application is intended for training of surgeons. In collaboration with
Leiden University Medical Centre we have created Hemosolve, a problem
solving environment for image based computational Heamodynamics.
Hemosolve includes our L-BGK solver, but also a FEM Navier-Stokes solver.
Moreover, it contains a 3D editing tool and powerfull visualization modules.
ViSE-VL
People: J.A. Kaandorp, R.G. Belleman, P.M.A. Sloot
In the ViSE-VL project we have developed a Visualisation and Simulation
Environment, specifically aimed at medical applications. The results of the
ViSE project are being used in the CrossGrid and Token2000 projects.
ViSE-VL was funded through the ICES/KIS 2 Min EZ project
High Performance Simulation on the GRID
Dutch-Russian project: NWO-RFBS-047.016.007
People: P.M.A. Sloot, A.V. Bogdanov.
In this project we study the use of Grid systems for High Performance
Simulations. The project is a collaboration between Amsterdam, St. Petersburg,
Moscow and Novosibirsk.
Dynamite
People: K.A. Iskra, T. Gubala, B. Ó Nualláin, D.A. Kaarsemaker, G.D. van
Albada, P.M.A. Sloot.
The Dynamite project (now internally funded) is the continuation of work on
the dynamic scheduling and migration of tasks in parallel programs started in
the ESPRIT project Dynamite. In 2004 work continued on the single task
checkpointer (ironing out some smaller remaining defects) and on developing
support for MPI and grid environments.
PDES
Involvement: K.A. Iskra, G.D. van Albada, P.M.A. Sloot.
This research on parallel discrete event simulation is a continuation of the work
by Overeinder on the behaviour of optimistic PDES, extended to grid-like
environments. In 2004 further important results regarding the behaviour of
PDES in a wide-area distributed environment were obtained. Important

strategies like dedicated routers, message aggregation and lazy cancellation were
studied and diff e rent methods of "global virtual time" evaluations were evaluated.
2005 and beyond
The long-standing problem of information processing in evolving Cellular
Automata will be further investigated, using elements from Information Theory
and Complexity theory. Our approach will be based on the notion of "local
entropy" as formulated in the concept of Fischer-Information. The research will
be supplemented by simulations of specific instances of Cellular Automata and
will form the theoretical embedding of our CA-based modelling and
simulations of biomedical phenomena.
We are currently increasing our emphasis on (Interactive) Problem Solving
Environments in distributed systems like the GRID. Based upon our previous
experience using HLA and the Dynamite system, our focus will be on
middleware, remote access and data integration, using the currently emerging
Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) and component technology for
scientific computing (the Common Component Architecture - CCA).
Participate in the CrossGrid project, a large consortium of 22 laboratories from
all over Europe, with the goal to develop a software architecture for a Grid
based interactive problem solving environment, applied to a number of
challenging CA-based applications from Biology, Medicine and flood-crisis
management. The SCS group has the final responsibility for issues related to
scientific computing on the grid and the applications within the Crossgrid
project. We also strongly participate in the European HealthGrid initiative.
As to the applications, we will further strengthen our attention in the
Biomedical field. The main topics will be interactive simulation and
visualization on the grid. A prototypical application will be vascular
reconstruction. This application is part of the CrossGrid project and of the
NWO- TOKEN2000 project, and is carried out in collaboration with the
Leiden University Medical Centre (for the medical datasets) and the University
of Twente (with cognitive psychologists, working on man-machine interaction
and learning in VR). Another domain is hierarchical modelling and data
integration through CA's. For example, in collaboration with the University of
Utrecht Medical Center and the AMC (Amsterdam) we work in the field of
HIV infection modelling using CA, and a rule-based medical expert system for
HIV medication. As reported, three new NWO-funded projects in the area of
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Computational Life sciences have been obtained in 2003; these will play an
important role in shaping our research in the coming years.
We have intensified our international collaborations. Within the framework of a
formal agreement between the Universiteit van Amsterdam and the Saint
Petersburg State University, Russian Federation, a joint laboratory for
computational science was established in Saint Petersburg. This lab works on
problem solving environments and applications. We formally collaborate with
CYFRONET, Cracow, Poland, through joint Ph.D. students in the field of
monitoring and scheduling for scientific computing on the Grid. In the
framework of a recently started NATO Science for Peace program we
collaborate with institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of
Science in the field of biomedical diagnostic systems. Finally, strong research
cooperation is established with a number of USA based universities (Stanford
University, Mississippi State University).
Relation to other programmes
We collaborate with the Parallel Systems Architecture and Programming
Methods and Environments groups in the Computing, System architecture,
and Programming Laboratory (CSP-Lab).
Through the Virtual Lab project we strongly collaborate with the Parallel
Systems Architecture group. The theoretical work on evolving CA is done in
collaboration with the Algorithms and Complexity Theory group of the ILLC.

2. Advanced Computing Systems Engineering
General Information
Contact person : Prof Dr L.O. Hertzberger
Telephone : +31 - 20 - 525 7464
URL : http://www.science.uva.nl/research/arch/
Fax : +31 - 20 - 525 7419
E-mail : bob@science.uva.nl
Position within the Organisation
The Advanced Computing Systems Engineering programme is carried out by
the Computer Architecture and Parallel Systems (CAPS) group, one of the
three research groups of the Computing, System Architecture and
Programming Laboratory at the Informatics Institute of the Faculty of Science.
The CAPS group participates in the Dutch Graduate School `ASCI'.
Characterization
Computer architecture is driven by the interaction between technology-push
from the development of sub-micron technology and demand-pull for efficient
and portable implementations of applications. Research in this field is relatively
broad as it expands from single processor systems to complex parallel and
heterogeneous computer systems. More specifically, computer architecture
research may vary from the study of large-scale distributed systems such as
applied for traffic control towards the study of embedded systems-on-chip, as
being used in modern digital multimedia consumer electronics. The research
field further expands when the consequences and requirements set by the
applications on the underlying software and hardware systems are also taken
into consideration. For instance, modern multimedia networking applications
may tolerate lossy communication when dealing with audio and video
streaming, whereas modern database applications require lossless and often
redundant communication. These databases themselves form the basis for many
new application areas such as virtual enterprises and virtual laboratories, of
which we can observe an impact on the system architecture. In other situations,
computer systems are embedded in a larger environment that will put their own
specific (real-time) demands on the overall computer system.
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Keywords
Parallel, distributed and grid-based system architectures, computer systems
modeling and simulation, (federated) database architecture, cooperative and
inter-operable systems, optical networking, AAA architecture.
NOAG-I-Theme: Parallel and Distributed Computing
Main themes
The leading objective of the Advanced Computing Systems Engineering
programme is to let its research be driven by problems that are of relevance to
society. The methodology applied is to find relevant problems that can be
translated into interesting research questions that are challenging to be solved.
As the relevant real-world applications will mainly be found in industry and the
governmental agencies, collaboration with these actors is essential. In our
research we restrict ourselves to methods and tools for complex, typically
parallel/distributed, computing systems design and realization. This research
activity comprises two major tracks:
Methods and tools for (embedded) computing systems design
Advanced information management system support
The research on computing systems design (track 1) concentrates on modeling
and simulation of complex computer based systems with the aim to predict
performance. From two decades of modeling and simulation experience, we
learned that the generalization of the models and the choice of abstraction levels
is very dependent of the design questions posed, as well as of the system under
study. We are currently applying this knowledge to the problem of embedded
systems design. Modern embedded systems, like those for media processing,
often have a heterogeneous system architecture with components in the range
from fully programmable to dedicated hardware. These components are
integrated as a system-on-chip that exploits task-level parallelism. The design
complexity of such embedded systems makes it essential
to have good tools available for exploring different design choices at an early
design stage. Our research, which is performed in close collaboration with
Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven and other Dutch universities, aims
at developing modeling and simulation methods for the efficient design space
exploration of heterogeneous embedded media systems. Key to this work is the
definition of the abstraction levels at which these systems can be efficiently
modeled.

Another field of embedded system design we are studying is that of road
transport telematics applications, like electronic fee collection. Contrary to the
previous case where the emphasis is on modeling the architecture and
application(s) separately, here the emphasis has been on modeling the computer
system and application, including the sensory system, as a whole. In the
computing systems design track, we also perform research on advanced Internet
topics. The main emphasis of this work is to get the best Internet Quality of
Service (QoS) for different applications and to design policy and security
architectures for GRID applications and Middleware.
The information management research (track 2) focuses on the design and the
prototypical development of database systems to support the classification and
manipulation of the information handled within advanced and complex
data-intensive applications. Considering the wide variety of both the
information handling characteristics and the environment heterogeneity
required by such complex applications, multi-faceted methodologies and
mechanisms are to be considered in this research. Two main areas of research
and development are considered. The first area is focused on the design and
development of fundamental infrastructures and mechanisms to support the
advanced and complex data-intensive application domains. The second area is
focused on certain specific system engineering applications, and the design and
development of tailored frameworks and tools to support their needs. The
Virtual Laboratory (VL) framework (discussed later on) is an important
initiative that integrates the research in both areas.
Organizational changes
During 2004, Dr. H. Afsarmanesh left CAPS to join the Human-Computer
Studies Lab. Also in 2004, Prof. C. Jesshope joined the UvA to form a new
group, called Computer Systems Architecture (CSA). The CSA group currently
still operates under the umbrella of CAPS. With the appointment of Prof. C.
Jesshope, Dr. A.D. Pimentel moved to the CSA group.
Track 1: Methods and tools for (embedded) computing systems design
Architectures and meThods for Embedded MedIa Systems (Artemis)
In the Artemis project, an architecture modeling and simulation workbench is
developed which aims at the efficient design space exploration of heterogeneous
embedded media systems. In 2004, which was the final year of Artemis, we continued
to address the problem of architecture model refinement. More specifically,
we apply a refinement method -- based on Integer-controlled Data-Flow
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(IDF) models -- that allows for runtime
transformation of application-level
events to architecture-level events.
Using case studies, we have shown that
our method allows for refining both
architectural communication behavior
and computational behavior.
In addition, we continued the development
of our prototype modeling & simulation software framework, called
Sesame, to support all developed modeling and simulation technology.
Moreover, we performed several studies on mathematically modeling the
mapping of application models onto architecture models. For this work, we
developed a multi-objective optimization tool to quickly explore different
mappings under multiple criteria. Finally, we developed a layer on top of the
widely-used SystemC simulation language, raising the abstraction level of this
language and allowing easier construction of so-called transaction-level models
(these are the performance models applied in Artemis).
Advanced Internet Research (AIR)
The main emphasis is to map different demanding grid applications to optical /
photonic networks and to design control, policy and security architectures for
Grid applications and Middleware. To that extent competence was gained in
three areas of research: Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA)
architectures and models, Optical networks and high bandwidth data transport
protocols and test environments. In 2004, a key demonstration was given at
SuperComputing 2004 by showing the first working concept of software to
provision dedicated optical paths (lambdas) in real time in a multi-domain
scenario. The demonstrator worked over four domains using NORTEL
software with our AAA toolkit interfaced and showed restoration functionality
in case of a link failure. The next paragraphs describe work in the different
subsections in the AIR group.
Optical networking architectures and models.
Trans-oceanic optical transportation, 10 Gbps Ethernet WAN PHY and
Lambda switching have already geared understanding on how to build an
optical Internet exchange, but this understanding is still not yet fully developed.
We are working on "terminology and modeling of networks". We studied the
ITU G.805 standard (together with related ITU standards) and compared our
terminology with the ITU definitions. The ITU definitions make it possible to
accurately describe a network connection. We try to develop a simpler model,

maybe giving more simplified descriptions of single end to end connections,
which can be more suitable for describing complete networks
IP transport protocols, performances monitoring and measurements .
In this field we have worked on tools to measure performances of network
infrastructure, tools to graphically display that information and we worked on
understanding why performances are as we measure them. We also enabled
existing grid infrastructures to be used as throughput measurement tools. We
performed a large number of throughput tests divided over various topology
setups, and also worked on improving the tools used to test, measure and
estimate the bandwidth. We want to use the grid infrastructure including
distributed computing middleware to build a traffic generator. We have
developed applications running under the Globus Toolkit with MPICH-G2 to
use grid resources to generate known traffic profiles. We are also working on
providing access to network elements via Web Services. This will allow end
users and applications to dynamically monitor and possibly manage the various
network components.
Authorization, Authentication and Accounting.
This part of the research focuses on the development en testing of concepts
around Generic AAA. The AIR group has developed a Generic AAA toolkit on
a testbed build with various network components. This work focused on the
RFC 2903 based Rule Based Engine and its associated language. Furthermore,
we have been working on the next generation Application Specific Modules
(ASMs), and have designed an ASM framework working in Service Oriented
Architecture by making all ASM web-services compliant.
In 2004 we worked on positioning GAAA toolkit within various research
projects.
Prototyping environment.
This activity encompasses all work to build and maintain the research
networking infrastructure and the build of prototypes and demonstrators. In
cooperation with SARA, we have created an advanced networking and grid
integration research laboratory, called the LightHouse.
Track 2: Advanced information management system support
Virtual Laboratory for e-Science (VL-e)
The aim of the ‘Virtual Laboratory for e-Science’ project is to bridge the gap
between the technology push of the high performance networking and the Grid
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and the application pull of a wide range of scientific experimental applications.
It will provide generic functionalities that support a wide class of specific
e-Science application environments and set up an experimental infrastructure
for the evaluation of the ideas.
Earlier work on virtual laboratory technology resulted in VLAM-G, the
Grid-based Virtual Laboratory AMsterdam, which provides a science portal for
distributed analysis in applied scientific research. It offers scientists the
possibility to carry out their experiments in a familiar environment, where content
and data are clearly separated. We have made the outcome of the VLAM-G
project available to the VL-e consortium as an experimental environment on the
DAS2 clusters. This included the migration of the expertise developed in the
context of the VLAM-G project to the Virtual Lab School project. For the
(near) future, we have planned work on dynamic workflow for e-science
applications in Grid based environments, as well as resource management.
VL-e/COLIM (Collaborative Information Management)
VL-e is a multi-disciplinary environment aiming to support a variety of
scientific environments from areas ranging from food informatics to
bioinformatics and biodiversity. Collaborative Information Management
(COLIM) is the subprogram of the VL-e project that addresses the
management of information generated and manipulated by scientific
experiments. COLIM addresses the design and implementation of a generic
collaborative information management system (CIMS), design and development

of necessary assisting tools, and exploration of the Grid technology for
federated query processing. Based on the initial results of requirements analysis,
the high-level COLIM architecture has been designed. Another task being
performed in COLIM is to support specific information management
requirements of some applications, such as biodiversity. In the near future, the
design of the system will be finalized considering the requirements of the
VL-e applications as well as the designs and directions of the other generic
VL-e subprograms. The development activities for the system and the necessary
assisting tools will start. The existing VLAM-G/VIMCO software will be
migrated to the production environment and maintained. A database for
biodiversity domain has been developed, which will be extended/ updated
taking the international developments in the domain into account.
NWO Flexworks – A Framework for Flexible Data Integration to Support
System Biology
The aim of the Flexworks project was to combine data generated using different
biomolecular techniques on a genome-wide scale in a flexible manner for the
Dutch scientific community. Major research aim of UvA – IvI was to provide
information management support in the domain of system biology. The
information management work focused on the definition of common data
models, design and development of collaborative database architectures, design
and development of Grid and Virtual Laboratory-based infrastructures for
properly supporting the data manipulation requirements of the targeted
bio-molecular experimentation environments. In 2004, the project has ended
and a final report for the project has been generated. The achieved results
include information modeling and management for DNA sequence analysis and
for microarray gene expression analysis.
EC 5FP ENBI – European Network for Biodiversity Information
The main objective of UvA-IvI in ENBI is the analysis and design of a
co-operative federated information management system inter-linking and
integrating the varied biodiversity databases as well as investigating a number of
other technologies and paradigms, namely Virtual Organizations, the Grid
technology, and Collaborative Information Management System (CIMS), to
address the information management challenges in ENBI. In 2004, UvA-IvI
explored the potential of using these technologies and paradigms in the
biodiversity domain and presented the results in three different deliverables.
In the near future, a design of the federated architecture for the Collaborative
Information Management System will be developed, which will be provided in
two deliverables: Draft and final design report of the federated architecture.
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3. Programming Research
General Information
Contact person : Prof Dr J.A. Bergstra
Telephone : +31 - 20 - 525 7462
URL : http://www.science.uva.nl/research/prog/
Fax : +31 - 20 - 525 7419
E-mail : janb@science.uva.nl
Position within the Organisation
The Programming Methods and Programming Environments programme is
carried out by the Programming Research Group (PRG) at the Informatics
Institute of the Faculty of Science. This group is one of the three research
groups of the Computing, System Architecture and Programming (CSP)
Laboratory at the Informatics Institute of the Faculty of Science.
The PRG participates in the Dutch Graduate School `IPA'.
Characterization
Research in the Programming Research Group takes shape in two projects:
Programming Methods and Programming Environments.
In the first project, the design and systematic use of algebraic methods in
specification languages, modeling of processes and program transformations are
point of departure. This project primarily aims at the transfer of results to the
scientific literature and to the educational stream.
The Programming Environments project concentrates on the generation of
programming environments from a formal language definition, in particular
generic user-interfaces and implementation and integration of distributed,
interactive systems. This project has produced several systems that are being
distributed to others.
Keywords
Algebraic Specification, Generic Language Technology, Term Rewriting,
Interoperability of Software Components, Semantics of Programming
Languages, System Renovation.
NOAG-I-Themes: Software Engineering (SE), Algorithms and Formal
Methods (AFM).

Main themes
The work in the Programming Methods and Environments programme during
2004 comprises two major projects:
Programming Methods
General subject is the design and systematic use of algebraic methods in
specification languages, modeling of processes, and program transformations.
This includes the design and development of tools to support research and
education in this field. This project is supervised by Bergstra.
In the Programming Methods project, process algebra is used to specify and
analyze the semantics of programs and programmed systems. With process
algebra, one fully abstracts from the textual, syntactic appearance of programs,
and reasons in terms of behavior. Process algebra exists within the paradigm of
semantics as homomorphism on syntax (compositional semantics): behavior can
be expressed in process expressions and is subject to forms of algebraic
reasoning. In program algebra - contrary to process algebra - one considers
aspects of the form of programs that are not preserved after abstraction to
behavior. Examples of such aspects are software metrics or programs with jump
instructions (go to's); here the semantics is no longer a homomorphic image of
the syntax. Program algebra is meaningful in the study of program
transformations that occur, for instance, in compilers. Module algebra is also
part of program algebra; flattening a modularized specification is a manifest
example of a program transformation with non-trivial semantics.
Programming Environments
The general research approach is to bring together established fundamental
notions such as modularization, term rewriting, and program generation with
pragmatic needs such as component-based development and understanding or
transforming legacy systems. Formal language definitions play an important
role in this approach. They describe the syntax and semantics of a domainspecific
or programming language and form the basis for the analysis and
transformation of software in existing languages, for the generation of specific
tools, and for the development of domain-specific languages. The aim is to
realize truly generic language technology that can be applied in many problem
areas. This project is supervised by Klint and mainly carried out at CWI.
From the perspective of the Programming Environments project, both
programming languages and application-oriented languages (e.g., for accessing
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databases or specifying financial products) need interactive tools to support
activities like program development, maintenance, and renovation. In this
project, we generate dedicated interactive environments and tools for these
activities from formal definitions of the desired languages. The tooling for
Programming Environments is based on fundamental notions like algebraic
specification, term rewriting, process algebra, and generalized LR parsing.
The research aims at further development and application of these notions
(e.g., efficient compilation of term rewriting, scannerless parsing) as well as
applications (e.g., renovation factories for software transformations).
2004 Results
Programming Methods
In the field of process algebra, we concentrated on foundational research,
extensions of the theory, and publication in the scientific literature.
Furthermore, our external collaborations in this area of research were
continued. The program algebra project emerged in 1998. This project primarily
aims at the transfer of this work to the scientific literature and to our own
students. A new line of development within this project is thread algebra,
focusing on behavioral semantics and tailored to extensions that precisely
model various forms of multi-threading. Finally, our foundational work in the
theory of algebraic specification and module algebra was continued as well.
We summarize our specific research results:
Process algebra
A model theory for process algebra has been developed. Also a study to
process algebra for hybrid systems was undertaken.
A new characterization of orthogonal bismulation equivalence in terms of
the compression structure of a process was found and will be published in
IPL next year.
A topic of ongoing research in process algebra is the integration of Bellnap’s
four-valued logic and process algebra via conditional composition.
Program algebra
Further development and applications of program algebra, e.g., the definition
of higher, special purpose dialects. Examples are enrichments with notions
for compilers and networks, and client-server interaction. Finally,
appropriate projection functions for these enrichments were defined.
Definition of an intermediate language suitable to interpret Object-Oriented

languages such as Java and C#, and appropriate projection functions.
Design and implementation of the basic instruction sets MSPio and of a
generic compiler for the PGA-Toolset at this moment capable of compiling
to Parrot (the virtual machine for Perl6) and CIL (ditto for .NET).
Maintenance and further development of the PGA-Toolset, for instance a
web-interface for some of the tools was added (see
http://www.science.uva.nl/research/prog/projects/pga).
Algebraic specification and module algebra
In 2004, some work was done in the book project "Foundations of algebraic
specification" (Rodenburg). In the tradition of algebraic specification
many-sorted algebras play an important part, but there are variants, and many
alternative semantics have been proposed (Goguen and Burstall have described
these in general as institutions). A model theory can be developed that embraces
them all. (In particular it also subsumes the theory of categories.) Older ideas
about reduction relations in algebras, a generalisation of term rewriting, will
find their place here. Furthermore, work is in progress on a final version of
Module algebra for initial algebra semantics (PRG-report P9407) based on an
improved understanding of the notion of export. Finally, a talk on this subject
was contributed to the ASL Logic Colloquium 2004 (Turin, Italy).
Programming Environments
The basic technological framework for our research is the Asf+Sdf Meta-
Environment: both an interactive development environment for Asf+Sdf
specifications and a generator for programming environments. The formalism
Asf+Sdf is based on algebraic specifications and context-free grammars and is
used to specify syntactic and semantic aspects of programming and application
languages. Implementation techniques for the Meta-Environment include term
rewriting, scannerless generalized LR parsing (SGLR) and coordination of
software components. The main scientific results can be summarized as follows:
Component-based software engineering. Interconnection techniques for
software components and coordination languages were developed. The main
result is the ToolBus coordination architecture that uses a scripting language
based on Process Algebra for describing (and executing) the cooperation
between heterogeneous software components.
ATerms. One of the abstractions used in the ToolBus architecture is that the
exchange of data between components is described by simple prefix terms that
can carry annotations for specific purposes. This idea has been perfected in
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ATerms: a very efficient library for the exchange of term-structured data. Main
features are maximal subterm sharing, automatic garbage collection and binary
term encoding.
Efficient implementation of Asf+Sdf. Using ATerms (and hence maximal
subterm sharing) during term rewriting has two major implications: testing for
term equality becomes a cheap, constant-time, operation that only uses pointer
equality and the size of terms that can be manipulated increases orders of
magnitude. Combining these two ideas with several optimization techniques we
can compile specifications to highly efficient C code. The resulting code is very
fast and can handle huge terms (more than 10^6 nodes).
Scannerless, generalized, LR parsing (SGLR). Generalized LR parsing (GLR)
has always been used in the Meta-Environment. The primary reason is that
GLR can be used to parse arbitrary context-free grammars. Since context-free
grammars are closed under composition, they can be used for parsing modular
grammars. This is a major advantage when dealing with large grammars for real
languages (e.g., Cobol). SGLR takes this approach a step further by integrating
lexical analysis and syntax analysis. As a result, the disambiguation mechanisms
that are already present in GLR can also be applied at the lexical level.
In 2004, Klint continued experiments in using relational calculus for
manipulating facts extracted from source code. The resulting scripting
language Rscript has already been used for manipulating facts derived from Java
and Cobol programs as well as for managing facts extracted from our daily
build process.
This project has produced several systems that are being distributed to others:
1. The Asf+Sdf Meta-Environment: an interactive development environment
for formal specifications that also acts as a generator for programming
environments. In use at, for instance, universities in Aarhus, Amsterdam (UvA
and Free University), La Coruna, Eindhoven, Glasgow, Groningen, Iowa,
Leiden, Milano, Munich, Nijmegen, Rostock, Utrecht, York, and at Cap
Gemini Ernst & Young (Utrecht), CWI (Amsterdam), Compuware
(Amsterdam), First ResultConsultants (Amsterdam), IBM Thomas Watson
Research Center (New York), INRIA (Nancy), Fortis (Amsterdam), ING
(Amsterdam), Postbank (Amsterdam), and Software Improvement Group
(Amsterdam). Applications of this system have been developed for (and in
cooperation with), for instance, ABN AMRO, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young,

Dutch Navy, Dutch PTT, GCEI, Fortis, IBM, Nederland-Haarlem, and Dutch
Railways (NS). For more information see
http://www.cwi.nl/~projects/MetaEnv.html.
2. The ToolBus coordination architecture: a system for the interconnection of
heterogeneous, distributed systems. The ToolBus is in use at all sites where the
Asf+Sdf Meta-Environment is being used. For more information see
http://www.cwi.nl/htbin/sen1/twiki/bin/view/SEN1/ToolBus
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The Intelligent Systems Laboratory Amsterdam
The Intelligent Systems Lab Amsterdam (ISLA) now proudly presents three
research groups. They are the Intelligent Sensory Information Systems group
(ISIS), the Intelligent Autonomous Systems group (IAS), and the Information
and Language Processing Systems group (ILPS). The three groups share an
interest in processing pictorial, auditory and/or textual information, the content
of such information as well as the consequences for actions and knowledge. The
topics are covered from theory to practice, from basic principles to
implementations of applications.
The prime scientific target of ISIS is to create access to the content of digital
images. The aim is to bridge the semantic gap between pictorial data and the
interpretation of the data by invariant vision and learning from (very) large
image databases. Video, color and tracking are important topics as well as
parallel image processing. Applications are, among others, in structured and
unstructured video, color image analysis, content-based image retrieval, and
picture search engines.
The IAS-Group studies methodologies to create intelligent autonomous
systems, which perceive their environment through sensors. The information is
used to act and generate intelligent, goal-directed behavior. This work includes
formalization, generalization and learning in autonomous systems.
Collaborating multi-agent systems create groups of autonomously operating
systems working together to realize a task. In the group the theory of geometric
algebra is also studied in depth as a means to formalize the addressing of space
in a computer.
Research within the ILPS group is aimed at developing and studying the
computational, statistical, and linguistic underpinnings of effective ways of
providing intelligent information access, especially to massive amounts of
information. Their leading methodology is to identify real-world scenarios that
give rise to interesting research challenges. ILPS takes part in, and organizes, a
number of world-wide evaluations in information retrieval and language
processing. This allows ILPS to subject its software infrastructure to qualitative
assessments.

1. Intelligent Sensory Information Systems
General information
Contact person : Prof Dr ir A.W. M. Smeulders
Telephone : +31 - 20 - 525 7460
URL : http://www.science.uva.nl/research/isis
Fax : +31 - 20 - 525 7490
E-mail : smeulders@science.uva.nl
Position within the Organisation
This program is carried out within the group Intelligent Sensory Information
Systems at the Informatics Institute of the Faculty of Science. The Intelligent
Sensory Information System Group participates in the Dutch Graduate School
'ASCI'.
Characterisation
The prime scientific target is to create access to the content of digital images and
to learn from multimedia data repositories in general. New topics of research
are picture-language combined information, tracking objects in video, learning
object recognizers and image space delivery. We aim to bridge the semantic gap
between pictorial data and the interpretation of the data. We do so from the
image data driven interpretation by computer vision, as well as driven from
knowledge about the image, designing algorithms of image analysis,
experimenting on visual data, and learning from (very) large image data
repositories. The research ranges from the theory of computer vision to
innovative applications in multimedia. Implementations are in digital document
structure analysis, video analysis, color image analysis and picture search
engines. Application areas currently are in industrial vision, multimedia
document analysis, biological image processing.
Key Words
Computer vision, image processing, multimedia information analysis, pattern
recognition, multimedia databases, e-documents, image/video retrieval,
performance evaluation of vision, mathematical morphology, color vision,
shape, content-based image retrieval, query optimization, parallel processing,
extensible databases.
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Main themes
Content-based access of multi-media data
The goal of multimedia information access is to provide efficient content-based
methods for indexing and retrieving multimodal information (images, video,
sound, music). The success of a content-based multimedia retrieval engine
depends on the generality, expressiveness and robustness of the multimedia
features expressing the similarity between multimedia documents. We aim at
new storage and retrieval technology to make large scale image/video assets
manageable, searchable, targetable and reusable.
Colour in computer vision
Colour computer vision aims at defining a colour theory for vision and image
sequences and to develop models for colour image processing methods. Colour
vision is a very powerful component in image databases, image sequences as
well as the processing of real world scenes. The purpose is to formulate
computational methods, data structures and colour space representations to
design proper colour image processing algorithms and to develop sets of colour
invariant image features.
Theory of computer vision
Invariance in computer vision is a recurrent theme in the design of methods to
describe shape and form analysis for the identification of equivalence classes
with respect to particular shape descriptor. That is, the tools are designed to be
invariant under the appearance changes that leave the interpretation constant.
Shape and form analysis is based on linear theory encompassing linear
scale-space theory and the differential structure of images as well as
mathematical morphological based on complete lattice theory with a strong
emphasis on the multi-local geometrical interpretation. To design long-term
tracking of objects, we study on instant learning of appearances.
Segmentation, learning and tracking
Learning in computer vision is taken on as a new topic driven by the fact that
so many and so large a variety of digital images is available these days. The aim
is to learn rather model object class appearances and to do this interactively by
active annotation.
Spatial and extensible databases
Spatial and pictorial databases are being researched for the purpose of
providing consistency to spatial reasoning in an attempt to enhance spatial

data-structure design. The formalization of spatial queries and the formalization
of spatial data is pursued to guarantee consistency on a pictorial content-level to
spatial databases. The purpose is to advance the insight in spatial and multi
media data databases as they differ from standard databases. The long-term goal
is integrating computer vision tools, OO-databases, and image query tools into
complete image information systems.
Software and systems
The aim of vision systems is to define a framework to support software
development. The aim is to get to a framework consisting of a number of
software modules, workbenches for performance analysis and environments
with databases, including appropriate interfaces. Performance evaluation to
establish precisely what a computational method can or cannot achieve. In the
computer vision community these engineering aspects are only recently taken
into consideration. We design meta-systems to enable easy performance
evaluation.
2004 Results
Content-based access of multi-media data
Content-based access to large stacks of images has been a topic of study for
some time now. Based on the invariant colour features, to be described below,
successful methods have been designed to achieve image retrieval robust against
variations in illumination, viewpoint and occlusion.
Large sets of documentsare analysed for their page layout characteristics, the
reading order, and their type of genre (e.g. scientific/news/commercial papers).
These methods were successfully applied to classify office documents and
scientific papers.
For the retrieval of videos, we aim to make multimedia archives as accessible as
their textual counterpart. To that end, our research efforts concentrate on
automatic semantic indexing and interactive retrieval of multimedia sources.
To value the merit of our efforts on high international standards, all research is
evaluated within the TRECVID benchmark for multimedia retrieval.
An import asset in our endeavor for semantic access is indexing of semantic
concepts. An architecture for semantic indexing has been developed that
facilitates generic indexing based on integrated analysis from multi-media
sources on content, style, and context level. Experiments with a lexicon of 32
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concepts on the 2004 TRECVID benchmark indicate that our approach is
state-of-the-art.
Despite the good results for automatic indexing, the current lexicon is still too
limited for daily practice retrieval. Therefore, we view user interaction as an
essential part of multimedia retrieval systems. To this end, we have developed a
novel paradigm for interactive retrieval which uses a lexicon of detectable
concepts in combination with keyword and visual example search to boost
interactive retrieval. Implementation of the paradigm within a video search
engine, see Figure 1, yielded the highest score for the interactive retrieval task of
TRECVID 2004.
Search engine for video retrieval, showing results for vehicles and cars.
We will continue this line of research with a further integration of multi-media
sources, a further understanding of the structure of video documents and
interactive access to the semantic content of large collections of multi-media
information.
Colour in computer vision
Colour is an important cue in image analysis. Image processing of colour images
requires special attention as well as new possibilities to see detail where grey
value methods cannot.
In previous years, local color, geometric and spatial frequency invariants were
developed at ISIS. These local features aim at the robust measurement of the
color, shape and texture of an object, under the most common accidental
viewing conditions. These accidental conditions can be largely characterized by
direction of view, the incident light, the color of the light and the other
accidents as the presence of a foreground or background. An invariant

epresentation of the object implies that the various conditions under which the
same view of the object may be perceived do not have to be learned. To test the
discriminative power of color, geometric and spatial frequency invariants, the
ALOI collection was recorded, containing color images of 1000 real-world
objects recorded under variuous illumination directions (Figure 2), and
different illumination colors (Figure 3).
The invariants were shown to increase discriminative power for object
recognition when compared to the visual measurements of which the invariants
were composed. More specifically, the illumination intensity invariant W and
the color constant shadow and shading invariant N proof to be discriminative
when recognizing objects from a data set containing much photometric
variation. However, the invariants are shown to be only marginally color
constant. The invariant sets outperform SIFT-features extracted from
distinctive keypoints when the object is recorded under various illumination
directions or when the object is rotated in 3 dimensions. Combining local
invariant features and the incorporation of color are known to be nontrivial
problems in computer vision, for which we have provided solutions.
From the general theory, methods are derived for industrial colour vision,
analysis of colour in documents, colour in microscopy, general images as
appearing on the worldwide web. The topic on colour has led to many
publications in journals (International Journal on Computer Vision and IEEE
Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence). We aim at expanding the
analysis to take on the same invariant representation of texture next, as well as
the semantic meaning of colour.
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Example objects from the ALOI dataset.
Example object from ALOI under different illumination directions.
Theory of computer vision
Mathematical morphology is an important paradigm for low-level image
processing. Our group has a long tradition on the topic at a theoretical as well
as a practical level, with applications in industrial and machine vision. Research
has been carried out on bringing two basic theories of low-level vision (i.e.
linear theory and morphological theory) on par. To that end, the slope
transform has been introduced as the morphological equivalent of the Fourier
transform. Morphological scale-space has been founded on the same principles
as linear scale-space. For practical mathematical morphology, we aim at
developing efficient algorithms. This implies efficient decomposition schemes
for structuring elements as well as the design of C++ patterns for morphological
image processing.
One of the most fundamental tasks in computer vision is edge and line detection
in images. The difficulty of edge and line detection is emphasized when the
structures run close together or cross each other, as is the case in engineering
drawings or two-dimensional projections of complex (3D) scenes. In these
cases, one would often like to have a detection method which takes advantage of
the anisotropic nature of lines and edges. We have shown the decomposition of
the anisotropic Gaussian filter method in two Gaussian line filters in non
orthogonal directions. The anisotropic Gaussian filtering method allows fast
calculation of edge and ridge maps, with high spatial and angular accuracy.

Segmentation and Learning
Image segmentation is the task of delineating the image of an object from the
real world in the digital data array. It is one of the fundamental difficulties of
computer vision, easily surpassed by man's superior capabilities. The difficulty
resides in the fact that even man cannot rarely give a formal pictorial description
why a boundary is positioned at a certain location and that is what a computer
needs to perform the job. We contribute a variety of solutions.
The necklace approach offers a solution to inhomogeneous boundaries as seen
in three-dimensional images of the spine. A boundary will be inhomogeneous
when there are neighboring, touching or overlapping objects, or when the
boundary is out of sight due to noise or occlusion. In our example, individual
vertebrae are delineated using an a priori geometrical model to be deformed for
each vertebra.
A string is a variational deformable model that is learned from a collection of
example objects rather than built from a priori analytical or geometrical
knowledge. As opposed to existing approaches, an object boundary is
represented by a one-dimensional multivariate curve in functional space, a
feature function, rather than by a point in vector space. Strings have been
compared with active shape models on 145 vertebra images, showing that
strings produce better results when initialized close to the target boundary,
and comparable results otherwise.
The watersnake approach has established a connection between the well-known
watershed segmentation from mathematical morphology and energy-based
segmentation methods. While the original watershed algorithm does not allow
incorporation of a priori information regarding object shape, we succeeded
doing so by formalizing and representing the watershed segmentation as a
minimization problem. In particular the imposing of contour smoothness on
the segmentation results, solves the problem with noisy boundaries that are
often encountered with the original watershed.
The topic on image segmentation have lead to two articles in IEEE trans. on
Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (IEEE PAMI). This is the most
prominent journal in the area of pattern recognition and is among the top three
journals in computer science in the world.
Spatial and extensible databases
Spatial and extensible databases are developed in the MAGNUM-project,
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which ended in 1999. Amongst the results obtained, the Monet database kernel
and its modules for image and geo-spatial reasoning stands out. Research in the
area of database kernels was focused on consolidation of the results obtained in
recent years in journal papers. The activities were realized in close co-operation
with the CWI-database group. In the area of database kernels, an innovative
experimental analysis uncovered the lack of performance improvement in
database technology over the last decade. The underlying reason is the relative
progress in CPU- and RAM-technology, which shows a increasing performance
bottleneck. As a result, traditional database solutions use less then a few percent
of the available resources. This observation has led to novel techniques to
measure the resource waste and new database algorithms to avoid resource
stales.
The topic on spatial databases resulted in papers in several conferences
including the VLDB conference.
Software and systems
The year 2004 has been a period of change for software engineering from the
large complex and abstract Horus system which is now completed to smaller
targets systems solving one computer vision task at the time but completely.
A separate seed topic is the study of parallelism in multimedia processing tasks.
The purpose of the research is to anticipate on future generation computer
systems while constructing a parallel processing library compatible with Horus.
A Ph.D. thesis on this topic has been completed by F.J. Seinstra entitled "User
Transparent Parallel Image Processing". The research has led to publications in
a.o. "IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed aystems", "Parallel
Computing", and "Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience".
In addition, the developed parallel software has been applied in the 2004 TREC-
VID competition, in which the expected sequential processing time of over 250
days was reduced to less than 60 hours. This reduction was obtained without
any hand-parallelization, and played an important role in the realization of our
top-ranking TRECVID results.
Image processing as a design process
The research topic of developing image processing tools as a design process was
concluded as a separate research topic. One sub-topic was the design of
methods for evaluating the performance in terms of robustness of image
processing methods. Formalization of the design of image processing tools
results in the use of self-reliant detectors each carefully documented on its

operational domain describing the complete picture set for which the detector
will operate well. The method has been applied to engineering drawings as well
as seeds. The topic on design process has lead to a paper in IEEE trans. on
PAMI.
2005 and beyond
With first priority we will increase the effectiveness of our solutions in image
retrieval and image search engines by expanding on our experience with
learning from image databases.
Computational efficiency of image search engines will be increased by the joint
development with spatial and extensible databases. This is important as it will
open up domains of hundreds of thousands of images, a significant step towards
data-mining the content.
At the same time, we aim to expand to create full access to multimedia
documents. The integration of information from text and pictures is a very
interesting topic both scientifically, as it reveals a lot about the nature of
information, as well as practically as multimedia documents will be ubiquitous
as is the need for their access. The MultimediaN project provides the
opportunity to reach this goal with the intended delivery of a large-scale
experimentation platform for multimedia information analysis.
Concerning color research, we aim at the extraction of invariants from
interesting regions of the image. Regions improve on the robustness when
compared to strictly local interest point based object recognition. For instance,
from color distributions we may derive appearance properties. Further, we aim
at exploiting distributions of color edges to derive texture properties. We will
concentrate on regions that are interesting from an information theoretical
point of view. To increase the specifity of regions, we will incorporate the
statistics of regions throughout the ALOI collection. We consider this
collection to be a natural starting point for visual cognition.
Over the years we have invested in a new, object-oriented software platform for
vision. By the end of the year we hope to deliver a first complete system for
internal use with an expected life time of 10 years.
Further, the available parallel functionality to heterogeneous wide-area Grid
systems is projected to be extended in 2005. The main focus is on the
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development of an efficient and easy-to-use execution model based on so-called
Multimedia Grid Services, i.e. high-performance multimedia functionality that
can be invoked from within sequential applications running on a standard
desktop machine. A key example is our Aibo robot dog, whose video data is
being processed at multiple cluster systems all over the globe. This research
direction is prioritized with the arrival of the new Distributed ASCI
Supercomputer 3 (DAS-3), which is co-financed by the MultimediaN
consortium.

2. Intelligent Autonomous Systems
General information
Contact person : Prof Dr ir F.C.A. Groen
Telephone : +31 - 20 - 525 7461
URL : http://www.science.uva.nl/research/ias/
Fax : +31 - 20 - 525 7490
E-mail : groen@science.uva.nl
Position within the Organisation
This program is carried out by the Intelligent Autonomous Systems group, one
of the two research groups of the Multimedia and Intelligent Systems
Laboratory at the Informatics Institute of the Faculty of Science. The Intelligent
Autonomous Systems group participates in the Dutch Graduate School 'ASCI'.
Characterisation
We develop methodologies to create intelligent autonomous systems that
perceive their environment through sensors and use that information to
generate intelligent, goal-directed behaviour in a perception-action cycle.
These intelligent systems may be single systems, or multiple systems working
together. In particular, we study perception for autonomous systems based on
vision; we develop a unified framework for geometric computations; we study
decision making of single- and multi-agent systems under uncertainty; and we
develop computational methods for learning systems and probabilistic
reasoning.
Key Words
Machine learning, Bayesian networks, neural computation, graphical models,
robotics, sensor data fusion, cognitive robots, ambient inteligence, human-robot
interaction, autonomous systems, reasoning with uncertainty, geometric
algebra, geometric programming, multi-agent systems, decision making,
planning, Markov decision processes, stochastic games.
Main themes
We study the methodologies to create intelligent autonomous systems. Such
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systems obtain their information from sensors and use that information to
generate intelligent, goal-directed actions. As these systems operate in a
sense-think-act loop, they can inherently learn from perceiving the result of
their actions. They may be single entities or cooperating multi-agent systems,
and they must operate in a real dynamic world, inhabited by humans and other
agents.
Characteristic for real-world problems is that the sensor data are noisy and hard
to interpret since models are often unavailable, inaccurate, or incomplete. On
the other hand, because of the real-world environment, data and models have
geometrical coherence and are constrained by physics. Our research focuses on
new methods which inherently incorporate this real-world structure, in order to
produce data processing and modelling that is robust to noise and
computationally efficient.
Decision making under uncertainty is an important issue for intelligent systems.
We are developing single- and multi-agent planning algorithms for this
problem. In particular, multi-agent systems are capable of sharing their
perceptions, resulting in a distributed world model. Coordinating the actions of
multiple agents is a real challenge, which we approach by Markov decision
processes and multi-agent learning strategies. As case study we use Robot
Soccer.
In the field of intelligent robots, specific applications we work on include
service and personal robots and intelligent cars both in structured and
unstructured terrain. In the area of surveillance and safety, we have projects in
distributed surveillance systems and decision support agents.
2004 Results
Perception for autonomous systems
We develop methodologies for accurate motion estimation and interpretation
from image sequences. Mobile vision platforms have their applications in traffic
and driving in unstructured terrain. Applications of static platforms are in
public safety, and intelligent care homes for the elderly. We cooperate with
TNO-D&V on a number of projects, which are related to autonomous systems,
such as the RoboJeep autonomous robot vehicle.
Terrain classification is important for off-road autonomous robot vehicle
guidance. Range based sensor systems, such as stereo vision, cannot distinguish

Orignal Colour Image Recognized Terrain Types
Terrain classification results for images recorded in different weather conditions.
Blue = sky, Dark Green = foliage, Light green = grass, yellow = sand, gray = gravel and
pixels colored red have been rejected.
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between solid obstacles such as rocks or soft obstacles such as tall patches of
grass. Terrain classification is needed to prevent that the robot vehicle is stopped
needlessly by the obstacle detection system. It can also be used to recognize
sand roads or other drivable areas.
We have developed a colour based method to classify typical terrain coverings
such as sand, grass or foliage. Using colour recognition outdoors is difficult,
because the observed colour of a material is heavily influenced by environment
conditions such as the scene composition and illumination type.
A novel approach has been developed for classifying different environment
states in outdoor colour images that does not require any additional sensor data.
By differentiating between environment states only a small variation in material
colour remains to be modeled. The results (as can be seen in the figure) show
that our approach is able to classify terrain types in real images with large
differences in illumination.
Also in cooperation with TNO-FEL methodologies for public safety are
developed. Many surveillance algorithms consist of different parts, such as
object detection, segmentation, tracking, and recognition. Literature focuses on
algorithms for one of these individual tasks. Integration of and communication
between these tasks is often rather ad-hoc. In this project we worked on a
statistical framework for visual tracking applications. It allows easy adaptation
of the tracking application by substitution of one of the algorithms for part of
the problem, without altering the remainder of the application. Furthermore,
the framework uses minimum cost classification and feedback for updating the
models using knowledge available elsewhere in the application. Another
problem for many surveillance algorithms is that often cameras with automatic
gain control have to be used. As part the scene changes, static parts of the scene
may suddenly become brighter or darker. We developed and compared a range
of techniques to automatically correct for these changes. This enables us to use
affordable auto-gain cameras to do sophisticated image processing.

Radars became a common component of perimeter monitoring systems.
Current state-of-the-art radars are cheap, portable, and small. A disadvantage of
radar is that its measurements cannot be directly visualized like an electrooptical
sensor. One way to visualize radar measurements is by showing them as
a 3D scene in a virtual environment, which can be interpreted by a human
observer. This requires the estimation of human motion features to animate the
person.
In the previous work we presented animate walking persons with the
model-based approach that provide a realistic look-alike of the real walking
person with the global Boulic parameters. Although we estimated only the
global Boulic parameters the animation showed a certain level of
personification. Disadvantages of the model-based approach are: It requires
human motion models for each type of motion like walking, jogging and
running. The computation time of the fit between the model response and
measurements is not real-time. Although the model-based approach has a
certain level of personification not all personification of human motion is
presented in the models for example a difference in the left step length and the
right step length. The research focuses on a feature-based approach to estimate
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the motion parameters. Three different methods are presented to extract the
maximum, minimum and centre velocity.
In addition to these features we extract an independent estimate of the
repetition frequency on bases of velocity slices in the spectrogram. The leg
model, torso model and repetitive behaviour are derived from the human
walking model of Boulic. Kalman filters smooth the leg, torso and repetition
frequency features and estimate the global Boulic parameters. The global Boulic
features completely describe the human motion and the leg features and torso
features give additional personification information. These parameters are input
to the human model of Boulic which forms the basis for animation. A multiple
processor application gives a real time solution. In the end of the year we start
with the arm movement estimation and estimate the difference between
swinging and non-swinging arms. The range dimension is added in the
measurements and a Principal Component extraction is used to locate the
human motion in the step-frequency- step-length space and classify the
different humans. (Ready to submit paper: Feature-based Human Motion
Parameter Estimation with Radar.)
Principles of autonomous systems
In the project on geometric algebra, we have continued the development of the
conformal model as a compact language for programming geometry, though in
the past year the effort was considerably reduced due to prolonged illness (RSI)
of the chief investigator. We have deepened the work on efficient
implementation, and on facilities for visualization of and experimentation with
geometric algebra and geometry. This involves compiler and interpreter
construction, and is a cooperation with the Faculty of Computer Science at the
Free University (VU). We have started writing a book ‘Geometric Algebra for
Computer Science’, based on our paper and interactive tutorials, to help spread
the distribution of the technique to the field.
Learning, probabilistic and neural computing
We develop learning and probabilistic reasoning methods for intelligent systems
operating in a real world. One line of research focusses on intelligent
environments which must be able to localize and track humans and analyze
their behaviour. In particular we studied a surveillance application with many
cameras which do not have overlapping field of views (see figure below). Such a
system is faced with the problem whether an object observed with a camera at
some time is the same object as observed by some other camera some time ago.
To deal with the uncertainty we use probabilistic networks. The methods we

developed outperform conventional (multi-hypothesis) tracking methods. The
project is funded by STW.
Another line of research concerns the modelling of sensory data. We developed
probabilistic methods that map high dimensional data to a non-linear low
dimensional subspace that preserves the structure of the data. Applications of
developed techniques in the field of behaviour analysis are studied. Work is
supported by STW.
An important new line of research concerns `cognitive devices’ for intelligent
environments. With top partners in Europe in the field of robots and
human-robot interaction we started a 6th framework Integrated Project
‘Cogniron’ in which a cognitive robotic assistant is developed. Our group
works on human activity analysis and on cognitive representations of objects
and space. With this Cogniron project, the work started in the NWO project
‘Concept learning’ and the work carried out in the ITEA project ‘Ambience’ is
continued.
Decision making in single- and multi-agent systems
We have studied the problem of agent sequential decision making (planning)
under uncertainty. In the hardest case, the agent does not observe the true state
of its environment, but it only receives noisy observations that are
stochastically coupled to the state. Solving such planning problems in an exact
fashion is known to be intractable, so our focus has been on approximate
solution techniques. We have developed "Perseus", an approximate value
iteration algorithm for arbitrary POMDPs (partially observable Markov
decision processes) which is very competitive over existing methods.
We are also interested in cooperative multi-agent systems. Here we use the
framework of coordination graphs which allows for a tractable approach to
multi-agent coordination, by decomposing the global payoff function of the
system into a sum of local terms. Our current work on coordination graphs
involves (i) message passing techniques for approximate decision making
(similar to belief propagation in Bayesian networks), and (ii) distributed
cooperative reinforcement learning (Q-learning). We incorporated this
framework in our UvA Trilearn RoboCup simulation team which won the
2004 German Open.
We have applied our experience to the real soccer game when performed by a
small number of robots. Previously we cooperated with the Delft University of
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Technology in the Mid-Size League, this year a Dutch Aibo Team was formed.
The 4-Legged Soccer League is an ideal challenge, because it defines a standard
hardware platform, which allows excelling on algorithms to perceive the
environment, to reason about the optimal (joint) actions, and to perform those
actions in a smooth way. The Dutch Aibo Team was a successful debutant,
which qualified directly for the WorldCup in Osaka with their performance in
the Technical Challenges.
The soccer world is dynamic, but has a fixed number of agents, and small
playing field. To study the influence of larger real-world models, we focused on
cooperation between teams of rescue-agents in a city after a disaster. In our
research we have experimented with a game-tree approach. In this approach the
agents construct a strategy for multiple steps in the future instead of just
selecting the behavior which currently has the highest priority. They do that not
only for themselves, but also for a limited number of team members. This
game-tree approach can also be used to trace the situation and the behaviors of
the agents multiple cycles back in history, to estimate which actions were really
beneficial on the long run.

We applied this game-tree approach in the UvA RoboCup Rescue simulation
team, which participated in the Rescue Middle Earth competition at the
PRICAI 2004. The figure shows a D visualization of a burning city after an
earthquake, as provided by the Robocup Rescue Simulation Project. In this city
ambulance, fire brigades, and police forces have to cooperate, while the
communication is strictly limited because of a collapsed infrastructure.
Another research line involves `Interactive Hierarchical Awareness’ in a
multi-agent system. Modeling and control of such a system may benefit
immensely from representing it at multiple levels of abstraction, i.e., using a
hierarchy of representations. This means that the system's state is represented at
multiple resolutions (in terms of time and abstraction) simultaneously for
different levels in the hierarchy, and similarly, that actions are taken at multiple
resolutions. In the Interactive Collaborative Information Systems (ICIS) project
we aim at developing scalable and theoretically sound methods for constructing
and updating hierarchical state representations for multi-agent systems. We are
working on establishing criteria for hierarchical state representations, for
instance based on action utilities, the Markov property, uncertainty, etc.
Furthermore, we are developing algorithms that enforce/approximate these
criteria based on the theory of MDPs, POMDPs, HPOMDPs, DBNs, and Utile
Distinction methods. Our main application domain is road traffic management.
Distributed perception and sensor fusion
Intelligent process control and decision making in complex systems require
adequate situation assessment, which in turn requires processing of large
amounts of heterogeneous information originating from different, spatially
dispersed sources, such as, sensory systems, human observers, databases, etc.
However, such "sensor fusion" is not trivial, since it requires adequate mapping
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between very heterogeneous concepts, we are confronted with noisy
information sources and, due to large amounts of information, significant
processing resources might be required (i.e. computational bottlenecks).
Another characteristic of the domains we are focusing on is that constellations
of information sources can change frequently and, prior to the operation, we
never know which information sources will be available. In addition, such
fusion systems often provide results which have a critical impact on the decision
making process and, consequently, further course of events. Therefore, high
quality of fusion results and prevention of misleading results is indispensable.
In order to be able to deal with the mentioned challenges, we have introduced
Distributed Perception Networks (DPN), multi-agent systems which support
fusion based on distributed Bayesian Networks (BN). In this context, our
research is focused primarily on the following problems: (i) Task driven
self-configuration of DPN agents at runtime, which allows adaptation to
dynamic information source constellations and supports reuse of partial fusion
results. (ii) Efficient and robust information fusion with distributed BNs, which
provide adequate mapping between observable events and beliefs in hypotheses
about hidden events. (iii) Resource allocation in distributed fusion systems
based on information theoretic criteria. (iv) Approaches to improved fusion
accuracy, such as fail-safe design of fusion systems as well as localization of
faulty model components and information sources.
In a related line of research we have studied the problem of decentralized data
mining (unsupervised learning) using gossip-based communication protocols.
In such protocols, random pairs of nodes repeatedly exchange their local
parameter estimates and combine them by weighted averaging. We have
provided theoretical and experimental evidence that under such protocols,
nodes converge exponentially fast to the correct parameter estimates.
Intelligent vehicles
Our research interest involves developing new vision-based techniques for
applications in the intelligent vehicles domain. In order to preserve safety,
current operational systems, such as automated transports and people movers,
need areas or lanes that are separated from other traffic. Reliable, robust and
real-time obstacle detection methodologies are needed to enable the safe
operation of these types of intelligent vehicles among other traffic participants
such as cars and pedestrians.

Real-time Stereo vision based obstacle detection on the road. The left shows the system in
action from inside of the vehicle. The images on the right hand side show the system’s
display. shown. Notice that a "caution" warning is given when the pedestrian is too close.
In joint research with TNO we have developed and evaluated a real-time
obstacle detection system. The obstacle detection system is based on dense
stereo vision. In contrast to sparse stereo vision, it uses matching algorithms
which estimate a depth for almost all pixels in the stereo image pair. Robust
algorithms are then applied to detect which of the pixel disparities belong to the
road surface. Other pixels, which belong to positive obstacles, are clustered into
separate instances. All parts of the obstacle detection system have been
optimized for the SIMD instruction sets that are available on normal computer
systems. The current version of the system achieves processing speeds of 5 Hz.
The figure above shows image of a test on the road, where the system detects
pedestrians. The system was also evaluated in the state-of-the-art VEHIL
facility of TNO in Helmond. This facility provides VeHicle In the Loop testing
for new sensors systems by using small robotic vehicles to simulate other traffic
(see photo below). By comparing the ground truth positions of the robotic
vehicles to that estimated by our obstacle detection system we determined that
the error in stereo ranging is less than 1/8 of a pixel
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Evaluation of real-time stereo vision based obstacle detection system in the VEHIL
facilty of TNO in Helmond. The vehicle with the stereo vision system (RoboJeep)
observes the small robotic vehicle which simulates a moving obstacle.
More than 150.000/6000 pedestrians are injured/killed yearly in traffic EUwide.
A collaboration with DaimlerChrysler Research (Germany) focuses on
these vulnerable traffic participants, aiming to develop a system for video-based
pedestrian recognition from a moving vehicle. From a methodical point of view,
this application is very challenging because it combines the difficulties of a
moving camera, a wide range of possible (deformable) object appearances,
cluttered backgrounds, stringent performance criteria and hard real-time
constraints. The second phase of the research project focuses on a Bayesian
extension to hierarchical shape-based object detection.

3. Information and Language Processing Systems
General information
Contact person : Prof Dr M. de Rijke
Telephone : +31 - 20 - 525 5358
URL : http://ilps.science.uva.nl/
Fax : +31 - 20 - 525 7490
E-mail : mdr@science.uva.nl
Position within the Organisation
This program is carried out by the Information and Language Processing
Systems (ILPS) group, one of the three research groups of the Intelligent
Systems Laboratory Amsterdam (ISLA) at the Informatics Institute of the
Faculty of Science. The Information and Language Processing Systems group
participates in the Dutch Graduate School SIKS.
As of April 1, 2004, the Information and Language Processing Systems group
(formerly the Language and Inference Technology (LIT) group) is part of the
Informatics Institute of the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Previously, the LIT
group was part of the Institute of Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC).
Founded by Maarten de Rijke and Michael Masuch in 2001, the group quickly
grew to become an award-winning group of around 20 people pursuing
foundational, experimental, and applied research in intelligent information
access. The following people have left the ILLC along with Maarten de Rijke:
Loredana Afanasiev, David Ahn, Caterina Caracciolo, Sisay Fissaha, Massimo
Franceschet, Evan Goris, Willem van Hage, Gabriel Infante-Lopez, Valentin
Jijkoun, Maarten Marx, Gilad Mishne, Rob Mokken, Karin Mueller, Stefan
Schlobach, Borkur Sigurbjörnsson, Maarten Stol, and Petrucio Viana. During
the second half of 2004, Balder ten Cate, Leonie IJzereef, and Erik Tjong Kim
Sang joined the group.
Characterization
Research within the Information and Language Processing Systems group is
aimed at developing and studying the computational, linguistic, and statistical
underpinnings of effective ways of providing intelligent information access,
especially in the face of massive amounts of information. Addressing this task
requires synergy between AI-research, IR-techniques, and applied natural
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language processing. Our leading methodology is to identify real-world
scenarios that give rise to interesting research challenges. If possible we try to
address such challenges from a broad spectrum of perspectives, ranging from
foundational and theoretical to experimental.
The ILPS group takes part in a number of world-wide evaluation exercises in
the areas of information retrieval and language processing, including TREC,
CLEF, INEX, ACE, and Senseval. To support our participation in these
evaluation efforts, the group has made, and continues to make, a considerable
investment in software infrastructure. During 2004 the ILPS increasingly
become both a participant and an organizer of large-scale evaluation efforts.
It has now become co-ordinator of the Dutch question answering efforts for
CLEF, as well as organizer of the WebCLEF multi-lingual web retrieval
evaluation effort.
Key Words
Information retrieval, applied natural language processing, knowledge
representation and reasoning, machine learning, data mining, question
answering, social networks, semi-structured data.
Main themes
The overall aim of the projects carried out within the Information and
Language Processing Systems group is to put abstract theories to work with
the aim of gaining insights in the computational, statistical, and linguistic
underpinnings of dealing with large amounts of textual information.
Research activities within the Information and Language Processing Systems
group fall under one or more of the following headings:
Information Retrieval
Work under this heading covers topics such as spatial reasoning and image
retrieval, semistructured data, cross-lingual retrieval, mono-lingual retrieval for
European languages, question answering systems, knowledge representation,
and web logs.
Applied Natural Language Processing
This heading covers topics such as information extraction, text mining, lexical
semantics, shallow parsing technologies, robust generation of semantic
representations, and online sentiment analysis.

Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
Work under this heading includes semistructured data, constraint satisfaction
problems, expressive power and functionality of query languages for XML data
and of restricted description languages (including modal, description, and
feature logic), proof and decision methods for modal-like logics, benchmarking
XML query languages, query evaluation for XPath and automated reasoning.
Much of the research in the Information and Language Processing Systems
group is aimed at understanding the computational behavior of information and
language processing technologies, especially in relation to their potential
benefits for real world information processing tasks. As a consequence, there is
a strong emphasis on implementation efforts.
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2004 Results
Information Retrieval
Our retrieval work was organized around participations in CLEF, INEX,
and TREC, with work on XML retrieval, multi-lingual retrieval, question
answering, and web retrieval. In the area of XML retrieval, we investigated the
appropriate unit of retrieval for XML retrieval, which lead to a large number of
publications, both at SIGIR and elsewhere. We also studied the potential
contribution of structural hints in XML retrieval; this too proved a fruitful
research area with publications at CIKM and elsewhere.
Mixing content-dependent and content-independent document features, our
web retrieval work proved competitive at the 2004 TREC Web track, building
on our expanding work on statistical language modeling. Additional work on
the use of light-weight query refinement techniques for web retrieval led to an
ECIR publication, best student paper award.
Work on our multi-stream question answering technology proved fruitful and
productive, with a successful participation in the question answering track at
CLEF, and with publications on question analysis, predictive answering, as well
as answer selection. We have started up efforts to marry our question answering
and XML retrieval efforts, and are exploring question answering against online
encyclopedia and against collections of frequently asked questions mined from
the web.
Applied Natural Language Processing
Work here was organized around a number of evaluation efforts. For a start, we
took part in Senseval-3 (Semantic forms and Logic forms), as part of our work
on robust shallow semantic analysis of natural texts. Our semantic
representations provide a good trade-off between the richness of the resulting
structures and the complexity and robustness of the computational methods.
Richer levels of linguistic analysis were studied as part of a new generative
language modeling formalism that allowed group members to systematically
study a broad spectrum of grammatical formalisms.
Among other applied linguistic interests were pursued question generation and
the study of word order variations. In a pilot study, manual annotations in a
treebank were exploited and used to generate complete syntactic annotations of
questions derived from declarative sentences.
Within the NWO project "ITEQA: Inference for Temporal Question
Answering", we worked on the general issues of improving information

extraction systems by incorporating data-driven techniques. Recognition of
temporal expressions yields readily to machine learning, but their normalization,
or interpretation, when considered as a monolithic task, seems to call for a
rule-based approach. We worked an analysis of normalization that separates
context-independent from context-dependent processing and, in particular,
identifies context-dependent classification tasks as a potential application area
for machine learning. We have found that that automatically learned classifiers
can improve timex normalization performance while simplifying system
development.
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
Almost all technology for processing XML data makes use of the W3C
standard language XPath. Within the NWO projects "A Model Checking
Approach to Query Evaluation on XML Documents" and "Model Checking
Algorithms and Tools for Hybrid Logics" we started with extending the XMark
XQuery benchmark to test the full functionality of XPath 1.0.
Within the NWO project "Complex Knowledge Base Classification" we
worked on establishing the computational complexity and expressive power of
XML query languages. This work is mainly disseminated in the database
community. Using techniques from modal and temporal logic we could provide
a complete characterization of the important Navigantional XPath language.
We characterized the W3C standard language XPath 1.0, as the two variable
fragment of first order logic (SIGMOD Record) and we designed a natural
extension of XPath 1.0 which is complete in the sense of Codd (ACM PODS
2004, best paper award).
The master thesis of one of our students has been turned into the NWO
Mozaïek proposal "A Model Checking Approach to Query Evaluation on XML
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Documents" which has been granted in 2004. The PhD student started working
on this project in September. The aim is to see whether the techniques developed
in temporal logic model checking can be applied to XML query
processing.
Finally, within the NWO Pioneer Project held by ILPS work was done on
constructing ontologies. To help improve current modeling and reasoning
environments we introduced, jointly with researchers from the AMC, formal
criteria for good modeling of terminologies. By introducing methods for
debugging, explanation and automatic semantical enrichment to support the
modeling process, we aim at encouraging others to use more expressive
formalisms.
2005 and beyond
In 2005 we will continue to shift our focus to web-based information access.
This development will show up very prominently in our organization efforts
for WebCLEF, a new multi-lingual web retrieval task that is being
set up under the CLEF umbrella.
Additionally, we will extend our web-based question answering demo's. Going
beyond factoid questions will be one of main question answering aims for 2005,
and it will centered around crawling, extracting, and retrieving
frequently asked question pages.
Further planned activities include creating synergy between our XML retrieval
and question answering activities. In particular, we aim to re-implement much
of the language processing required for question answering as off-line
annotation activities, thus creating collections of concurrent XML files.
Answering question would then be adressed as retrieval against these files.
Finally, our work on benchmarking XML query evaluation engines will
continue, and we now aspire to create multiple test sets that together cover as
much of the required query and language functionality as possible.

The Laboratory For Human Computer Studies
The Human Computer Studies (HCS) laboratory performs research on
theories, methods and technology regarding the design and use and evaluation
of complex human-computer systems. A first class of complex humancomputer
that are object of study are knowledge-intensive systems. Such
systems can be based on human knowledge that is represented in ontologies and
knowledge bases, or can contain knowledge obtained by machine learning
methods. This research is centered around questions concerning semantic
modeling, ontology engineering, multi-agent systems and adaptive systems.
Typical examples of such systems are: Semantic Web applications, text mining
tools, tools for developing and maintaining ontologies, qualitative reasoning
systems, adaptive systems and ontology population and learning systems.
Application domains include: cultural heritage, E-government services on the
web, knowledge management, modeling physical systems, intelligent learning
environments, bioinformatics, collaborative information management and
virtual organizations.
A second class of complex human-computer systems that are object of study at
HCS, are e-learning environments, simulation environments for educational
purposes and interactive systems. A central topic is the study of interaction
requirements and user experiences, in particular for special user groups. Results
of this research include methods for requirement extraction, user evaluation
methods and best practices.
General Information
Contact person : Prof Dr B.J. Wielinga
Telephone : +31 – 20 – 888 4696/4689
URL : http://hcs.science.uva.nl
Fax : +31 – 20 – 525 6896
Email : wielinga@science.uva.nl
Position within the organization
The laboratory for Human Computer Studies (HCS) is one of the three
laboratories at the Informatics Institute of the Faculty of Science at the
Universiteit van Amsterdam. The HCS laboratory was founded in 2004 as a
merger between the former Social Science Informatics group in the Faculty of
Social and Behavioural Sciences and a number of smaller groups in the Faculty
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of Science. The HCS group participates in the Dutch Graduate School "SIKS"
(School for Knowledge and Information Systems).
Characterization
The general mission of HCS is the study of how people interact with ICT
applications to achieve their goals, how human knowledge can be brought to
bear in ICT applications and how ICT technology can support human
activities. The research in HCS can be categorized under the following main
themes:
Knowledge, Agent and Semantic Web Technology
Adaptive Information Management
Co-operative Information Management in Federated Systems
Interactive Systems
Qualitative Reasoning
Each of these themes will be discussed in detail below.
Knowledge, Agent and Semantic Web Technology
Key Words
Ontologies, Semantic Web, Multi-agent systems, Knowledge-based indexing
and retrieval
Main Theme
This theme concerns research on theories, methods and technologies for
representing, extracting and interpreting the semantics of information resources.
The background of the research is the vision of the Semantic Web: an extension
of the current web with meaning attached to information resources such as
documents, images, video and audio material. Ontologies as a shared
conceptualization of a part of the world, will play an essential role in the
attribution of meaning to heterogeneous information resources. Hence, an
important topic in the theme is the representation of, the reasoning with and the
acquisition (automatic or semi-automatic) of ontologies.
The Semantic Web will be a distributed system. Hence one may expect that
agent technology will play an important role in the Semantic Web. The role of
agents will be to harvest, combine and extract information from heterogeneous

sources. Agents will have different types of knowledge. For example one agent
may know how to extract terms from a document, another agent may have
knowledge about an ontology of a particular domain. One of the research topics
of the theme is how such agents can be organized in a multi-agent system.
2004 Results
Ontologies
The Ph.D. project on knowledge-rich indexing of learning objects (S. Kabel)
showed that re-use of learning material can be facilitated by using ontologies for
indexing and retrieval. Fragments of instructional material represented by
various media (text, video, images, audio) were indexed using ontologies of
various types (domain, instructional, knowledge type). Empirical studies using
the indexed material and the ontologies for retrieval showed that the ontologies
increase the efficiency and the effectiveness of re-use of instruction material.
Document analysis and indexing
The general goal of the Metis project is the development of knowledge on how
to make organisations smarter by focusing on: collaboration and
communication; relating and visualizing information and communication; and
organisational perspectives on knowledge management. The HCS laboratory
has contributed by developing tools and ontologies that make it possible to
index and retrieve documents within communities of practice (CoPs). An initial
evaluation of the results at a large plastics company suggests that the
"knowledge maps" semi-automatically generated from such CoPs make it easier
to retrieve relevant knowledge. Further application of text analysis tools to
"noisy" document-sets is ongoing.
Multi-agent systems
In 2004 C. van Aart completed his thesis on "Organizational Building Blocks
for Design of Distributed Intelligent Systems". This work resulted in a
framework for multi-agent design, based both on human organizational models
and principles for distributed intelligent systems design. Three organizational
structures were developed for coordination and cooperation in multi-agent
systems. A number of case studies were developed as a proof of principle for the
theoretical concepts.
Programming and Semantic Web infrastructure
The core of the HCS software resources is formed by SWI-Prolog and its
supporting packages dealing with visualization, networking, markup languages,
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semantic web storage and querying and much more. After initial development
within an EU project for editing models in the field of knowledge engineering
the system has grown to a world-wide accepted open source resource for
research and education. The current focus is on ontology management and text
mining.
Achievements over 2004 include addition of Constraint Logic Programming
(CLP) in cooperation with KU Leuven, multi-threaded HTTP/HTTPS server
and client support, extension of the semantic web storage module with
concurrency and internationalization (unicode) support and provide a Sesame
compatible query engine and API in cooperation with the VU.
2005 and beyond
Semantic Web and E-culture
The work on the topics decribed above will continue in 2005 and beyond. The
work on converting existing thesauri to ontologies represented with Semantic
Web technology (RDF(S) and OWL) will continue. In particular, conversion
and use of large ontologies, such as the Getty thesauri (AAT, TGN, ULAN), in
the domain of annotating cultural heritage objects will be an important research
topic for the coming years.
Another topic in this context is population and learning of ontologies from
heterogeneous sources. Initial tests in the domain of e-culture have shown that
relations, for example between artist and art style can be automatically derived
from information on the WWW. This work will be extended to ontology
learning: the extraction of generic concepts and relations from various sources.
Communication Coordination in Hybrid Multi-Agent Systems
The major objective of the CCHMAS part of the CDM cluster in the ICIS
project (Bsik) is to investigate organizational structures and strategies for the
coordination in dynamic, distributed and hybrid agent systems. van Aart et al.
(2004) have used traditional organizational principles to build ad-hoc intelligent
systems from intelligent services. The CCHMAS project will extend this work
to more dynamic situations, where there is uncertainty about the world in
which the agents operate, the (amount of) information and the availability of
agents. We will research a specific class of agents - so-called manager agents -
that have no other task then to organize and coordinate a dynamic set of diverse
operator agents in an uncertain world, and that report to, and take instructions
from humans. The project has started end of 2004. In 2005 we will set-up a
prototype system within the RoboCup Rescue Simulation environment.

We will use this environment to define initial coordination and communication
ontologies for joint actions within the RoboCup Rescue world. We will extend
this framework by successively introducing more and more dynamics into the
environment, into the organizational structures and into available information.
Adaptive Information Management
Key Words
machine learning, data mining, adaptive systems, knowledge discovery,
grammar induction, web mining, interactive systems
Main Theme
The research on Adaptive Information Management (AIM) focuses on the
study of systems that can adapt their behavior to the environment. There are
two main lines of research, single learning systems, and groups of cooperating
systems. This field of research has a strong link with the study of agents.
The distinguishing character of AIM is the focus on adaptation of behavior and
learning. The ambition of the AIM group in the coming five years is:
to study formal models of adaptive systems,
to study collaboration models
to realize a number of industrial or prototypical applications of adaptive
systems,
to study the complexity and explain the efficacy of existing learning systems.
2004 Results
In the DUMPERS project, it was shown that a method for clustering page
transitions can discover structure in usage from the traces of users. This can
be used to automatically construct navigation support.
The thesis by Floor Verdenius discussed the application of Machine
Learning for industrial problems and provided methods for selecting an
appropriate learning method for a problem. A methodology is outlined and a
method is presented to assess if a particular class of models is appropriate.
In the context of AID we will be building a suite of dynamic, model driven
information access and knowledge extraction tools on top of an architecture
for grid-based distributed data analysis over the next 4 years. In the AID
VL-e project an activity analysis of the cases provided by the Food
Informatics partners was made. This analysis is the basis for a demo
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application of the adaptive query environment that will be presented to the
project partners in February 2005. We decided to participate in the TREC
Genomics Track to test our results in an international context. The AID
tools were made operational on the TREC Genomics data set of over 4
million Medline abstracts using the Mesh ontology.
Research on data assimilation resulted in a study in the biological domain
(bird migration) and traffic forecasting area.
Research into virtual organizations to support ICT led to novel concepts for
ICT maintenance. In the scope of the VL-e project, the proposed models are
experimentally verified.
2005 and beyond
Two new projects started at the end of 2004. An IOP-MMI project will address
methods for text classification applied in the context of trainable information
distribution: can a system be trained to send information to the person for
which it is most useful considering current activities. In the ICIS-CHIM
project, adaptive systems will be studied from the perspective of acceptability
for the user. Other themes are the discovery of concepts and relations from text
methods for learning and sharing "learning bias", knowledge that is used for
further learning. In 2005 the AID VL-e project will make it’s first prototype of
the adaptive information retrieval tool suite available on the GRID Proof of
Concept environment of VL-e. In 2005 we will also start collaboration with the
Biorange program focusing on the following themes: SP3: Integrative
Bioinformatics. Research theme 5: Content Driven Data Modeling and SP4:
VL-e for Bioinformatics Applications. Research theme 3: Collaborative
Information Management.
Collaborative Information Management in Federated Systems
Keywords
Federated/distributed databases, collaborative networked organizations,
knowledge management, ontology engineering, schema matching/integration,
knowledge discovery, virtual organization breeding environment
Main theme
Research in the CO-IM group is primarily focused on collaborative
information management in Federated Systems. It addresses the design and

development of architectural frameworks, semantic models, and supporting
services necessary for the inter-operation and coordination of goal-oriented
collaboration among heterogeneous / autonomous systems. Special emphasis is
given to: modeling of information / knowledge, ontology engineering, federated
schema management, federated query processing, and semi-automatic assisting
tools for developers of federated architectures and systems, all of which applied
to a wide variety of complex emerging domains, from scientific to
manufacturing and from control engineering to tele-assistance. The main areas
of research and prototypical development activities aim at the following:
Federated information/knowledge engineering in complex emerging domains
Information management architecture for cooperative systems
Semi-automatic tools supporting integration / inter-operability among
heterogeneous / autonomous environments
Collaborative Networked Organizations (CNO) paradigm, their theoretical
foundations, management of breeding environments, ontology engineering /
discovery, trust modeling and trust management
2004 Results
In EC 5FP ENBI – European Network for Biodiversity Information, the
applicability and potential of both the GRID technology and Virtual
Organizations to biodiversity domain was explored. An analysis and
characterization of collaborative information management needs for the ENBI
application domain was performed, and the results of activities were reported to
the global biodiversity community of GBIF.
In EC 5FP – two Networks of Experts: THINKcreative, and VOSTER,
collaborated in the organization of several international workshops/conferences
related to the area of Virtual Organizations. We were involved (as a co-editor) in
the preparation of a technical book, published by Springer, with several chapters
based on the results of the THINKcreative project, and other chapters
submitted by international experts in the field. Both of these projects ended in
2004.
In EC 6FP ECOLEAD– European Collaborative networked Organization
LEADership initiative, the CO-IM group is one of the main four players in this
large Integrated Project, with 19 European partners, launched in April 2004.
During its first year, the key entities and components of the Breeding
Environment for collaborative networks (VBE) are identified and modelled,
VBE operating principles are defined, and the design of a VBE support
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infrastructure is achieved. Furthermore, requirement analysis of the VBE
functionality has identified the need for: pro-active VBE competency
management system, support for ontology discovery/evolution during the life
cycle of the VBE, and performance-based trust establishment among the VBE
members.
In Dutch Bsik VL-e – Virtual Laboratory e-Science, the design of VL-e
COLIM (collaborative information management) component started. A study
was performed on the development of flexible approaches for automatic
generation of database schema definitions based on the ontology entries
provided by expert scientists. Also an existing proof of concept module for
virtual laboratory information management (VIMCO), developed earlier by the
CO-IM group, was enhanced and made available on the GRID proof of
concept environment of the VL-e. The VIMCO component will be used as a
"base" for information management by VL-e’s existing scientific applications.
The PhD thesis of Ersin Kaletas represented the information management of the
Virtaul Laboratory project and introduced the use of pre-defined "Process Flow
Templates" and workflows for proper modeling of experimentation steps in
different scientific domains.
In EC 5FP TeleCARE – Multi-Agent Tele-Supervision System for Elderly
Care, the development of several key information management components
were completed, including: the federated database system, its schema
management, and agent-based federated query processing, the resource catalog
management system supporting TeleCARE’s HW/SW resources, and the tool
for semi-automatic generation of data structures from their ontology
definitions. These components were demonstrated and evaluated, serving as the
proof of concepts. The project completed in 2004.
2005 and beyond
In ENBI, the design of CIMS infrastructure for Cooperative Information
Management System, that applies the GRID technology, federated information
management, and the Virtual Organization, to the biodiversity domain, will be
finalized. This model and approach will be evaluated for adoption by the Global
biodiversity community of GBIF.
The ECOLEAD project runs until 2008. By that time, development of the breeding
environment to support establishment and operation of collaborative networked
organizations (CNO) will be achieved. Significant contributions will be

made to: development of a reference model, and reference system architecture
for the VO breeding environments, the VBE management system, the VBE life
cycle support, discovery / evolution of competency/resource ontology, trust
models, and approaches to performance-based trust establishment.
The VL-e project runs until 2008. The VL-e COLIM will approach several
open issues related to design and implementation of "generic and extensible
collaborative information management architecture" for supporting the VL-E
application areas, including:
Common representation models and common framework / language, to
support integration of pre-existing heterogeneous information systems,
towards their full federation.
Development of Grid-based modules for federated information retrieval and
federated query processing.
Development of advanced semi-automatic tools, e.g. schema matching/
integration and automatic generation of database schemas, to assist the
VL-e’s scientists, developers and administrators, with management of their
information,
Interactive Systems
Key Words
Human computer interaction, Cultural aspects of ICT, E-government, Learning
environments, Meta-cognition
Main Theme
In general this theme covers the theory and practice of human computer
interaction in a variety of contexts. One topic under this theme is the study of
interaction requirements and user experiences for special user groups (blind
children, cultural minorities, disadvantaged communities, entrepreneurs,
students). Special evaluation methodologies have to be developed to gain insight
in interface design principles for these groups.
A second topic under this theme is the design and evaluation of interactive
learning environments. What design principles can be developed for systems
that support learners in their learning tasks. An important theoretical issue is
how the principles derived from theories of learning and instruction can be
translated into methods for e-learning environments.
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2004 Results
Human Computer Interaction for the Blind
In order to gain insight in the barriers towards optimal user experience for blind
and visually impaired our research aims to develop an international online
community for blind and seeing children. This research focus offers us the
opportunity to push theory and technological innovation further to cater for
solutions to the problems we encounter. These innovations are thought to offer
contributions for the field of Human Computer Interaction in general and
contribute towards bridging human sensory capabilities with technology.
In 2004, our efforts have focused on requirements analyses of blind and seeing
children to identify differences in requirements and user experience. We find
that blind children build different cognitive models concerning Internet and
computer technology than seeing children do and these differences influence
interaction.
Cultural aspects of E-government
In previous studies investigating the effects of culture on design preferences,
attitude towards computers, understanding of interfaces, use of e-government
systems, we have measured cultural value dimensions and have tried to relate
them to design preferences, user attitudes, user experience or usage behaviour.
In a recent study we investigated multi-cultural user experience of
e-government applications for SME’s, In another study we tested attitude
towards computers in the Akshaya project (a pilot project in rural India to
make at least one person in every household computer literate). In these studies,
cultural dimensions were not found to correlate with aspects of attitude or user
experience. Our findings suggest that socio-economic factors such as
knowledge of language, education and computer experience are better factors to
predict user preferences and attitudes. Even though these factors offer the
ability to model a particular target user group, it still leaves the question about
the way in which cognitive models of the real world are shared within a culture
and whether modeling of users on a group or cultural level is possible.
Not only to assess international and cultural aspects of Human Computer
Interaction but also to inform theories on collaborative systems. In investigating
cross-cultural user behaviour we will need to build a complete and more
complex model of the user and the context in which technology is used.
E-government for multicultural entrepreneurs.
The city of Amsterdam is developing many new ways to improve service
delivery to citizens and entrepreneurs in the city. Recently, a virtual business

counter, het ondernemersloket, has opened in Amsterdam. We investigated how
users with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds experience the use of this
virtual counter. The main findings indicate that language skills and virtualisation
of the company of the user affect the use of the virtual counter more than
cultural background and other demographic variables.
ICT for development
Other research focuses on poverty reduction in developing nations and the role
of technology in this process. Previously, a project was briefly mentioned where
technology acceptance was evaluated for people in rural India who are taking
part of a computer literacy project. The research offered insights in the impact
of technology on economically disadvantaged communities. Another study
investigates access to education for children in developing countries. This
research is in collaboration with the NIIT institute of India (KIOSK project)
and involves the development and placement of publicly accessible computer
kiosks in rural India. Our research investigates what knowledge children
develop by using computers without any assistance. The research provides
insights into the knowledge needed to make optimal use of computers and the
internet and what schooling and knowledge could potentially be provided
through the kiosks.
Learning in simulation environments
This project investigates factors that influence learning processes in simulation
environments such as KM-Quest. The main results of the research are:
1. Contrary to the literature (cf. De Jong & Van Joolingen) the gaming –
simulation environment KM Quest for the domain of Knowledge
Management does promote learning success. Students acquire declarative and
procedural knowledge as a result of playing the game.
2. The prospective measurement of meta-cognition (in which meta-cognition is
regarded as a more or less stable trait or disposition) by means of a self-report
inventory, does not influence the acquisition of knowledge and skills
3. The retrospective measurement of meta-cognition (in which meta-cognition
is viewed as a transitory state) by means of a self-report inventory, does
influence the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Students that report to be
weaker in using meta-cognitive skills, achieve more learning success than
students that report to be stronger in using meta-cognitive skills. The
assumption is that KM Quest, that is strongly rooted in constructivist
principles, is especially beneficial for students that are weaker in monitoring
and controlling their learning behaviour.
4. The addition of a task model to the learning environment that prescribes how
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to solve KM problems is of no influence on learning achievements or use of
meta-cognitive skills.
2005 and beyond
In 2005 further research in the ICIS-CHIM project will investigate the
interaction necessary for user involvement in automated filtering or information
distribution. In complex collaborative dynamic environments such as crisis
control situations, information overload is countered through adaptive
information filtering. These filtering systems are based on machine learning
technology and mix automatic and manual profile generation. The way in which
users in complex dynamic settings can collaborate and collectively train the
information distribution system will be one of the focus areas of research.
Affective aspects of interaction will be investigated as effectiveness and
efficiency of the system will depend on user trust and acceptance.
A new research project proposed involves user interaction and interface
preferences for multimodal Virtual Reality visualization. Virtual environments
support a variety of modalities ranging from non-immersive desktop
representations on a conventional PC or a PDA, to fully immersive CAVE-like
environments and augmented reality (AR). The range of functionalities
supported is variable and can focus on projection and analysis of complex data
(MRI scan based visualisations of human physical conditions) or virtual meeting
places where remote social interaction is realised through virtual presence in a
virtual space. The selection of an appropriate modality in accordance with the
user’s tasks, preferences and personal features is increasingly important.
The research will investigate to what extent task-orientation, user culture and
socio-psychological factors influence user preferences for interaction in
different projection modalities.
Ongoing research concerning special user groups will lead to developments of
prototype systems to facilitate interaction between blind and seeing users.
E-learning tools to facilitate unsupervised learning in disadvantaged
communities and the development of a model of culture as well as a model of
emotion to effectively investigate the effects of culture and the effects of
emotion on human computer interaction. Data collection tools will be
developed from these models and administered in a large scale international
empirical study.

Qualitative Reasoning
Keywords
Knowledge capture and communication, Knowledge simulation, Conceptual
knowledge, Common-sense reasoning, Question generation, Diagrammatic
reasoning, External representations, Concept Maps, Explanation.
Main theme
Qualitative reasoning is an area of Artificial Intelligence that is concerned with
the construction of knowledge models that capture insights domain experts
have of systems’ structure and their behaviour (functioning). Qualitative
reasoning provides a rich vocabulary for describing objects, situations, relations,
causality, assumptions, and mechanisms of change. Using this vocabulary it is
possible to capture conceptual knowledge about systems and their behaviour
and use that knowledge to automatically derive relevant conclusions without
requiring numerical data. Qualitative modelling uses a compositional approach
to enable reusability. This is achieved by constructing libraries of partial
behaviour descriptions (model-fragments) that apply to the smallest entities
relevant within a domain. As larger systems are built from these basic elements,
reasoning about the behaviour of larger systems means combining the
behaviour of these elements. This prevents having to develop dedicated models
for each system encountered. Our main research questions include:
Constructing knowledge libraries for new domains
Distributed and collaborative model-building
Automated question generation
Explanation generation and automated model debugging
The application of QR technology to education
Diagrammatic languages for knowledge visualization
2004 Results
Tools for Knowledge Capture and Communication
A set of tools has been constructed that is currently being used by domain
experts (mainly ecologists) to capture and share knowledge among experts,
stakeholders and learners. The latest versions of this software produced in 2004
are: GARP (version 2), VisiGarp (version 2.04), and HOMER (version 2.1)
(http://hcs.science.uva.nl/projects/GARP/.) GARP is a domain independent
qualitative reasoning engine that allows users to simulate the behaviour of
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systems using a command-based interface. VISIGARP is a graphical interface to
GARP that allows users to select, run and inspect qualitative simulation models
by interacting with automatically generated visualizations. HOMER is a
model-building environment that allows users to construct qualitative models
using a graphical interface. Models constructed with HOMER can be exported
as a set of files and used as input for GARP and/or VisiGarp.
Learning by modeling
Interactive Learning Environments that can be used by learners to learn while
constructing. This is a special research track within the theme Qualitative
Reasoning. It concerns research questions such as external representations,
knowledge visualisation, and automated help. The Ph.D. project carried out by
V. Bessa Machado showed that with careful designed diagrammatic
representations novices were capable of using the model-building workbench
MOBUM successfully. A multi-agent approach was developed to support the
modelling process. The agents provided different kinds of help, such as general
information on the formalisms and tailored feedback addressing the individual
needs of a learner. Agents thus have scope, provide context-sensitive help, and
are personified according to the type of support they provide. An evaluation
study showed that such a help-system can effectively support users. V. Bessa
Machado successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis on this topic in 2004 (promotor
prof. dr. B.J. Wielinga and co-promotor dr. B. Bredeweg).
MONET network of Excellence
Monet is a European Network of Excellence in Model Based Systems and
Qualitative Reasoning (MBS & QR) (Contract No: IST-33540). The Project
brings together experts in these fields from Academia and Industry in order to
realize the potential of this area. The primary aim being to bring these
technologies to the point where they are of use to Industry and therefore
forward the competitiveness of the joint economies of Europe. The methods
used in MBS & QR are applicable to many and diverse areas of Research and
Industry. Some applications are more developed than others; some are already
in commercial use at this time. The Project aims to further the use of these
technologies and then apply the lessons learned in their development to
furthering the areas that are not quite so developed.
Portal on QRM
Due to the advanced representational features of Qualitative Reasoning, users
find it often hard to use. One of the major problems with using Qualitative
Reasoning is gaining the experience required to use them. Although the

software is available (in our case freely so) if learners, teachers, stake-holders or
domain experts want to use QR software it is difficult, if not impossible for
them to do so unaided. A portal has been implemented that supports users of
QR technology. The current version of the portal (version 2) includes
information on QR ontologies, modelling and simulation
(http://monet.aber.ac.uk/). There is an initial enumeration of typical examples
and assignments, a list of FAQ and a glossary. The goal is to have this portal
grow and support a community of practice on using and developing QR
technology.
2005 and beyond
NaturNet-Redime is a EU FP6 STREP project that has just started (March 1st,
2005). It will develop educational programmes to contribute to and accompany
the design of the European Union’s Strategy for Sustainable Development.
The technology produced will increase knowledge of the various factors that
affect sustainable development. By building understanding of processes,
decision makers, stakeholders, and citizens will be able to make more informed
and equitable decisions. All materials will be available via the NaturNet-
Redime (www.naturnet.org) web portal. Interaction with end users will provide
feedback to ensure optimization.
The tools for knowledge capture and communication developed by our group
will be the basis for the ecologist in the project to construct conceptual models.
While collaborating with the experts, we will further improve our tools and
develop means to support their usage. Three areas of research are planned.
First, the integration of existing software packages into a seamless workbench
for capturing and sharing ecological knowledge. Secondly, tools, method and
support for a collaborative approach to modelling. Third, intelligent support
and means for model-debugging to aid users (particularly, citizens and
stakeholders) in their needs to created understanding and construct
argumentation.
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Chapter 3
Applied Research
and Education
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The Laboratory for Computing, System Architecture and
Programming
1. Computational Informatics
The knowledge acquired through Computational Science is vital to solve many
important problems in contemporary society, not only in the general sense,
through the development of know-how, solution techniques and tools, but also
through the development of specific applications and Grid middleware.
The Grid promises to become an important paradigm for business computing
and our efforts in developing grid based environments is therefore very
relevant. Many of our applications have a clear societal relevance. As an
example, consider the work performed for the vascular reconstruction. The
societal relevance of the flooding crisis management application in the
CrossGrid project has been dramatically demonstrated recently, with and
estimated damage of over 10 billion Euros due to flooding in Germany alone.
Finally, the HIV infection related work clearly is of high societal relevance.
2. Advanced Computing Systems Engineering
The social and technological relevance of our research is illustrated by the
impact this research has for companies like Philips, where the architectures of
consumer electronics become increasingly heterogeneous
and complex. Good tool support, to assist architects during all design stages,
becomes more and more important for designing these systems. Another
example is the introduction of road pricing along the Dutch roads, which has
been a political issue for many years. In the CAPS group, we have concentrated
on the technical issues of this subject. In both examples modeling and
simulation of the systems play an important role in studying their behavior
before they are actually built. The industrial benefit of our Virtual Laboratory
research is illustrated by the opportunities offered to, for example, commercial
aviation companies: using virtual laboratory infrastructures, companies like
Boeing have access to a Virtual Wind Tunnel to perform large simulations
needed for the design of new wind turbines for aircrafts.
3. Programming Methods and Programming Environments
In the Programming Methods and Environments programme, the general aim is
to support the development of better software in a systematic manner. Design

and analysis on the conceptual level both are indispensable for a better
understanding of programming, programming languages and programmed
systems. The connection between our different projects has always been the
transfer of concepts and models to the experimental stream and to the scientific
community.
Sophisticated tools based on a firm foundation are crucial for the gradual
improvement of software engineering practices. The results of the
Programming Environments project may have a major impact on the longer
term software development strategies in industry. In the software IT industry,
most
development is about enhancing existing systems, for instance, providing new
front-ends to established back-ends, capitalizing on existing relational
technology for data storage, and building new interfaces to existing software
assets. Organizations are more and more trying to find effective ways to reuse
their investments in existing packages, data bases, and legacy assets. Evidently,
more and more people working in the software engineering area will be
working on existing systems. This project perfectly fits these needs from the IT
industry.
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The Intelligent Systems Laboratory Amsterdam
1. Intelligent Sensory Information Systems
ISIS has been awarded as one of three national centers in the IOP-program for
industrial vision. Over the years, the IOP-project is performed in cooperation
with Stork, Oce, Philips CFT, Philips Medical Systems, ENZA, TNO, DLO,
Noldus, Nederlands Forensisch Instituut, SPC and a few other industries.
The AMIS project combines five computer science research schools of the
Netherlands into one integrated project on image search. The emphasis towards
multimedia is further developed through an ICES KIS II grant of MEuro 4 to
the UvA and the CWI with additional support from Elsevier, Oce, TNO,
Datadistilleries. The aim is to convert high level research in multi-media
information analysis into demonstrators, half-products and other means of
innovation in Dutch industry.
The European IMAT project is developed with support from a variety of
industries in Europe.
We have set up a joint venture with TNO called MediaMill in the area of
multi-media information analysis. And we commenced a cooperation with the
Ducth Forensic Institute, Rijswijk.
In the context of the ICES KIS and IOP programs, we design and show
demonstrators to a large variety of industries and institutions. Demonstrators
are in the area of image search, the PictoSeek system as well as the Filter Image
Browser, document image analysis, document genre classification and the
MediaMill video indexer.
Based on our experience with SCIL-Image, an environment for image
processing algorithms implemented for 10 years in a large number of scientific
labs for image processing mostly within the Netherlands, we have concluded
work on the object-oriented pattern-based Horus C++ package.
2. Intelligent Autonomous Systems
To promote robotics at a young age, the IAS-group has initiated in 2004
RoboCup Junior (http://www.robocupjunior.nl). RobuCup Junior is a special
league in which children between 9 and 19 compete with robots of their own
design. In cooperation with the Amstel Institute and Nemo annual workshops

and competitions are organized. During these games the best teams are selected
and may then participate in international competitions. RoboCup Junior
consists of three leagues that are divided into a number of age groups from 9 to
19.
Peter van Lith and Jelle Kok were the scientific hosts of the Beta Festival, a
yearly event to promote science in the Netherlands
(http://www.studeren.uva.nl/betafestival/). This year the focus was on robotics.
3. Information and Language Processing Systems
In collaboration with colleagues at the Academisch Medisch Centrum (AMC)
work continued on support tools for developing terminologies, such as
debugging, explanation, and summarization.
We started the developement of a benchmark for XML query engines. The goal
of this project is to improve existing, both commercial and open-source,
programs. The benchmark discovered bugs in two of the three systems we
tested. These have been reported to the developers of the query engines and
fixed.
Using TREC evaluation measures, the search engine of the UvA website has
been tested and compared to state of the art search engine technologies. This has
resulted in a number of concrete recommendations to the ICT group of the
Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Collaborative work with several cultural heritage partners was set up, and has
so far lead to final year projects and/or drafts of research proposals. Contacts
with Elsevier Science were re-newed, and possibilities for future collaborations
in the area of semi-structured retrieval are being explored.
Finally, within the setting of the Adaptive Information Disclosure project,
ontology-based search technology is being developed to support the literature
search efforts of bio-informaticians.
Applied Research and Education
44
Annual Report 2004
The Laboratory for Human Computer Studies
Interapy
Interapy conducts research on Computer-mediated Therapy (CMT) using a
structured approach administered via the WWW. Interapy is a company that
grew out of collaborative research between participants from Psychology and
Social-science Informatics (now HCS). An important class of treatments deals
with Post-traumatic Stress Syndromes (PTSS).
Ontologies
The methods and tools developed as part of the ontology research activities
were used to develop a number of ontologies for knowledge management
application projects in two large companies.
Eduction
One outcome of the research performed by UvA within the THINKcreative
network of experts - focused on the study of virtual/networked organizations –
was editing a book on "Collaborative Networked Organizations". This book is
now being used by several Universities for graduate courses in this area.

Chapter 4
Facts and Figures
Facts an Figures 45
Annual Report 2004
Financial paragraph (x 1000 Euro) 2005
Income
Lump sum (university funding) 3451
Income from research activities 3981
Other income 150
Total 7582
Expenses
Personnel 6100
Other expenses 2076
Total 8176
Net result -594
Human Resource Input in fte for 2004
Human Resource Funding CSP ISLA HCS
Input 2004
CI ACSE PMPE ISIS IAS ILPS HCS
Full Professor 1 1 2 0.6 1.2 1 0.75 1
2
3 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.4
Associate Pro f e s s o r 1 1 2 1 2 0.5 0.7
2
3 0.9
Assistant Pro f e s s o r 1 2 3 2 1.3 1.8 0.75 5.1
2 0.7
3 0.4 0.2 0.3
Post doc 1 1 2 0.6 3.6 1.7
2 2 3 1 2.8
3 1.2 2.8 3 3 2.8
PhD Student 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.5 1
2 4.5 1 2 3 1.5 2
3 5 3 2 1 0.75 8
S o f t w a r
e Developers 1 1 1 1 1
2
3 6 9 2 1
Other 1 1.3 1 1 0.8
2 1.5
3 2.3 7.6 3
Guests 1 2 0.4 1.2

Research Input 2004 Funding CSP ISLA HCS
CI ACSE PMPE ISIS IAS ILPS HCS
Full Professor 1 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.6 0.3 0.38 0.5
2
3 0.2 0.3
Associate Professor 1 0.4 0.5 0.4 1 0.4
2 0.2
3 0.1 0.4 0.5
Assistant Professor 1 0.8 0.4 0.8 0.5 1 0.38 2.65
2 0.7
3 0.4
Post doc 1 0.4 0.3 1.1 1.15
2 0.6 0.5 0.8 3.03
3 4.8 2 2.4 1.35
PhD Student 1 0.7 0.7 2 0.7 0.56 0.75
2 2.55 1.4 2.4 1.37 0.94
3 3.3 4.4 2.6 1.4 0.87 1.24
Other 1 0.3 0.2
2
3 4.4 0.9 0.7
Guests 0.3 0.4 0.7
Scientific Output 2004 CSP ISLA HCS Total
CI ACSE PMPE ISIS IAS ILPS HCS
Dissertations 1 1 1 1 3 7
Journal Articles 19 7 2 14 4 4 11 61
Books, bookchapters,
special issues 6 12 1 6 25
Conference
contributions 22 20 1 37 34 57 30 201
Reports 11 4 4 7 26
Professional
publications 1 1 6 1 9
Facts an Figures
46
Annual Report 2004

Appendices
Appendices Informatics Institute
47
Annual Report 2004
Appendix 1: Publications
The Laboratory for Computing, System Architecture and
Programming
1. Computational Informatics
Recent key publications
[1] K.A. Iskra, R.G. Belleman, G.D. van Albada, J. Santoso, P.M.A. Sloot, H.E.
Bal, H.J.W. Spoelder and M. Bubak. The polder computing environment, a
system for interactive distributed simulation. Concurrency and Computation:
Practice and Experience, 14:1313-1335, 2002. Special Issue on Grid Computing
Environments.
[2] J.A. Kaandorp, E.A. Koopman, P.M.A. Sloot, R.P.M. Bak, M.J.A. Vermeij
and L.E.H. Lampmann. Simulation and analysis of flow patterns around the
scleractinian coral Madracis mirabilis (Duchassaing and Michelotti). Phil. Trans.
R. Soc. Lond. B, vol. 358 (1437), pp. 1551 - 1557. 2003.
[3] B.D. Kandhai, D. Hlushkou, A.G. Hoekstra, P.M.A. Sloot, H. van As and
U. Tallarek. Influence of stagnant zones on transient and asymptotic dispersion
in macroscopically homogeneous porous media. Physical Review letters,
88(23):234501:1-4, 2002.
[4] S.F. Portegies Zwart, H. Baumgardt, P. Hut, J. Makino and S.L.W. McMillan.
Formation of massive black holes through runaway collisions in dense young
star clusters. Nature, vol. 428, pp. 724-726, 2004.
[5] P.F. Spinnato, G.D. van Albada and P.M.A. Sloot. Performance modelling of
distributed hybrid architectures. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed
Systems,vol. 15, nr 1 pp. 81-92. January 2004.
[6] A. Tirado-Ramos, P.M.A. Sloot, A.G. Hoekstra and M. Bubak. An
Integrative Approach to High-Performance Biomedical Problem Solving
Environments on the Grid. Parallel Computing, vol. 30, nr 9-10 pp. 1037-1055,
(Chun-Hsi Huang and Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, editors), 2004.

Dissertations
[1] Z. Zhao: An agent based architecture for constructing Interactive Simulation
Systems,PhD thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands, (Promotor: Prof. Dr. P.M.A. Sloot, Co-promotor: Dr. G.D. van
Albada) December 2004.
Journal articles
[1] A.M.M. Artoli, B.D. Kandhai, H.C.J. Hoefsloot, A.G. Hoekstra and P.M.A.
Sloot. Lattice BGK of flow in a symmetric bifurcation. Future Generation
Computer Systems, vol. 20, nr 6 pp. 909-916, 2004.
[2] D. Chakrabarty and S.F. Portegies Zwart. An Inverse-Problem Approach to
Cluster Dynamics. Astronomical Journal,vol. 128, pp. 1046-1057, September
2004.
[3] B. Chopard and A.G. Hoekstra. Guest Editorial, Computational science of
lattice Boltzmann modelling. Future Generation Computer Systems, vol. 20, nr 6
pp. 907-908, August 2004.
[4] H.S.M. Cramer, V. Evers, E.V. Zudilova and P.M.A. Sloot. Context analysis
to inform virtual reality application development. International Journal of
Virtual Reality, vol. 7, nr 3 pp. 177-186, 2004.
[5] J.M. Fregeau, P. Cheung, S.F. Portegies Zwart and F.A. Rasio. Stellar collisions
during binary-binary and binary-single star interactions. Mon. Not. Royal
Astr. Soc., vol. 352, pp. 1-19, July 2004.
[6] A. Gualandris, S.F. Portegies Zwart and P.P. Eggleton. N-body simulations
of stars escaping from the Orion nebula. Mon.Not.Royal Astron. Soc., vol. 350,
pp. 615-626, May 2004.
[7] A.G. Hoekstra, J. van 't Hoff, A.M.M. Artoli and P.M.A. Sloot. Unsteady
flow in a 2D elastic tube with the Lattice BGK method. Future Generation
Computer Systems,vol. 20, nr 6 pp. 917-924, 2004.
[8] C. Hopman, S.F. Portegies Zwart and T. Alexander. Ultraluminous X-Ray
Sources as Intermediate-Mass Black Holes Fed by Tidally Captured Stars.
Astrophys. J. Let., vol. 604, pp. L101-L104, April 2004.
Appendices 48
Annual Report 2004
[9] R.M.H. Merks, A.G. Hoekstra, J.A. Kaandorp and P.M.A. Sloot. Polyp
oriented modelling of coral growth. Journal of Theoretical Biology,vol. 228, nr
4 pp. 559-576, 2004.
[10 ] D. Merrit, S. Piatek, S.F. Portegies Zwart and M. Hemsendorf. Core
Formation by a Population of Massive Remnants. Astrophys. J. Let., vol. 608,
pp. L25-L28, June 2004.
[11] G. Nelemans, L.R. Yungelson and S.F. Portegies Zwart. Short-period AM
CVn systems as optical, X-ray and gravitational-wave sources. Mon. Not. Royal
Astr. Soc., vol. 349, pp. 181-192, March 2004.
[12] S.F. Portegies Zwart, J. Dewi and T. Maccarone. Intermediate mass black
holes in accreting binaries: formation, evolution and observational appearance.
Mon. Not. Royal Astr. Soc. , vol. 355, pp. 413-423, December 2004.
[13] S.F. Portegies Zwart, P. Hut, S.L.W. McMillan and J. Makino: Star cluster
ecology - V. Dissection of an open star cluster: spectroscopy, Mon. Not. Royal
Astr. Soc., vol. 351, pp. 473-486, June 2004.
[14] S.F. Portegies Zwart, H. Baumgardt, P. Hut, J. Makino and S.L.W.
McMillan. Formation of massive black holes through runaway collisions in
dense young star clusters. Nature, vol. 428, pp. 724-726, April 2004.
[15] C.P. Salzberg, A.T. Antony and H. Sayama. Evolutionary dynamics of cellular
automata-based self-replicators in hostile environments. BioSystems, vol.
78, nr 1-3 pp. 119-134, 2004.
[16] K.A. Semyanov, P.A. Tarasov, A.E. Zharinov, A.V. Chernyshev, A.G.
Hoekstra and V.P. Maltsev. Single-Particle Sizing from Light Scattering by
Spectral Decomposition. Applied Optics,vol. 43, nr 26 pp. 5110-5115,
September 2004.
[17] M.S. Sipior, S.F. Portegies Zwart and G. Nelemans. Recycled pulsars with
black hole companions: the high-mass analogues of PSR B2303+46. Mon. Not.
Royal Astr. Soc., vol. 354, pp. L49-L53, November 2004.
[18] P.F. Spinnato, G.D. van Albada and P.M.A. Sloot. Performance Modeling of
Distributed Hybrid Architectures. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and
Distributed Systems,vol. 15, nr 1 pp. 81-92, January 2004.

[19] A. Tirado-Ramos, P.M.A. Sloot, A.G. Hoekstra and M. Bubak. An
Integrative Approach to High-Performance Biomedical Problem Solving
Environments on the Grid. Parallel Computing, vol. 30, nr 9-10 pp. 1037-1055,
(Chun-Hsi Huang and Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, editors), 2004.
Books, bookchapters and special issues
[1] M. Bubak, G.D. van Albada, P.M.A. Sloot and J.J. Dongarra. Computational
Science - ICCS 2004: 4th International Conference, Kraków, Poland, June 6-9,
2004. Proceedings, Part I, in series Lecture Notes in Computer Science,vol. 3036,
Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, June 2004, ISBN 3-540-22114-X.
[2] M. Bubak, G.D. van Albada, P.M.A. Sloot and J.J. Dongarra. Computational
Science - ICCS 2004: 4th International Conference, Kraków, Poland, June 6-9,
2004. Proceedings, Part II, in series Lecture Notes in Computer Science,vol.
3037, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, June 2004, ISBN 3-540-22115-8.
[3] M. Bubak, G.D. van Albada, P.M.A. Sloot and J.J. Dongarra. Computational
Science - ICCS 2004: 4th International Conference, Kraków, Poland, June 6-9,
2004. Proceedings, Part III, in series Lecture Notes in Computer Science,vol.
3038, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, June 2004, ISBN 3-540-22116-6.
[4] M. Bubak, G.D. van Albada, P.M.A. Sloot and J.J. Dongarra. Computational
Science - ICCS 2004: 4th International Conference, Kraków, Poland, June 6-9,
2004. Proceedings, Part IV, in series Lecture Notes in Computer Science , vol.
3039, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, June 2004, ISBN 3-540-22129-8.
[5] J.A. Kaandorp and R.A. Garcia Leiva. Morphological analysis of two- and
three-dimensional images of branching sponges and corals. In A.M.T. Elewa,
editor, Morphometrics - Applications in Biology and Paleontology, pp. 83-94.
Springer-Verlag, 2004. ISBN 3-540-21429-1.
[6] P.M.A. Sloot, B. Chopard and A.G. Hoekstra. Cellular Automata: 6th
International Conference on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry,
ACRI 2004, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 25-28, 2004. In series
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3305, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg,
October 2004, ISBN: 3-540-23596-5.
Appendices
49
Annual Report 2004
Conference contributions
[1] A.M.M. Artoli, L. Abrahamyan and A.G. Hoekstra. Accuracy versus
Performance in Lattice Boltzmann BGK Simulations of Systolic Flows. In M.
Bubak, G.D. van Albada, P.M.A. Sloot and J.J. Dongarra, editors,
Computational Science - ICCS 2004: 4th International Conference, Kraków,
Poland, June 6-9, 2004, Proceedings, Part IV, in series Lecture Notes in
Computer Science,vol. 3039, pp. 548-555, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, June
2004, ISBN 3-540-22129-8.
[2] H.S.M. Cramer, V. Evers, E.V. Zudilova and P.M.A. Sloot. Usability
Evaluation of a Simulated Vascular Reconstruction System. In Proceedings of
the VIRART Virtual Reality Design and Evaluation Workshop 2004, (CD-
ROM, Panel VI (Design methods/process and evaluation)) University of
Nottingham, United Kingdom, January 2004, ISBN 0 85358 123 1.
[3] J. Cui and J.A. Kaandorp. Mathematical modelling of calcium homeostasis in
yeast cells. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Intelligent
Systems for Molecular Biology and 3rd European Conference on Computational
Biology (ISMB/ECCB), (abstract) pp. 215, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, July 2004.
[4]D.P. Gavidia, E.V. Zudilova and P.M.A. Sloot. A Client-Server Engine for
Parallel Computation of High-Resolution Planes. In M. Bubak, G.D. van
Albada, P.M.A. Sloot and J.J. Dongarra, editors, Computational Science - ICCS
2004: 4th International Conference, Kraków, Poland, June 6-9, 2004,
Proceedings, Part III, in series Lecture Notes in Computer Science,vol. 3038, pp.
970-977, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, June 2004, ISBN 3-540-22116-6.
[5] M. Gieles. E. Athanassoula and S.F. Portegies Zwart. The Effect of Spiral
Arms on Star Cluster Evolution. AAS/Division of Dynamical Astronomy
Meeting, vol. 35, pp. May 2004.
[6] E. Gorbachev Yu, M.A. Zatevakhin, A.A. Ignatiev, V.V. Krzhizhanovskaya.
Simulation of heat and mass transfer processes in PECVD reactors for silicon
films growth under the conditions of intense formation of higher silanes in the
gas phase in The 5th Minsk International Heat and Mass Transfer Forum, MIF-
2004. May 24-28, 2004. Minsk, Belarus. Book of abstracts, V. 1, pp. 301-302 (in
Russian), Proceedings published on CD, index S04/4-08. Proceedings on the
Web: http://relay.itmo.by/forum/mif5/S04/4-08.PDF

[7]Y.E. Gorbachev, V.V. Krzhizhanovskaya and P.M.A. Sloot. Using GRID
technologies for simulation of complex physical-chemical systems. In
Proceedings of the XI All-Russian conference Telematika '2004. (In Russian) pp.
165-167, Publ.: SPbSU ITMO "Informika", St. Petersburg, Russia, June 2004.
[8] Y.E. Gorbachev, M.A. Zatevakhin, A.A. Ignatiev and V.V.
Krzhizhanovskaya. Virtual Laboratory for Research and Education. In XI
International Conference on High Technologies and Quality of Education and
Science. pp. 90-91, SPbSPU, St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, February
2004.
[9] K.A. Iskra, G.D. van Albada and P.M.A. Sloot. Towards Grid-aware Time
Warp. In Proceedings of the 18th Workshop on Parallel and Distributed
Simulation, pp. 63-70, IEEE Computer Society, Kufstein, Austria, May 2004,
ISBN 0-7695-2111-8.
[10] M.B.N. Kouwenhoven, A.G.A. Brown, A. Gualandris, L. Kaper, S.F.
Portegies Zwart and H. Zinnecker. The Primordial Binary Population in OB
Associations, in Revista Mexicana de Astronomia y Astrofisica Conference Series,
(Provided by the NASA Astrophysics Data System ) pp. 139-140, August 2004.
[11] M.B.N. Kouwenhoven, S.F. Portegies Zwart, A. Gualandris, A.G.A.
Brown, L. Kaper and H. Zinnecker. Recovering the primordial binary population
using simulating observations of simulations. Astronomische Nachrichten
Supplement, (Abstract) vol. 325, pp. 101, 2004.
[12] V.V. Krzhizhanovskaya, M.A. Zatevakhin, A.A. Ignatiev, Y.E. Gorbachev,
W.J. Goedheer and P.M.A. Sloot. A 3D Virtual Reactor for Simulation of
Silicon-Based Film Production, in 5th International Bi-Annual ASME/JSME
Symposium on Computational Technologies For Fluid / Thermal / Chemical /
Stressed Systems With Industrial Applications, held in conjunction with the
ASME/JSME PVP Conference. In series ASME PVP, vol. 491, nr 2 pp. 59-68,
San Diego / La Jolla, California, July 2004, ISBN 0-7918-4686-5.
[13] V.V. Krzhizhanovskaya, Y.E. Gorbachev and P.M.A. Sloot. A Grid-Based
Problem-Solving Environment for Simulation of Plasma Enhanced Chemical
Vapor Deposition. In Book of abstracts of the International Conference
"Distributed Computing and Grid Technologies in Science and Education", pp.
89-90, JINR Dubna, Dubna, Russia, June-July 2004, ISBN 5-9530-0052-9.
Appendices
50
Annual Report 2004
[14] B. Leskes and P.M.A. Sloot. Unlearning Phenomena in Co-evolution of
Non-uniform Cellular Automata. In P.M.A. Sloot, B. Chopard and A.G.
Hoekstra, editors, Cellular Automata: 6th International Conference on Cellular
Automata for Research and Industry, ACRI 2004, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands, October 25-28, 2004, in series Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
vol. 3305, pp. 172-181, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, October 2004, ISBN: 3-
540-23596-5.
[15] B. Ó Nualláin and S. de Rooij. Online Suffix Trees with Counts. In
Proceedings of the Data Compression Conference 2004, (accepted) IEEE
Computer Society Press, 2004.
[16] K. Rycerz, M. Bubak, M. Malawski and P.M.A. Sloot. Support for Effctive
and Fault Tolerant Execution of HLA-Based Applications in the OGSA
Framework. In M. Bubak, G.D. van Albada, P.M.A. Sloot and J.J. Dongarra,
editors, Computational Science - ICCS 2004: 4th International Conference,
Kraków, Poland, June 6-9, 2004, Proceedings, Part III, in series Lecture Notes in
Computer Science,vol. 3038, pp. 848-855, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, June
2004, ISBN 3-540-22116-6.
[17] K. Rycerz, B. Bali_, R. Szymacha, M. Bubak and P.M.A. Sloot: Monitoring
of HLA Grid Application Federates with OCM-G. In S.J. Turner, D. Roberts
and L. Wilson, editors, Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Distributed
Simulation and Real-Time Applications (DS-RT'04), pp. 125-132, IEEE,
Budapest, Hungary, October 2004, ISBN 3-540-22116-6.
[18] P.M.A. Sloot, A. Tirado-Ramos, A.G. Hoekstra and M. Bubak. An
Interactive Grid Environment for Non-Invasive Vascular Reconstruction, in
2nd International Workshop on Biomedical Computations on the Grid
(BioGrid'04), in conjunction with Fourth IEEE/ACM International Symposium
on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid2004), (CD-ROM IEEE Catalog
# 04EX836C) IEEE, Chicago, Illinois, USA, April 2004, ISBN 0-7803-8431-8.
[19] A. Tirado-Ramos, J.M. Ragas, D.P. Shamonin, H. Rosmanith and D.
Kranzlmueller. Integration of Blood Flow Visualization on the Grid: the
FlowFish/GVK Approach. In M.D. Dikaiakos, editor, Grid Computing:
Proceedings of the 2nd European AcrossGrids Conference, Nicosia, Cyprus, in
series Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3165, pp. 77-79, Springer Verlag,
Nicosia,Cyprus, January 28-30 2004, ISBN: 30540-22888-8.

[20] L.R. Yungelson, G. Nelemans and S.F. Portegies Zwart. AM CVn systems
as optical, X-ray and GWR sources. In Revista Mexicana de Astronomia y
Astrofisica Conference Series, pp. 117-119, July 2004.
[21] K. Zajac, M. Bubak, M. Malawski and P.M.A. Sloot. Execution and
Migration Management of HLA-Based Interactive Simulations on the Grid. In
R. Wyrzykowski, J.J. Dongarra, M. Paprzycki and J. Wa_niewski, editors,
Parallel Processing and Applied Mathematics: 5th International Conference,
PPAM 2003, Czestochowa, Poland, September 7-10, 2003. Revised Papers, in
series Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3019, pp. 872-879, Springer-
Verlag, Heidelberg, 2004, ISBN 3-540-21946-3.
[22] E.V. Zudilova and P.M.A. Sloot. Multi-modal Interaction in Biomedicine.
In Y. Cai, editor, Ambient Intelligence for Scientific Discovery, in series Lecture
Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3345, pp. 184-201, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg,
2004.
Professional publications
[1] P.M.A. Sloot and A.G. Hoekstra: Virtual Vascular Surgery on the Grid,
ERCIM news, October 2004.
Other products
Software
[1] The Dynamite software package for the checkpointing of PVM programs is
available through http://www.science.uva.nl/research/scs/Software
[2] Development of "Roche" binary evolution web interface:
http://carol.wins.uva.nl/~spz/act/roche/roche.html
[3] Development of "McScatter" hybrid software package for Monte-Carlo
dynamics with binary evolution http://manybody.org/McScatter.html
[4] MODESTA is a dedicated parallel computer platform for MOdeling DEnse
STellar systems in Amsterdam. The machine became available for production
on 2 October 2004 and is now working full time. Current performance is
1.01TFLOPs sustained speed. MODESTA has a dedicated web site:
http://modesta.science.uva.nl/
Appendices
51
Annual Report 2004
Interviews e.d.
P.M.A. Sloot:
[1] Interview Time Magazine:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,574849-3,00.html
[2] Natuur, wetenschap en techniek, nr 12, 2004: Wetenschapper aan het woord:
Boeken top 3 van Prof. Peter Sloot;
[3] AT 5: A commercial based on the theme "innovation" in the series for the
campaign 'I Amsterdam' filmed at the Sciencepark, aired three times in
December.
[4] 10 December 2004 VARA Interview: Vara: "Nieuwslicht", popular scientific
program.
http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/tv/vara/nieuwslicht/bb.20041210.asf
S.F. Portegies Zwart (selection):
[5] Sky & Telescope (August 2004, P.20) How to build a midsize black hole by
Robert Naeye
[6] Radio (AM 747) program Hoe by Teleac (2 July 2004, at 13:00).
[7] Jornal de Ciencia (22 April 2004) Grupo propoe receita para buracos negros
[8] NRC Handelsblad (24 April 2004) Middelzware zwarte gaten
[9] Scientific American (28 April 2004) Colliding Stars May Form Intermediate
Black Holes
[10] Sky & Teleskope (20 April 2004) Black hole construction zone by Robert
Naeye
[11] Life on national radio VPRO Noorderlicht (20 April 2004) missende
zwarte gaten in het heelal by van Hattum.
[12] Polskie radio (14 April 2004) Astronomia: Czarna dziura w budowie
[13] Aljazeera (15 April 2004) Missing link found in black hole by the editor
[14] de Volkskrant (18 April 2004) Amsterdammers vinden zwart gat by the
editor
[15] BBC news (15 April 2004) New support for black hole theory by Paul
Rincon
[16] cnn.com (14 April 2004) Colliding stars may create black holes by Robert
Roy Britt
[17] Wissenschaft-online.de (14 April 2004) Sternencrash bei viel Verkehr by the
editor
[18] Noorderlicht (VPRO) (14 April 2004) Middengaten by Maarten
Keulemans
[19] Astronomy (March 2004) Black holes in the middle by Steve Nadis
[20] Sky & Telescope (4 Febr 2004) Stellar Breakups by Pamela L. Gay

2. Advanced Computing Systems Engineering
Recent key publications
[1] H. Afsarmanesh, V. Guevara-Masis, and L.O. Hertzberger. Management of
Federated Information in Tele-assistance Environments. The Journal on
Information Technology in Healthcare, 2(2): 87-108, 2004.
[2] A.S.Z Belloum, D.Groep, L.O. Hertzberger, V. Korkhov, Cees T.A.M de
laat, D. Vasunin. "VLAM-G: a Grid-based Virtual Laboratory" . Future
Generation Computer System,19, 2003, No 2, 209-217
[3] C. de Laat, E. Radius, S. Wallace. "The Rationale of the Current Optical
Networking Initiatives", iGrid2002 special issue, Future Generation Computer
Systems,volume 19 issue 6, 2003.
[4] A.D. Pimentel, L.O. Hertzberger, P. Lieverse, P. van der Wolf and E.F.
Deprettere. Exploring Embedded-systems Architectures with Artemis. IEEE
Computer, 34(11):57-63, 2001.
[5] Visser, H.H. Yakali, A.J. van der Wees, M. Oud, G.A. van der Spek and L.O.
Hertzberger. "An hierarchical view on modelling the reliability of a dsrc-link
for etc applications". IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems,
3(2), June 2002.
Dissertations
[1] E.C. Kaletas: Scientific Information Management in Collaborative
Experimentation Environments, PhD thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam,
Amsterdam. ISBN 90-5776-121-1. 2004.
Journal articles
[1] H. Afsarmanesh and L. M. Camarinha-Matos (Eds). International Journal
of Networking and Virtual Organizations (Inderscience), Special issue on
Infrastructures for new virtual organizations, Vol. 2, Nº 3, 2004.
During 2004 H. Afsarmanesh switched from Advanced Computing Systems Engineering
to Human Computer Studies. Publications by H. Afsarmanesh have been listed in both
groups but are counted in Advanced Computing Systems Engineering.
Appendices
52
Annual Report 2004
[2] H. Afsarmanesh, V. Guevara-Masis, and L. O. Hertzberger. Management of
Federated Information in Tele-assistance Environments. The Journal on
Information Technology in Healthcare,2 (2): 87-108, 2004.
[3] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. A multi-agent based
infrastructure to support virtual communities in elderly care. International
Journal of Networking and Virtual Organizations, Inderscience, 2004 Vol. 2,
No. 3, pp.246–266, ISSN 1470-9503, 2004.
[4] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. TeleCARE: Collaborative
virtual elderly care support communities. The Journal on Information
Technology in Healthcare, Vol. 2, Issue 2, London, pp 73-86, ISSN 1479-649X,
April 2004.
[5] C. Curti, T. Ferrari, L. Gommans, S. van Oudenaarde, E. Ronchieri, F.
Giacomini, C. Vistoli. On Advance Reservation of Heterogeneous Network
Paths. Future Generation Computer Systems Journal, 2004
[6] Y. Demchenko. Virtual Organisations in Computer Grids and Identity
Management. Information Security Technical Report - Volume 9, Issue 1,
January-March 2004, Elsevier, Pages 59-76
[7] E. C. Kaletas, H. Afsarmanesh and L. O. Hertzberger. A Collaborative
Experimentation Environment for Biosciences. International Journal of
Networking and Virtual Organizations, 2 (3): 209-231, 2004.
Books, bookchapters and special issues
[1] H. Afsarmanesh and L.M. Camarinha-Matos (Eds). International Journal of
Networking and Virtual Organizations (Inderscience), Special issue on
Infrastructures for new virtual organizations, Vol. 2, Nº 3, 2004.
[2] H. Afsarmanesh, V. Marik and L.M. Camarinha-Matos. Challenges of
collaborative networks in Europe. In Collaborative Networked Organizations –
A research agenda for emerging business models, chap. 3.3, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[3] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh (Eds). Collaborative
networked organizations – A research agenda for emerging business models, by
both Springer and Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.

[4] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. A strategic roadmap for
advanced virtual organizations. Loeh, F. Sturm, M. Ollus, in Collaborative
Networked Organizations – A research agenda for emerging business models,
chapter 7.2, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[5] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. A roadmapping methodology
for strategic research on VO. In Collaborative Networked Organizations – A
research agenda for emerging business models, chapter 7.1, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[6] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. Formal modeling methods for
collaborative networks. In Collaborative Networked Organizations – A research
agenda for emerging business models, chapter 6.3, Kluwer Academic Publishers,
ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[7] L. M. Camarinha-Mato and H. Afsarmanesh. Emerging behavior in complex
collaborative networks, In Collaborative Networked Organizations – A research
agenda for emerging business models, chapter 6.2, Kluwer Academic Publishers,
ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[8] L.M. Camarinha-Matos, V. Tschammer and H. Afsarmanesh. On emerging
technologies for VO. In Collaborative Networked Organizations – A research
agenda for emerging business models,chapter 5.4, Kluwer Academic Publishers,
ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[9] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. Support infrastructures for
new collaborative form. In Collaborative Networked Organizations –
A research agenda for emerging business models, chapter 5.2, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[10] L. M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. Targeting major new trends.
In Collaborative Networked Organizations – A research agenda for emerging
business models, chapter 3.2, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-
4, 2004.
[11] L.M. Camarinha-Matos, E. Banahan, J. Sousa, F. Sturm, H. Afsarmanesh, J.
Barata, J. Playfoot and V. Tschammer. Emerging collaborative forms. In
Collaborative Networked Organizations – A research agenda for emerging
business models, chapter 2.4, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-
4, 2004.
[12] A.D. Pimentel and S. Vassiliadis, editors, Proceedings of the 3rd and 4th Int.
Appendices
53
Annual Report 2004
Workshop on Systems, Architectures, MOdeling, and Simulation (SAMOS 2004) ,
LNCS 3133, Samos, Greece, July, 2004.
Conference contributions
[1] H. Afsarmanesh, V. Guevara-Masis and L.O. Hertzberger. Federated management
of information for TeleCARE, in Proceedings of TELECARE 2004– Int.
Workshop on Tele-Care and Collaborative Virtual Communities in Elderly
Care, 13 Apr 2004, Porto, Portugal, INSTICC Press, pp 49-62, ISBN 972-8865-
10-4, 2004.
[2] H. Afsarmanesh, V. Guevara-Masis and L.O. Hertzberger. Service-Oriented
Architecture of TeleCARE. In Proceedings of On the Move to Meaningful
Internet Systems 2004,OTM 2004 Workshops, OTM Confederated International
Workshops and Posters, GADA, JTRES, MIOS, WORM, WOSE, PhDS, and
INTEROP 2004.
[3] H. Afsarmanesh, V. Guevara-Masis and L.O. Hertzberger. Ontology-Based
Automatic Data Structure Generation for Collaborative Networks. In
Proceedings of PRO-VE'04- 5th IFIP Working Conference on Virtual
Enterprises, 2004.
[4] L. M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. The emerging discipline of
collaborative networks. In Proceedings of PRO-VE’04– Virtual Enterprises and
Collaborative Networks, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-8138-3,
pp 3-16, 23-26, August 2004.
[5] L. M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. TeleCARE: Collaborative
virtual elderly support communities.In Proceedings of TELECARE 2004– Int.
Workshop on Tele-Care and Collaborative Virtual Communities in Elderly
Care, 13 Apr 2004, Porto, Portugal, INSTICC Press, pp 1-12, ISBN 972-8865-
10-4, 2004.
[6] F. Dijkstra and C. de Laat, Optical Exchanges. GRIDNETS conference proceedings,
October 2004
[7] C. Erbas, S. Cerav-Erbas and A.D. Pimentel. Static Priority Scheduling of
Event-Triggered Real-Time Embedded Systems'. In Proceedings of the
ACM/IEEE International Conference on Formal Methods and Models for
Codesign (MEMOCODE'04), San Diego, USA, June 23-25, 2004.

[8] L. Gommans, F. Travostino, J. Vollbrecht, C. de Laat, R. Meijer. Tokenbased
authorization of Connection Oriented Network resources. GRIDNETS
conference proceedings, October 2004.
[9] V. Guevara-Masis, H. Afsarmanesh and L.O. Hetzberger. Ontology-based
automatic data structure generation for collaborative networks. In Proceedings
of PRO-VE’04 – Virtual Enterprises and Collaborative Networks, Kluwer
Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-8138-3, pp 163-174, 23-26 August 2004.
[10] V. Guevara-Masis, H. Afsarmanesh and L.O. Hertzberger. Service-
Oriented Architecture for TeleCARE, presented at On the Move to Meaningful
Internet Systems 2004: OTM 2004 workshops: OTM confederated International
Workshops and Posters, GADA, JTRES, MIOS, WORM, WOSE, PhDS, and
INTEROP 2004, Agia NAPA, Cyprus, 2004.
[11] V. Guevara-Masis, O. Unal, E. C. Kaletas, H. Afsarmanesh and L. O.
Hertzberger. Using Ontologies for Collaborative Information Management:
Some Challenges & Ideas. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference
on Advances in Information Systems (ADVIS 2004), 2004.
[12] E.C. Kaletas, H. Afsarmanesh and L.O. Hetzberger. Analysis of requirements
for collaborative scientific experimentation environments. In Proceedings
of BASYS’04 – Emerging Solutions for Future Manufacturing Systems,
Springer, ISBN 0-387-22828-4, pp. 251-262, 27-29 September 2004.
[13] E.C. Kaletas, H. Afsarmanesh, and L.O. Hertzberger. A Methodology for
Integrating New Scientific Domains and Applications in a Virtual Laboratory
Environment. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Enterprise
Information Systems (ICEIS 2004), 2004.
[14] V. Korkhov, A.S.Z Belloum, L.O. Hertzberger. VL-e: Approach to design a
Grid-based Virtual Laboratory 5th Austrian-Hangarian yorkshop on
Distributed and Parallel systems, Budapest, Hungary, September 19-22, 2004.
[15] V. Korkhov, A.S.Z. Belloum, L.O. Hertzberger. Evaluating Metascheduling
Algorithms in VLAM-G environment, ASCI 2004 conference.
[16] Thompson and A.D. Pimentel. A High-level Programming Paradigm for
SystemC. In the Proceedings of the 4th Int. Workshop on Systems,
Architectures, MOdeling, and Simulation (SAMOS 2004), LNCS, Samos,
Greece, July, 2004.
Appendices
54
Annual Report 2004
[17] Thompson and A.D. Pimentel. A High-level Programming Paradigm for
SystemC. In the Proceedings of the Progress workshop on Embedded Systems,
October 2004.
[18] A. Tokmakoff, Y. Demchenko and M. Snijders. Collaboration and security
in CNL's virtual laboratory. WACE 2004, September 2004.
[19] A. Visser, J.G. Zoetebier, H.H. Yakali, L.O. Hertzberger. An application
for the Virtual Traffic Laboratory: calibrating speed dependence on heavy
traffic. Workshop on Dynamic Data Driven Application Systems, Krakow,
Poland, 6-9 June, 2004.
[20] A. Visser, J.G. Zoetebier, H.H. Yakali, L.O. Hertzberger. The measurement
architecture of the Virtual Traffic Laboratory. International Conference on
Computer Science (ICCS 2004), Krakow, Poland, 6-9 June, 2004.
Professional publications
[1] F. Dijkstra and D. Groep: Building a Multi-Domain Grid, ERCIM News 59,
Oct 2004, pp 36-37.
Other products
[1] As part of Artemis, we developed a prototype modeling and simulation
environment called Sesame (Simulation of Embedded System Architectures for
Multi-level Exploration). See http://sesamesim.sourceforge.net/ for the
software.
[2] VL-e/COLIM. The existing VLAM-G/VIMCO software has been
extensively tested and prepared for migration to the production environment.
Administrative tools for data source, user, and access rights management were
developed. For the biodiversity application, an Oracle database has been
developed. Data importing and visual query building functionality was built for
this database.

3. Programming Methods and Programming Environments
Recent key publications
[1] J.A. Bergstra, A. Ponse and M.B. van der Zwaag. Branching Time and
Orthogonal Bisimulation Equivalence. Theoretical Computer Science,309
(1-3):313-355, 2003.
[2] J.A. Bergstra and A. Ponse. Register-machine based processes. Journal of the
ACM, 48(6):1207-1241, 2001.
[3] M.G.J. van den Brand, J. Heering, P. Klint and P.A. Olivier. Compiling
language definitions: The ASF+SDF compiler. ACM Transactions on
Programming Languages and Systems, Volume 24(4):334-368, 2002.
[4] M.G.J. van den Brand, P. Klint, and J.J. Vinju. Term Rewriting with
Traversal Functions. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering Methodology,
12(2):152-190, 2003.
[5] Terese (editors), (among the authors I. Bethke and P. Klint). Term Rewriting
Systems. Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science 55, Cambridge
University Press, 2003.
Journal articles
[1] J.A. Bergstra and C.A. Middelburg. Located Actions in Process Algebra
with Timing. Fundamenta Informaticae 64, pp 183-211, 2004.
[2] S.P. Luttik, P.H. Rodenburg, and R.M. Verma. Remarks on Thatte's
Transformation of Term Rewriting Systems. Information and Computation,
195:66-87, 2004.
Conference contributions
[1] J.A.Bergstra. Machine Function Based Control Code Algebras. In F.S. de
Boer, M.M. Bonsangue, S. Graf and W.P. de Roever (Eds.), Proceedings FMCO
2003, SLNCS 3188, pp 17-41, 2004.
Appendices
55
Annual Report 2004
Reports
[1] J.A. Bergstra and I.Bethke. Linear Projective Program Syntax, Logic Group
Preprint Series 233, Dept. of Philosophy, Utrecht University, 2004.
[2] J.A. Bergstra. Axioms for SNABOK, a System and Network Administration
Body of Knowledge: Missing Link Stage of Ontology Process,Logic Group
Preprint Series 227, Dept. of Philosophy, Utrecht University, 2004.
[3] J.A. Bergstra and C.A. Middelburg. Process Algebra for Hybrid Systems,
Logic Group Preprint Series 225, Dept. of Philosophy, Utrecht University,
2004.
[4] J.A. Bergstra and C.A. Middelburg. Continuity controlled hybrid automata,
Technical report 0411, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2004.
[5] J.A. Bergstra and C.A. Middelburg. Model theory for process algebra,
Technical report 0424, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2004.
[6] J.A. Bergstra and C.A. Middelburg. Thread algebra for strategic
interleaving, Technical report 0435, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2004.
[7] J.A. Bergstra and C.A. Middelburg. A thread algebra with multi-level
strategic interleaving, Technical report 0441, Eindhoven University of
Technology, 2004.
[8] J.A. Bergstra and A. Ponse. Execution architectures for program algebra,
Logic Group Preprint Series 230, Dept. of Philosophy, Utrecht University,
2004.
[9] B. Diertens. Molecular Scripting Primitives, Electronic report PRG0401,
Programming Research Group, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2004.
[10] B. Diertens. A Compiler-projection from PGLEc.MSPio to Parrot ,
Electronic report PRG0403, Programming Research Group, Universiteit van
Amsterdam, 2004.
[11] P. Klint, T. van der Storm, and J.J. Vinju. Term rewriting meets aspectoriented
programming, Technical report SEN-E0421, CWI, 2004.

Professional publications
[1] G. Ballintijn, S. Brinkkemper, R. L. Jansen, P. Klint, and T. van der Storm.
Intelligente levering van productsoftware, Informatie 46:28-33, 2004.
[2] I. Bethke, B. Diertens, and A. Ponse. Webklas Informatica: Wat is een programma?,
Electronic publication in Dutch, Programming Research Group,
Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2004,
http://www.science.uva.nl/~alban/WebKlas/
[3] M. Kas and P. Klint. Kenniseconomie valt of staat met onderzoeksagenda
informatica, Automatisering Gids(week 22), 2004.
[4] P. Klint. Het Calimero effect. I/O Informatica Onderzoek, June 2004.
[5] P. Klint. Een patentoplossing? Nee, dank U!. I/O Informatica Onderzoek,
September 2004.
[6] P. Klint. Wanneer wordt U geoutsourced?. I/O Informatica Onderzoek,
December 2004.
Other products
[1] Toolkit for process algebra (the PSF-Toolkit):
http://www.science.uva.nl/~psf
[2] Toolset for program algebra: http://www.science.uva.nl/research/prog/projects/pga
[3] The Asf+Sdf Meta-Environment:
http://www.cwi.nl/~projects/MetaEnv.html
[4] The ToolBus coordination architecture:
http://www.cwi.nl/htbin/sen1/twiki/bin/view/SEN1/ToolBus
Appendices
56
Annual Report 2004
The Intelligent Systems Laboratory Amsterdam
1. Intelligent Sensory Information Systems
Recent key publications
[1] Th. Gevers and H.M.G. Stokman. Robust Histogram Construction from
Color Invariants for Object Recognition. IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and
Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 26(1), pp. 113-118, 2004.
[2] S. Ghebreab and C. C. Jaffe and A. W. M. Smeulders. Population-based
incremental interactive concept learning for image retrieval by stochastic string
segmentations. IEEE trans. Medical Imaging, 676 - 689 , 23(6), 2004.
[3] H.T. Nguyen and A. W. M. Smeulders. Fast Occluded Object Tracking by a
Robust Appearance Filter. IEEE trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine
Intelligence. 26(8), 1099 - 1104, 2004.
[4] F.J. Seinstra and D. Koelma and A.D. Bagdanov. Finite State Machine Based
Optimization of Data Parallel Regular Domain Problems Applied in Low Level
Image Processing. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems,
15(10), 865—877, oct 2004.
[5] C.G.M. Snoek and M. Worring and J.M. Geusebroek and D.C. Koelma and
F.J. Seinstra. In Proceedings of the 2th TRECVID Workshop, NIST Special
Publication, Gaithersburg, USA, 2004.
Dissertations
[1] A.D.Bagdanov: Style characterization of machine printed texts, Ph D thesis,
Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2004.
Journal Articles
[1] M. Aiello and A. W. M. Smeulders. Thick 2D Relations for Document
Understanding. Information Sciences, vol. 167, 147 – 176, 2004.
[2] A. D. Bagdanov and M. Worring. Multi-scale document description using
rectangular granulometries. International Journal of Document Analysis and
Recognition (IJDAR), Vol. 6, 3, pp. 181-191, March 2004.

[3] I. Cohen and N. Sebe and F.G. Cozman and M.C. Cirelo and T.S. Huang.
Semi-supervised Learning of Classifiers: Theory and Algorithms and Their
applications to Human-Computer Interaction, IEEE Transactions on Pattern
Analysis and Machine Intelligence,26(12), 1553-1567, 2004.
[4] Th. Gevers and H.M.G. Stokman. Robust Histogram Construction from
Color Invariants for Object Recognition. IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and
Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 26(1), pp. 113-118, 2004.
[5] Th. Gevers. Robust Segmentation and Tracking of Colored Objects in
Video. IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology,pp. 776- 781,
June, 2004.
[6] Th. Gevers, G. Finlayson, R. Schettini. Color for Image Indexing and
Retrieval. Guest Editorial, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 94, 1-3,
2004.
[7] S. Ghebreab and C. C. Jaffe and A. W. M. Smeulders. Population-based
incremental interactive concept learning for image retrieval by stochastic string
segmentations. IEEE trans. Medical Imaging, 676 - 689, 23(6), 2004.
[8] S. Ghebreab and A.W.M. Smeulders. Combining Strings and Necklaces for
Interactive Three-Dimensional Segmentation of Spinal Images Using an
Integral Deformable Spine Model. IEEE Trans. on Biomedical Engineering,
50(10), 1821-1829, 2004.
[9] L. Hollink and A. Th. Schreiber and B. Wielinga and M. Worring.
Classification of User Image Descriptions. International Journal of Human
Computer Studies,61(5), 601-626, 2004.
[10] H.T. Nguyen and A. W. M. Smeulders. Fast occluded object tracking by a
robust appearance filter. IEEE trans. on pattern analysis and machine
intelligence. 26(8), 1099 - 1104, 2004.
[11] I. Patras and M. Worring and R. van den Boomgaard. Dense motion estimation
using regularization constraints on local parametric models. IEEE
Trans. Image Processing,13(11), 1432-1443, 2004.
[12] F.J. Seinstra and D. Koelma and A.D. Bagdanov. Finite State Machine
Based Optimization of Data Parallel Regular Domain Problems Applied in
Appendices
57
Annual Report 2004
Low Level Image Processing. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed
Systems,15(10), 865—877, oct 2004.
[13] F.J. Seinstra and D. Koelma. User Transparency: A Fully Sequential
Programming Model for Efficient Data Parallel Image Processing. Concurrency
and Computation: Practice and Experience.16(6), 611-644, may 2004.
[14] A. W. M. Smeulders and T. S. Huang and T. Gevers. Guest editorial,
International Journal of Computer Vision, vol. 56, January-February, 2004.
Conference contributions
[1] F. Aldershoff and Th. Gevers. Visual Tracking and Localisation of Billboards
in Streamed Soccer Matches. In SPIE Electronic Imaging 2004, San Jose, CA,
USA.
[2] J. Amores, N. Sebe, P. Radeva, Th. Gevers and A. Smeulders. Boosting
Conceptual Information in Content-based Image Retrieval. In Proceedings
ACM SIGMM Multimedia Information Retrieval Workshop (MIR'04), 2004,
31-38.
[3] G. J. Burghouts, J. M. Geusebroek and A. W. M. Smeulders. Observables
and Invariance. In Proceedings Advanced School for Imaging and Computing
04, Ouddorp, The Netherlands, 2004.
[4] G. J. Burghouts, J. M. Geusebroek and A. W. M. Smeulders: Observables
and Invariance for Early Cognitive Vision. Proceedings of the Early Cognitive
Vision Workshop, Schotland, 2004.
[5] A. Diplaros, T. Gevers and N. Vlassis. Skin detection using the EM
algorithm with spatial constraints. IEEE International Conference on Systems,
Man and Cybernetics, The Hague, Netherlands, 2004.
[6] E. Engbers, M. Lindenbaum and A. W. M. Smeulders. An information-based
measure for grouping quality. In Proceedings of European Conference
Computer Vision 04, Springer Verlag GmbH, LNCS 3023, Prague, 392 – 404,
2004.
[7] P. Enser, Y. Kompatsiaris, N.E. O'Connor, A. F. Smeaton and A.W.M.
Smeulders. Image and Video Retrieval. In Proceedings of CIVR04, Springer
Verlag GmbH, Dublin, 2004.

[8] Th. Gevers and A.W.M. Smeulders. Content-based image retrieval: an overview.
Emerging Topics in Computer Vision, Prentice Hall, G. Medioni and S. B.
Kang editor, 333 - 384, 2004.
[9] Th. Gevers. Color Invariant Density Estimation for Image Segmentation
and Object Tracking. IEEE ICIP, Singapore, 2004.
[10] S. Ghebreab and A.W.M. Smeulders. An Approximately Complete String
Representation of Local Object Boundary Features for Concept-Based Image
Retrieval. IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging, Virginia,
2004.
[11] L. Hollink, G.P. Nguyen, D. Koelma, A.Th. Schreiber, M. Worring. User
Strategies in Video Retrieval: a Case Study. In Proceeding of the International
Conference on Image and Video Retrieval (CIVR), 2004.
[12] S. Manegold, P.A. Boncz, N. Nes and M.L. Kersten. Cache-Conscious
Radix-Decluster Projections. In Proceedings of the International Conference on
Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), pp. 684-695, Toronto, ON, Canada, 2004.
[13] G.P. Nguyen and M. Worring. An user based framework for salient detail
extraction. In Proceeding of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia
and Expo (ICME), 2004.
[14] G.P. Nguyen and M. Worring. Optimizing similarity based visualization in
content based image retrieval. In Proceeding of the IEEE ICME special session
Novel Techniques for Browsing in Large Multimedia Collections, 2004.
[15] G.P. Nguyen and M. Worring. Optimizing similarity based visualization in
content based image retrieval, In Proceeding of the 10th Advanced School for
Computing and Imaging (ASCI), 2004.
[16] H.T. Nguyen and A.W.M. Smeulders. Tracking aspects of the foreground
against the background. In Proceedings of European Conference Computer
Vision 04, 446 - 456, Prague, 2004.
[17] H.T. Nguyen and A. W. M. Smeulders, Active learning using pre-clustering,
In Proceedings of the 21th International Conference on Machine Learning
ICML04, Banff, Canada, 2004.
Appendices
58
Annual Report 2004
[18] H.T. Nguyen and A.W.M. Smeulders. Everything gets better all the time
apart from the amount of data. Image and Video Retrieval, In Proceedings of
CIVR04, Peter Enser and Yannis Kompatsiaris and Noel E. O'Connor and
Alan F. Smeaton and Arnold W.M. Smeulders, 33 - 41, Springer Verlag GmbH,
Dublin, 2004.
[19] T.V. Pham and A.W.M. Smeulders. Statistical strategy for object class
recognition using part detectors. Statistical Learning in Computer Vision,
Prague, 2004.
[20] N. Sebe, M.S. Lew and T.S. Huang. The State-of-the-Art in Human-
Computer Interaction. In Proceedings. ECCV International Workshop on
Human Computer Interaction, 2004.
[21] N. Sebe, M.S. Lew and C. Djeraba. Proceedings of the Multimedia
information Retrieval Workshop, ACM publisher, 2004.
[22] N. Sebe, M.S. Lew and T.S. Huang. Computer Vision in Human-Computer
Interaction. Proceedings HCI /ECCV 2004, 2004.
[23] N. Sebe, M.S. Lew, I. Cohen, Y. Sun, T. Gevers and T.S. Huang, Authentic
Facial Expression Analysis. In Proceedings International Conference on
Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG'04), 2004.
[24] N. Sebe, I. Cohen, Th. Gevers and T.S. Huang, Skin Detection: A Bayesian
Network Approach. In Proceedings International Conference on Pattern
Recognition ICPR'04), 2004.
[25] N. Sebe, Y. Sun, E. Bakker, M.S. Lew, I. Cohen and T.S. Huang. Towards
Authentic Emotion Recognition. In Proceedings International Conference on
Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (IEEE SMC'04), 2004.
[26] N. Sebe, D.P. Huijsmans, Q. Tian and Th. Gevers. Complete Performance
Graphs in Probabilistic Information Retrieval. In Proceedings Pacific-Rim
Conference on Multimedia (PCM'04), 2004.
[27] F.J. Seinstra, D. Koelma and A.D. Bagdanov. Towards User Transparent
Data and Task Parallel Image and Video Processing: An Overview of the
Parallel-Horus Project. In Proceedings of the 10th International Euro-Par
Conference Euro-Par 2004, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3149, Pisa,
Italy, 2004.

[28] A.W.M. Smeulders and F. de Jong. Multimedia information technology for
indexing. Media management in the digital era, In Mieke Lauwers editor,
Amsterdam, 40 - 43, 2004.
[29] C.G.M. Snoek, M. Worring, J.M. Geusebroek, D.C. Koelma and F.J.
Seinstra. In Proceedings of the 2th TRECVID Workshop, NIST Special
Publication, Gaithersburg, USA, 2004.
[30] C.G.M. Snoek, M. Worring and A.G. Hauptmann. Detection of TV News
Monologues by Style Analysis. In IEEE International Conference on
Multimedia & Expo, Taipei, Taiwan, 2004.
[31] Y. Sun, N. Sebe, M.S. Lew and T. Gevers. Authentic Emotion Detection in
Real-Time Video. Proceedings ECCV International Workshop on Human
Computer Interaction (HCI'04), 2004.
[32] Q. Tian, Q. Xue, J. Yu, N. Sebe and T.S. Huang. To w a rd an Improved Error
Metric. In Proceedings International Conference on Image Processing, 2004.
[33] Q. Tian, Q. Xue, N. Sebe and T.S. Huang. Error Metric and Its
Applications. In Proceedings SPIE East'04, Internet Multimedia Management
Systems V, 2004.
[34] Q. Tian, J. Yu, Q. Xue,N. Sebe and T.S. Huang. Robust Error Metric
Analysis for Noise Estimation in Image Indexing. In Proceedings CVPR
International Workshop on Multimedia Data and Document Engineering
(MDDE'04), 2004.
[35] Q. Tian, J. Yu, Q. Xue and N. Sebe. A New Analysis of the Value of
Unlabeled Data in Semi-Supervised Learning for Image Retrieval. In
Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo
(ICME'04), 2004.
[36] J. van de Weijer, Th. Gevers. Tensor Based Feature Detection for Color
Images. In Proceedings IS&T/SID's CIC 2004, The SunBurst Resort,Scottsdale,
Arizona, 2004.
[37] J. van de Weijer, Th. Gevers. Robust Optical Flow from Photometric
Invariants. In Proceedings of Int. Conference on Image Processing 2004,
Singapore, 2004.
Appendices
59
Annual Report 2004
Professional publications
[1] F. de Jong and A. W. M. Smeulders. MultimediaN research project.
DigiCULT.info, vol. 9, 34 - 35, 2004.
Other products
[1] J.M. Geusebroek, G. Burghouts and A.W.M. Smeulders. The Amsterdam
Library of Object Images. ALOI is a color image collection of one-thousand
small objects. In order to capture the sensory variation in object recordings, we
systematically varied viewing angle, illumination angle, and illumination color
for each object, and additionally captured wide-baseline stereo images.
We recorded over a hundred images of each object, yielding a total of 110,250
images for the collection.
http://www.science.uva.nl/~aloi/
[2] J.M. Geusebroek. Fast Anisotropic Gauss Filtering software, performs
two-dimensional anisotropic Gaussian smoothing and differentiation by
recursive filtering techniques.
http://www.science.uva.nl/~mark/downloads/
[3] Th. Gevers and A.W.M. Smeulders. ZOMAX, A General Purpose Image
Processing and Retrieval System for the World Wide Web. The system provides
an interactive image processing module and an image search engine, called
PicToSeek, for searching images on the web.
http://www.science.uva.nl/research/isis/zomax.html
[4] D. Koelma and E. Poll: Horus: a vision library based on patterns.
http://www.science.uva.nl/~koelma/isis/projects/horus.html
[5] M. van Liempt, A.W.M Smeulders and H.T. Nguyen: Template Tracking
Using Color Invariant Pixel Features. Tracking objects robust to photometric
variations, such as shadow, shading, and specularities. Handselected objects are
followed real-time from either mpg or webcam video stream.
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~mliempt/isis/downloads.html
[6] G.P. Nguyen and M. Worring. A demo on similarity based visualization of
large image collections.
[7] F.J. Seinstra and D. Koelma. Parallel Horus - 'Proof-of-concept'

implementation (partial version) of user transparent parallel image processing
functionality as provided in Horus.
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~fjseins/ParHorusCode/
[8] C.G.M. Snoek and M. Worring. Goalgle: A Soccer Video Search Engine,
Goalgle is a prototype search engine for soccer video. A fully automatic soccer
video analysis system has been developed which analyses soccer broadcasts and
makes them accessible by names of players, teams, and highlight events.
http://www.goalgle.com
[9] C.G.M. Snoek, M. Worring, J.M. Geusebroek, D.C. Koelma, and F.J.
Seinstra. Mediamill demo: Semantic Video Search Engine. This system allows
for interactive retrieval based on a lexicon of 32 automatically derived semantic
concepts. The demo searches a broadcast news archive of 184 hours.
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~cgmsnoek/tv/
[10] C.G.M. Snoek and M. Worring. VIPER: Video Personalizer. VIPER is a
prototype search engine for personalized video retrieval over the Internet. The
demo searches a broadcast news archive of 184 hours.
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~cgmsnoek/viper/
[11] L. Todoran and M. Worring. Document Ground Truthing and evaluation
tool.A tool has been built for assisting users in ground truthing scanned color
documents based on layout and logical information. It has been used to create
the UvA color document dataset. Tools for evaluating algorithms with respect
to the ground truth have been developed as well. Documents and tools will be
made available to the research community.
2. Intelligent Autonomous Systems
Five key publications
[1] W. Kowalczyk and N. Vlassis. Newscast EM. In Advances in Neural Information
Processing Systems 17, Vancouver, Canada, December 2004. MIT Press.
[2] B. Kröse, R. Bunschoten, S. ten Hagen, B. Terwijn and N. Vlassis.
Household robots look and learn. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine,
11(4):45-52, December 2004.
Appendices
60
Annual Report 2004
[3] M. Zaharia and L. Dorst. Modeling and visualization of 3D polygonal mesh
surfaces using geometric algebra. Computers & Graphics, 28:519-526, 2004.
[4] W. Zajdel, A. T. Cemgil, and B. Kröse. Online multicamera tracking with a
switching state-space model. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference
on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), pages IV:339-343, Cambridge, UK, 2004.
[5] Z. Zivkovic and F. van der Heijden. Recursive unsupervised learning of finite
mixture models. IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence,
26(5):651-656, 2004.
Dissertations
[1] J. J. Verbeek. Mixture Models for Clustering and Dimension Reduction,
PhD thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, December 2004.
Journal Articles
[1] B. Kröse, R. Bunschoten, S. ten Hagen, B. Terwijn, and N. Vlassis.
Household robots look and learn. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine,
11(4):45-52, December 2004.
[2] M. Zaharia and L. Dorst. Modeling and visualization of 3D polygonal mesh
surfaces using geometric algebra. Computers & Graphics,28:519-526, 2004.
[3] Z. Zivkovic and F. van der Heijden. Recursive unsupervised learning of finite
mixture model. IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence,
26(5):651-656, 2004.
[4] Z. Zivkovic and F. van der Heijden. Improving the selection of feature
points for tracking. Pattern Analysis and Applications, 7(2):144-150, 2004.
Conference contributions
[1] A. T. Cemgil. Polyphonic Pitch Identification and Bayesian Inference,
In Proceedings Int. Computer Music Conference, Miami, FL, 2004.
[2] A. Diplaros, T. Gevers, and N. Vlassis. Skin detection using the EM
algorithm with spatial constraints. In W. Thissen, P. Wieringa, M. Pantic, and M.
Ludema, editors, Proceedings of the IEEE Int. Conf. on System, Man and

Cybernetics, pages 3071-3075, The Hague, The Netherlands, October 2004.
Omnipress. ISBN 0-7803-8567-5.
[3] L. Dorst and D. Fontijne. An algebraic foundation for object-oriented
Euclidean geometry. RIMS Kokyuroku,1378:138-153, 2004.
[4] F. C. A. Groen, M. T. J. Spaan, and J. R. Kok. Real world multi-agent
systems: information sharing, coordination and planning. In Proceedings
Workshop ICT Agents, The Hague, The Netherlands, November 2004.
[5] F. Groen , N. Amato , A. Bonarini , E. Yoshida and B. Kröse. Proceedings
Intelligent Autonomous Systems 8, Amsterdam, March 10-12 , 2004, IOS Press,
Amsterdam, ISBN: 1-58603-414-6
[6] S. H. G. ten Hagen and B. J. A. Kröse. Learning to understand tasks for
mobile robots. In W. Thissen, P. Wieringa, M. Pantic, and M. Ludema, editors,
Proceedings of the IEEE Int. Conf. on System, Man and Cybernetics,pages
2942-2947, The Hague, The Netherlands, October 2004. Omnipress. ISBN 0-
7803-8567-5.
[7] D. Hildenbrand, D. Fontijne, C. Perwass, and L. Dorst. Geometric algebra
and its application to computer graphics. In Eurographics 2004, Grenoble,
France, August 2004.
[8] V. Hollink, M. van Someren, and S. ten Hagen. Web site adaptation:
Recommendation and automatic generation of navigation menus. In
Proceedings of the Annual Workshop of the SIG Adaptivity and User Modeling
in Interactive Systems 2004, Berlin, Germany, October 2004.
[9] J. R. Kok and N. Vlassis. Multiagent Q-learning by context-specific
coordination graphs. In F. Groen, N. Amato, A. Bonarini, E. Yoshida, and B.
Kröse, editors, Proceedings 8th Int. Conf. on Intelligent Autonomous Systems ,
pages 317-324, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, March 2004. IOS Press.
[10] J. R. Kok and N. Vlassis. Sparse cooperative Q-learning. In R. Greiner and
D. Schuurmans, editors, Proceedings of the 21st Int. Conf. on Machine
Learning, pages 481-488, Banff, Canada, July 2004. ACM.
[11] J. R. Kok and N. Vlassis. Sparse tabular multiagent Q-learning. In K.
Steenhaut, A. Nowe, T. Lenaerts, editor, Benelearn 2004, Proceedings of the
Appendices
61
Annual Report 2004
Annual Machine Learning Conference of Belgium and The Netherlands,pages
65-71, Brussels, Belgium, January 2004.
[12] W. Kowalczyk and N. Vlassis. Newscast EM. In Advances in Neural
Information Processing Systems 17, Vancouver, Canada, December 2004. MIT
Press.
[13] B. J. A. Kröse, N. Vlassis, and W. Zajdel. Bayesian methods for tracking
and localization. In Proceedings of Philips Symposium On Intelligent
Algorithms, (SOIA), pages 27-38, 2004.
[14] J. R. J. Nunnink, J. J. Verbeek, and N. Vlassis. Accelerated greedy mixture
learning. In K. Steenhaut, A. Nowe, T. Lenaerts, editor, Benelearn 2004,
Proceedings of the Annual Machine Learning Conference of Belgium and The
Netherlands, Brussels, Belgium, January 2004.
[15] S. Oomes, P. Jonker, M. Poel, A. Visser, M. Wiering. The Dutch AIBO
Team 2004. In Proceedings of the RoboCup 2004, July 2004, Lisboa.
[16] J. M. Porta and B. J. A. Kröse. Appearance-based concurrent map building
and localization. In F. C. A. Groen, editor, Int. Conf. on Intelligent
Autonomous Systems, IAS'04, pages 1022-1029. IOS Press, March 2004. ISBN
1-58603-414-6.
[17] J. M. Porta and B. J. A. Kröse. Appearance-based concurrent map building
and localization using a multi-hypotheses tracker. In Proceedings IEEE/RSJ
International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages 3424-3429,
Sendai, Japan, 2004. IEEE Press.
[18] S. B. M. Post, M. L. Fassaert, A. Visser. The high-level communication
model for multiagent coordination in the RoboCupRescue Simulator. In D.
Polani, B. Browning, A. Bonarini, K. Yoshida (Eds.), RoboCup 2003, Lecture
Notes on Artificial Intelligence,Vol. 3020, p. 503-509, 2004. Springer Verlag,
Berlin.
[19] M. Reuvers, R. Kleihorst, H. Broers, and B. Kröse. A smart camera for face
recognition. In Proceedings of SPS-2004, 2004.
[20] M. van Someren, V. Hollink, and S. ten Hagen. Greedy recommending is
not always optimal. In B. Berendt, A. Hotho, D. Mladenic, M. van Someren, M.

Spiliopoulou, and G. Stumme, editors, Web Mining: From Web to Semantic
Web, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence,pages 148-163. Springer, February
2004. ISBN: 3-540-23258-3.
[21] M. T. J. Spaan and N. Vlassis. A point-based POMDP algorithm for robot
planning. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation, pages 2399-2404, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 2004.
[22] H. Sunyoto, W. van der Mark, and D. M. Gavrila. A comparative study of
fast dense stereo vision algorithms. In Proceedings of the IEEE Intelligent
Vehicle Symposium, Parma, Italy, June 2004.
[23] B. Terwijn, J. M. Porta, and B. J. A. Kröse. A particle filter to estimate non-
Markovian states. In F. C. A. Groen, editor, International Conference on
Intelligent Autonomous Systems, IAS'04, pages 1062-1069. IOS Press, March
2004. ISBN 1-58603-414-6.
[24] A. Thean, M. van Elk, C. Lievers, K. Labibes, W. van der Mark, and J.
Kleijweg. Design and validation of a virtual fmcw radar for automotive
applications. In Proceedings of the 5th EUROSIM Congress on Modeling and
Simulation, Marne la Vallee, France, September 2004.
[25] A. H. G. Versluis, B. J. F. Driessen, J. A. van Woerden, and T. T. ten Kate.
Collaborative control aspects for rehabilitation robots. In F.C.A. Groen, editor,
International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems, IAS'04. IOS
Press, March 2004. ISBN 1-58603-414-6.
[26] A. Visser, G. Pavlin, S. P. van Gosliga, and M. Maris. Self-organization of
multi-agent systems. In Proceedings of the International workshop Military
Applications of Agent Technology in ICT and Robotics , The Hague, The
Netherlands, November 2004.
[27] N. Vlassis, R. K. Elhorst, and J. R. Kok. Anytime algorithms for multiagent
decision making using coordination graphs. In W. Thissen, P. Wieringa, M.
Pantic, and M. Ludema, editors, Proceedings of the IEEE Int. Conf. on System,
Man and Cybernetics, pages 953-957, The Hague, The Netherlands, October
2004. Omnipress. ISBN 0-7803-8567-5.
[28] N. Vlassis and M. T. J. Spaan. A fast point-based algorithm for POMDPs.
In K. Steenhaut, A. Nowe, T. Lenaerts, editor, Benelearn 2004, Proceedings of
Appendices
62
Annual Report 2004
the Annual Machine Learning Conference of Belgium and The Netherlands,
pages 170-176, Brussels, Belgium, January 2004.
[29] P. J. Withagen, K. Schutte, and F. C. A. Groen. Probabilistic classification
between foreground objects and background. In Proceedings of the 17th
International Conference on Pattern recognition (ICPR 2004), volume I, pages
31-34, Cambridge, UK, August 2004. IEEE.
[30] W. Zajdel, A. T. Cemgil, and B. Kröse. Online multicamera tracking with a
switching state-space model. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference
on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), pages IV:339-343, Cambridge, UK, 2004.
[31] Z. Zivkovic. Improved adaptive Gaussian mixture model for background
subtraction. In Proceedings Int. Conference on Pattern Recognition, UK,
August 2004.
[32] Z. Zivkovic. Optical-flow-driven gadgets for gaming user interface. In
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Entertainment Computing,
2004.
[33] Z. Zivkovic and B. Kröse. An EM-like algorithm for color-histogrambased
object tracking. In IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern
Recognition,June 2004.
[34] Z. Zivkovic and B. Kröse. A probabilistic model for an EM-like object
tracking algorithm using color-histograms. In 6th IEEE Int. Workshop on
Performance Evaluation of Tracking and Surveillance (in connection with
ECCV2004), May 2004.
Reports
[1] A. T. Cemgil, W. Zajdel, and B. J. A. Kröse. A hybrid graphical model for
online multi-camera tracking. Technical Report IAS-UVA-04-03, Informatics
Institute, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands, November 2004.
[2] J. M. Porta, M. T. J. Spaan, and N. Vlassis. Value iteration for continuousstate
POMDPs. Technical Report IAS-UVA-04-04, Informatics Institute,
Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands, December 2004.
[3] M. T. J. Spaan and N. Vlassis. Perseus: randomized point-based value

iteration for POMDPs. Technical Report IAS-UVA-04-02, Informatics
Institute, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands, November 2004.
[4] N. Vlassis and J. J. Verbeek. Gaussian mixture learning from noisy data.
Technical Report IAS-UVA-04-01, Informatics Institute, Universiteit van
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, September 2004.
Other products
M. T. J. Spaan and N. Vlassis. "Perseus Software"for solving partially
observable Markov decision processes. Available from:
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~mtjspaan/pomdp/
3. Information and Language Processing Systems
Recent key publications
[1] V. Hollink, J. Kamps, C. Monz, and M. de Rijke. Monolingual document
retrieval for European languages. Information Retrieval, 7:33_52, 2004.
[2] V. Jijkoun and M. de Rijke. Enriching the output of a parser using memorybased
learning. In Proceedings 42nd Annual Meeting of the Association for
Computational Linguistics (ACL 2004), pages 311_318, 2004.
[3] J. Kamps and M. de Rijke. The effectiveness of combining information
retrieval strategies for European languages, In Proceedings 19th Annual ACM
Symposium on Applied Computing, pages 1073_1077, 2004.
[4] J. Kamps, M. de Rijke, and B. Sigurbjörnsson. Length normalization in
XML retrieval, In Proceedings 27th Annual International ACM SIGIR
Conference (SIGIR 2004), pages 80_87, 2004.
[5] M. Marx. Conditional XPath, the first order complete XPath dialect. In
Proceedings of PODS'04, pages 13_22. ACM Press, June 2004. Best newcomer
and best paper award.
Appendices
63
Annual Report 2004
Journal articles
[1] L. Afanasiev, P. Blackburn, I. Dimitriou, B. Gaiffe, E. Goris, M. Marx and
M. de Rijke. PDL for ordered trees. Journal of Applied Non_Classical Logics ,
2004.
[2] M. Franceschet, A. Montanari, and M. de Rijke. Model checking for
combined logics with an application to mobile systems. Automated Software
Engineering, 11:289_321, 2004.
[3] V. Hollink, J. Kamps, C. Monz, and M. de Rijke. Monolingual document
retrieval for European languages. Information Retrieval, 7:33_52, 2004.
[4] A. Münnich, R. Mokken and W. Saris. Testing n-stimuli bisymmetry. Journal
of Mathematical Psychology, 48:399_408, 2004.
Books, bookchapters and special issues
[1] P. Blackburn, M. de Rijke, and Y. Venema. Modal Logic. Cambridge
University Press, 2004. Reprinted with corrections.
Conference contributions
[1] S. Fissaha Adafre, W.R. van Hage, J. Kamps, G. Lacerda de Melo and M. de
Rijke. The Universiteit van Amsterdam at CLEF 2004. In C. Peters and F.
Borri, editors, Working Notes for the CLEF 2004 Workshop , pp 91_98, 2004.
[2] L. Afanasiev. XML query evaluation via CTL symbolic model checking. In
Proceedings of the ESSLLI2004 Student Session, Nancy, 2004.
[3] L. Afanasiev, M. Franceschet, M. Marx and M. de Rijke. CTL model
checking for processing simple XPath queries. In Proceedings Temporal
Representation and Reasoning (TIME 2004), IEEE Computer Society Press,
2004.
[4] D. Ahn, S. Fissaha Adafre, V. Jijkoun and M. de Rijke. The University of
Amsterdam at Senseval-3: Semantic Roles and Logic Forms. In Proceedings of
Senseval-3: Third International Workshop on the Evaluation of Systems for the
Semantic Analysis of Text, pages 49_53, Association for Computational
Linguistics, 2004.

[5] D. Ahn, V. Jijkoun, J. Kamps, G. Mishne, K. Müller, M. de Rijke and S.
Schlobach: The University of Amsterdam at TREC 2004. In TREC 2004
Conference Notebook, pages 43_56, Gaithersburg, Maryland USA, 2004.
[6] D.D. Ahn. Presupposition incorporation in quantifier domains (extended
abstract). In Sinn und Bedeutung 9. Gesellschaft für Semantik, 2004.
[7] D. Ahn, V. Jijkoun, G. Mishne, K. Müller, M. de Rijke and S. Schlobach. A
Recall Oriented Approach to Open Domain Question Answering (abstract) . In
15th Meeting of Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands (CLIN 2004),
2004.
[8] R. Bernardi, I. Dahn, G. Mishne, M. Moortgat, M. de Rijke and H.
Uszkoreit. Dynamic teaching materials for ESSLLI. In P. Monachesi, C. Vertan,
W. von Hahn, and S. Jekat, editors, Proceedings LREC Workshop on Language
Resources: Integration and Development in e-Learning and in Teaching
Computational Linguistics, 2004.
[9] N. Bezhanishvili, B. ten Cate, M. Marx and P.Viana. Sahlqvist theory and
transfer results for hybrid logics. In R. Schmidt, I. Pratt-Hartmann, M.
Reynolds, and H. Wansing, editors, Preliminary proceedings of Advances in
Modal Logic 2004, pp 44_61, University of Manchester.
[10] P. Blackburn and B. ten Cate. Pure extensions, proof rules and hybrid axiomatics.
In R. Schmidt, I. Pratt-Hartmann, M. Reynolds and H. Wansing, editors,
Preliminary proceedings of Advances in Modal Logic 2004, pp 16_29,
University of Manchester.
[11] S. Brand, R. Gennari and M. de Rijke. Constraint methods for modal satisfiability.
In K.R. Apt, F. Fages, F. Rossi, P. Szeredi and J. Vancza, editors, Recent
Advances in Constraints, 2003, volume 3010 of LNAI, pp 66_86, Springer, 2004.
[12] C. Caracciolo, W. van Hage and M. de Rijke. Topic driven access to full
text documents. In Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Digital
Libraries (ECDL 2004), LNCS, pp 495_500, Springer,2004.
[13] S. Fissaha, D. Ahn and M. de Rijke. Temporal expression extraction using
conditional random fields (abstract). In 15th Meeting of Computational
Linguistics in the Netherlands (CLIN 2004), 2004.
Appendices
64
Annual Report 2004
[14] I. Fundulaki and M. Marx. Specifying Access Control Policies for XML
Documents with XPath. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM Symposium on Access
Control Models and Technologies (SACMAT) , pp 61_69,Yorktown Heights,
New York, USA, June 2004, ACM Press.
[15] W.R. van Hage, M. de Rijke and M. Marx. Information retrieval support
for ontology construction and use. In S.A. McIlraith, D. Plexousakis, and F. van
Harmelen, editors, Proceedings 3rd International Semantic Web Conference
(ISWC 2004), LNCS 3298, pages 518_533, 2004.
[16] G. Infante-Lopez and M. de Rijke. Alternative approaches for generating
bodies of grammar rules. In Proceedings 42nd Annual Meeting of the
Association for Computational Linguistics(ACL 2004) , pp 454_461, 2004.
[17] G. Infante-Lopez and M. de Rijke. Comparing the ambiguity reduction
abilities of probabilistic context-free grammars. In Proceedings of the Fourth
International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2004).
[18] G. Infante-Lopez and M. de Rijke. Expressive power and consistency
properties of state-of-the-art natural language parsers. In J.L. Vicedo, P.
Martinez-Barco, and R. Munoz et al., editors, Proceedings Advances in Natural
Language Processing: 4th International Conference, EsTAL 2004, pp 149_160,
2004.
[19] G. Infante-Lopex and M. de Rijke. Alternative approaches for generating
bodies of grammar rules (extended abstract). In R. Verbrugge, N. Taatgen, and
L. Schomaker, editors, Proceedings BNAIC 2004, 2004, pages 337_339.
[20] V. Jijkoun and M. de Rijke. Answer selection in a multi-stream open
domain question answering system. In S. McDonald and J. Tait, editors,
Proceedings 26th European Conference on Information Retrieval(ECIR'04),
volume 2997 of LNCS, pp 99_111, Springer, 2004.
[21] V. Jijkoun and M. de Rijke. Enriching the output of a parser using
memory-based learning, In Proceedings 42nd Annual Meeting of the Association
for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2004), pp 311_318, 2004.
[22] V. Jijkoun, M. de Rijke and J. Mur. Information extraction for question
answering: Improving recall through syntactic patterns. In Proceedings of the
20th International on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2004), 2004.

[23] V. Jijkoun, G. Mishne and M. de Rijke. How frogs built the Berlin Wall. In
C. Peters, J. Gonzalo, M. Braschler, and M. Kluck, editors, Comparative
Evaluation of Multilingual Information Access Systems,CLEF2003, volume
3237 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp 523_534, Springer, 2004.
[24] V. Jijkoun, G. Mishne, M. de Rijke, S. Schlobach, D. Ahn and K. Müller.
The University of Amsterdam at qa@clef 2004. In C. Peters and F. Borri, editors,
Working Notes for the CLEF 2004 Workshop, pp 321_324, 2004.
[25] V. Jijkoun, G. Mishne, C. Monz, M. de Rijke, S. Schlobach and O. Tsur.
The Universiteit of Amsterdam at the TREC 2003 Question Answering Track.
In Proceedings TREC 2003, pp 586_593, 2004.
[26] J. Kamps and M. de Rijke. The effectiveness of combining information
retrieval strategies for European languages. In Proceedings 19th Annual ACM
Symposium on Applied Computing,pp 1073_1077, 2004.
[27] J. Kamps, M. de Rijke., and B. Sigurbjörnsson. Length normalization in
XML retrieval. In Proceedings 27th Annual International ACM SIGIR
Conference (SIGIR 2004), pages 80_87, 2004.
[28] J. Kamps, M. Marx, M. de Rijke, and B. Sigurbjörnsson. Best-match
querying from document-centric XML. In S. Amer-Yahia and L. Gravano,
editors, Proceedings Seventh International Workshop on the Web and Databases
(WebDB 2004), pages 55_60, 2004.
[29] J. Kamps, M. Marx, R.J. Mokken and M. de Rijke. Using WordNet to
measure semantic orientations of adjectives. In Proceedings of the Fourth
International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2004),
volume IV, pages 1115_1118, 2004.
[30] J. Kamps, C. Monz, M. de Rijke, and B. Sigurbjörnsson. Language-dependent
and language-independent approaches to crosslingual text retrieval. In C.
Peters, J. Gonzalo, M. Braschler, and M. Kluck, editors, Comparative
Evaluation of Multilingual Information Access Systems, CLEF 2003, volume
3237 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 152_165, Springer, 2004.
[31] J. Kamps, C. Monz, M. de Rijke and B. Sigurbjörnsson. Approaches to
robust and web retrieval. In Proceedings TREC 2003, pages 594_600, 2004.
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[32] B. Magnini, S. Romagnoli, A. Vallin, J. Herrera, A. Penas, V. Peinado, F.
Verdejo, and M. de Rijke. Creating the DISEQuA corpus: a multilingual test set
for the monolingual question answering tasks at CLEF 2003. In C. Peters, J.
Gonzalo, M. Braschler, and M. Kluck, editors, Comparative Evaluation of
Multilingual Information Access Systems, CLEF 2003, volume 3237 of Lecture
Notes in Computer Science, pages 487_500, Springer, 2004.
[33] B. Magnini, S. Romagnoli, A. Vallin, J. Herrera, A. Penas, V. Peinado, F.
Verdejo, and M. de Rijke. The multiple language question answering track at
CLEF 2003. In Carol Peters, Julio Gonzalo, Martin Braschler and Michael
Kluck, editors, Comparative Evaluation of Multilingual Information Access
Systems, CLEF 2003, volume 3237 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages
471_486, Springer, 2004.
[34] B. Magnini, A. Vallin, C. Ayache, G. Erbach, A. Penas, M. de Rijke, D.
Rocha, K. Simov, and R. Sutcliffe. Overview of the clef 2004 multilingual
question answering track. In C. Peters and F. Borri, editors, Working Notes for
the CLEF 2004 Workshop, pages 281_294, 2004.
[35] M. Marx. Conditional XPath, the first order complete XPath dialect. In
Proceedings of PODS'04, pages 13_22. ACM Press, June 2004.
[36] M. Marx. XPath with conditional axis relations. In Proceedings of
EDBT'04, volume 2992 of LNCS, pages 477_494, 2004.
[37] M. Marx and M. de Rijke. Semantic characterizations of navigational
XPath. In V. Mihajlovic and D. Hiemstra, editors, Proceedings of the First
Twente Data Management Workshop (TDM'04), pages 67_73, 2004.
[38] G. Mishne and M. de Rijke. Source code retrieval using conceptual
similarity. In Proceedings RIAO 2004, pages 539_554, 2004.
[39] K. Müller. Semi-Automatic Construction of a Question Treebank. In
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Language Resources and
Evaluation (LREC 2004), Lisbon, Portugal, 2004.
[40] K. Müller. Revealing Automatically Phonological Similarities of Dutch and
German (abstract). In 15th Meeting of Computational Linguistics in the
Netherlands (CLIN 2004), 2004.

[41] L. Polanyi, C. Culy, M. van den Berg, G.L. Thione, and D.D. Ahn. A rule
based approach to discourse parsing. In Proceedings of the 5th SIGdial
Workshop in Discourse and Dialogue, pages 108_117, 2004.
[42] L. Polanyi, C. Culy, M. van den Berg, G.L. Thione, and D.D. Ahn.
Sentential structure and discourse parsing. In Proceedings of the ACL 2004
Workshop on Discourse Annotation, 2004.
[43] S. Schlobach. Explaining subsumption by optimal interpolation. In
Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Logics in Artificial Intelligence
(JELIA '04), LNAI. Springer, 2004.
[44] S. Schlobach and R. Cornet. Logical support for terminological modeling.
In M. Fieschi, E. Coeira, and Yu-Chan Jack Li, editors, Proceedings of Med Info
2004, number 107 in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 2004.
[45] S. Schlobach, M. Olsthoorn and M. de Rijke. Type checking in opendomain
question answering. In Proceedings of the 16th European Conference on
Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2004), pages 398_402. IOS Press, 2004.
[46] S. Schlobach, M. Olsthoorn and M. de Rijke. Type checking in opendomain
question answering (extended abstract). In R. Verbrugge, N. Taatgen,
and L. Schomaker, editors, Proceedings BNAIC 2004, 2004, pages 367_368.
[47] B. Sigurbjörnsson, J. Kamps, and M. de Rijke. An element-based approch
to XML retrieval. In N. Fuhr and S. Malik, editors, Proceedings INEX 2003,
pages 19_26, 2004.
[48] B. Sigurbjörnsson, J. Kamps and M. de Rijke. Multiple sources of evidence
for XML retrieval. In Proceedings 27th Annual International ACM SIGIR
Conference (SIGIR 2004), 2004.
[49] B. Sigurbjörnsson, J. Kamps and M. de Rijke. Processing content-andstructure
queries for XML retrieval. In V. Mihajlovic and D. Hiemstra, editors,
Proceedings of the First Twente Data Management Workshop (TDM'04), pages
32_38, 2004.
[50] B. Sigurbjörnsson, J. Kamps and M. de Rijke. Processing content- oriented
XPath queries. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth ACM conference on
Information and knowledge management, pages 371_380. ACM Press, 2004.
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[51] B. Sigurbjörnsson, J. Kamps and M. de Rijke. The University of
Amsterdam at INEX 2004. In N. Fuhr, M. Lalmas, S. Malik, and Z. Szl´avik,
editors, INEX 2004 Workshop Proceedings, pages 104_109, 2004.
[52] B. Sigurbjörnsson and A. Trotman. Queries: INEX 2003 working group
report. In N. Fuhr and S. Malik, editors, Proceedings INEX 2003, pages
167_170, 2004.
[53] B. Sigurbjörnsson, J. Kamps and M. de Rijke. Building a multilingual web
retrieval collection (abstract). In 15th Meeting of Computational Linguistics in
the Netherlands (CLIN 2004), 2004.
[54] B. Sigurbjörnsson, J. Kamps and M. de Rijke. Length normalization in
XML retrieval (extended abstract). In R. Verbrugge, N. Taatgen, and L.
Schomaker, editors, Proceedings BNAIC 2004, 2004, pages 369_370.
[55] E. Tjong Kim Sang. Introduction to FactMine (abstract). In 15th Meeting of
Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands (CLIN 2004), 2004.
[56] O. Tsur, M. de Rijke and K. Sima'an. Biographer: Biography questions as a
restricted domain question answering task. In Proceedings ACL 2004 Workshop
on Question Answering in Restricted Domains,2004.
[57] A. Weber and K. Müller. Word order variation in German main clauses: A
corpus analysis. In Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on
Linguistically Interpreted Corpora (LINC-04), Geneva, Switzerland, 2004.
Reports
[1] J. van Benthem, G. Bezhanishvili, B. ten Cate and D. Sarenac. Modal logics
for products of topologies . Technical Report PP-2004-15, ILLC, Universiteit van
Amsterdam, 2004.
[2] N. Bezhanishvili and B. ten Cate. Transfer results for hybrid logic _ part i:
the case without satisfaction operators. Technical Report PP-2004-06, ILLC,
Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2004.
[3] B. ten Cate. The first order formulas preserved under ultrafilter ex tensions
are not recursively enumerable. Technical Report PP-2004-27, ILLC,
Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2004.

[4] B. ten Cate and M. Franceschet. Guarded fragments with constants.
Technical Report PP-2004-32, ILLC, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2004.
Other products
Miscellanea
[1] B. ten Cate, M. Marx and P. Viana. Liber Amicorum ter gelegenheid van het
afscheid van Dick de Jongh, chapter Sahlqvist theory for hybrid logic. 2004.
[9] M. Marx. Book review of Relation Algebras and Games by R. Hirsch and I.
Hodkinson. Studia Logica, 77(1):129_147, 2004.
[12] B. Sigurbjörnsson. Book review: Language Modeling for Information
Retrieval (eds. W.B. Croft and J. Lafferty). Journal of Logic, Language and
Information, 13(4):531_534, 2004.
Software
[1] L. Afanasiev. XMChecker, An XML Model Checker.
http://ilps.science.uva.nl/Resources
[2] D. Ahn. System for Recognizing and Normalizing Temporal Expressions.
URL:
http://ilps.science.uva.nl/Resources
[3] N. Caarls and R. Mokken HORUS. A Platform for Spatial Feature
Detection in Multispectral Images from Remote Sensing (version 1.08)
[4] M. Franceschet. XPathMark: An XPath benchmark for XMark, URL:
http://www.science.uva.nl/~francesc/xpathmark
[5] G. Mishne. ILPS Extensions to Lucene. URL:
http://ilps.science.uva.nl/Resources
[6] B. Sigurbjörnsson. XML Retrieval Extensions to Lucene. URL:
http://ilps.science.uva.nl/Resources/
[7] E. Tjong Kim Sang. FactMine Dutch QA Demo. URL: http:
//staff.science.uva.nl/~erikt/factmine/qademo.cgi
Appendices
67
Annual Report 2004
Corpora.
[1] V. Jijkoun. Answer Type Classification. Guidelines plus evaluation corpus.
URL:
http://ilps.science.uva.nl/Resources/
[2] V. Jijkoun. Question-Answer Pairs Collection. URL:
http://ilps.science.uva.nl/Resources/
[3] J. Kamps, M. de Rijke, B. Sigurbjörnsson. EuroGOV: A Multilingual Web
Retrieval Collection. URL: http://ilps.science.uva.nl/WebCLEF/
[4] G. Mishne. Blog Comment Spam Collection. URL:
http://ilps.science.uva.nl/Resources/blogspam
[5] G. Mishne. Source Code Retrieval Corpus+Assessments. URL:
http://www.science.uva.nl/~gilad/scg
[6] K. Müller. Evaluation corpus for Tagging Questions. URL:
http://ilps.science.uva.nl/Resources/

The Laboratory for Human Computer Studies
Recent key publications
[1] C.J. van Aart, B.J. Wielinga and A. Th. Schreiber. Organizational Building
Blocks for Design of Distributed Intelligent Systems. Int. J. Human-Computer
Studies, 61, 567-599, 2004.
[2] Bredeweg, B. and Struss, S. (Eds). Current Topics in Qualitative Reasoning.
AI Magazine (special issue), Volume 24, Number 4 (winter), 13-130, 2003.
[3] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh (Eds). Collaborative networked
organizations – A research agenda for emerging business models,Springer
and Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[4] S. Kabel, R. de Hoog, B.J. Wielinga and A. Anjewierden. The added value
of task and ontology based mark-up for information retrieval. Journal of the
American Society for Information Science and Technology,55(4), pp 348-362,
2004.
[5] P. van der Putten and M. van Someren. A bias-variance analysis of a real
world learning problem: the CoIL challenge 2000. Machine Learning, 57, 177-
195, 2004.
Dissertations
[1] C.J. van Aart. Organizational Principles for Multi-Agent Systems,PhD
Thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, April 2004 (Promotores: Prof. Dr. B.J.
Wielinga and Prof. Dr. A.Th. Schreiber).
[2] V. Bessa Machado. Supporting the Construction of Qualitative Knowledge
models, PhD Thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, November 2004 (Promotor:
Prof. Dr. B.J. Wielinga, Co-promotor: Dr. B. Bredeweg).
During 2004 H. Afsarmanesh switched from Advanced Computing Systems Engineering
to Human Computer Studies. Publications by H. Afsarmanesh have been listed in both
groups but are counted in Advanced Computing Systems Engineering.
Informatics Institute
68
Annual Report 2004
[3] S. Kabel. Knowledge-rich indexing of learning objects, PhD Thesis,
Universiteit van Amsterdam, October 2004 (Promotores: Prof. Dr. B.J.
Wielinga, Prof. Dr. R. de Hoog).
[pm] E. C. Kaletas. Scientific Information Management in Collaborative
Experimentation Environments, PhD Thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam,
(Promotor: Prof. Dr. L.O. Hertzberger, Co-promotor: Dr. H. Afsarmanesh)
May 2004.
Journal Articles
[1] C.J. van Aart, B.J. Wielinga and A. Th. Schreiber. Organizational Building
Blocks for Design of Distributed Intelligent Systems. Int. J. Human-Computer
Studies 61, 567-599, 2004.
[2] P. Adriaans and M. van Zaanen. Computational Grammar Induction for
Linguists. Grammars 7, 57-68, 2004.
[3] P. Adriaans, H. Fernau, C. de la Higuera and M. van Zaanen. Introduction
to the Special Issue on Grammar Induction. Grammars, 7, 41-43, 2004.
[4] J. Breuker, A. Valente and R. Winkels. Use and reuse of legal ontologies in
knowledge engineering and information management. Artificial Intelligence &
Law, Vol 12, special issue on Legal Ontologies, (37 pages), 2004.
[5] H.S.M. Cramer, V. Evers, E.V. Zudilova and P.M.A. Sloot. Context analysis
to support development of virtual reality applications. Journal of Virtual
Reality, 7(3), 177-186, 2004.
[6] V. Evers, E. del Galdo, D. Cyr and C. Bonanni (Eds). Designing for Global
Markets 6. Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on
Internationalisation of Products and Systems,8-10 July, Vancouver, Canada,
2004.
[7] L. Hollink, A.Th.Schreiber, B. Wielinga and M.Worring. Classification of
User Image Descriptions. International Journal of Human Computer Studies
61(5), 601-626, 2004.
[8] S. Kabel, R. de Hoog, B.J. Wielinga and A. Anjewierden. The added value
of task and ontology based mark-up for information retrieval. Journal of the

American Society for Information Science and Te c h n o l o g y, 55(4), pp 348-362, 2004.
[9] S. Kabel, R. de Hoog, B. J. Wielinga and A. Anjewierden. Indexing learning
objects: vocabularies and empirical investigation of consistency. AACE Journal
of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13(4), 405-425, 2004.
[10] N. Lavrac, H. Motoda, T. Fawcett, R. Holte, P. Langley and P. Adriaans.
Lessons learned from data mining applications and collaborative problem solving.
Machine Learning, 57, 13-34, 2004.
[11] P. van der Putten and M. van Someren. A bias-variance analysis of a real
world learning problem: the CoIL challenge 2000. Machine Learning, 57, pp.
177-195, 2004.
[pm] H. Afsarmanesh and L. M. Camarinha-Matos (Eds). International Journal
of Networking and Virtual Organizations (Inderscience), Special issue on
Infrastructures for new virtual organizations, Vol. 2, Nº 3, 2004.
[pm] H. Afsarmanesh, V. Guevara and L.O. Hertzberger. Management of federated
information in tele-assistance environments. The Journal on Information
Technology in Healthcare,Vol. 2, Issue 2, London, April 2004.
[pm] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. A multi-agent based infrastructure
to support virtual communities in elderly care. International Journal
of Networking and Virtual Organizations, Inderscience,2004 Vol. 2, No. 3,
pp.246–266, ISSN 1470-9503, 2004.
[pm] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. TeleCARE: Collaborative
virtual elderly care support communities. The Journal on Information
Technology in Healthcare, Vol. 2, Issue 2, London, pp 73-86, ISSN 1479-649X,
April 2004.
[pm] E. C. Kaletas, H. Afsarmanesh and L. O. Hertzberger. A Collaborative
Experimentation Environment for Biosciences. International Journal of
Networking and Virtual Organizations, 2 (3): 209-231, 2004.
Books, bookchapters and special issues
[1] P. Adriaans, H. Fernau, C. de la Higuera and M. van Zaanen (Eds.). Special
Issue on Grammar Induction, Grammars, 7, 2004.
Informatics Institute
69
Annual Report 2004
[2] B. Berendt, A. Hotho, D. Mladenic, M. van Someren, M. Spiliopoulou and
G. Stumme (Eds.). Web Mining: From Web to Semantic Web, Band 3209, ISBN
3-540-23258-3, 2004.
[3] J. Breuker, A.Valente and R. Winkels. Ontologías jurídicas: una
aproximación funcional. In P. Casanovas and R. Benjamins (Eds),
Web semántica y ontologías jurídicas. Aplicaciones para el derecho en la nueva
generación de la red. Ed.Comares, Madrid, pp 19 – 38, 2004.
[4] J. Breuker and R. Hoekstra. Core concepts of law: taking common-sense
seriously. In A.C. Varzi and L. Vieu (Eds) Formal Ontology in Information
Systems (FOIS-2004), IOS-Press, pp 210—221, 2004.
[5] N. Christoph. Empirical evaluation methodology for embodied
conversational agents. In Zs. Ruttkay and C. Pelachaud (Eds), Evaluating
ECAs, Kluwer Academic Press, pp. 67-100, 2004.
[6] J. Lehmann, J, Breuker and B. Brouwer. La causalidad en la Inteligencia
Artificial y en el derecho. In P. Casanovas and R. Benjamins (Eds), Web
semántica y ontologías jurídicas. Aplicaciones para el derecho en la nueva
generación de la red. Ed.Comares, Madrid, pp 151—178, 2004.
[pm] H. Afsarmanesh and L.M. Camarinha-Matos (Eds). International Journal
of Networking and Virtual Organizations (Inderscience), Special issue on
Infrastructures for new virtual organizations, Vol. 2, Nº 3, 2004.
[pm] H. Afsarmanesh, V. Marik and L.M. Camarinha-Matos. Challenges of collaborative
networks in Europe. In Collaborative Networked Organizations
– A research agenda for emerging business models, chap. 3.3, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[pm] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. A strategic roadmap for
advanced virtual organizations, Loeh, F. Sturm, M. Ollus, in Collaborative
Networked Organizations – A research agenda for emerging business models,
chap. 7.2, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[pm] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. A roadmapping
methodology for strategic research on VO. In Collaborative Networked
Organizations – A research agenda for emerging business models, chap. 7.1,
Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.

[pm] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. Formal modeling methods
for collaborative networks. In Collaborative Networked Organizations – A
research agenda for emerging business models,chap. 6.3, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[pm] L. M. Camarinha-Mato and H. Afsarmanesh. Emerging behavior in
complex collaborative networks. In Collaborative Networked Organizations –
A research agenda for emerging business models,chap. 6.2, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[pm] L.M. Camarinha-Matos, V. Tschammer and H. Afsarmanesh. On emerging
technologies for VO. In Collaborative Networked Organizations –
A research agenda for emerging business models, chap. 5.4, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[pm] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. Support infrastructures for
new collaborative forms. In Collaborative Networked Organizations –
A research agenda for emerging business models, chap. 5.2, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
[pm] L. M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. Targeting major new
trends. In Collaborative Networked Organizations – A research agenda for
emerging business models,chap. 3.2, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-
4020-7823-4, 2004.
[pm] L.M. Camarinha-Matos, E. Banahan, J. Sousa, F. Sturm, H. Afsarmanesh,
J. Barata, J. Playfoot and V. Tschammer. Emerging collaborative forms. In
Collaborative Networked Organizations – A research agenda for emerging
business models,chap. 2.4, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4,
2004.
[pm] L.M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh (Eds). Collaborative networked
organizations – A research agenda for emerging business models,by
both Springer and Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-7823-4, 2004.
Conference contributions
[1] A. Anjewierden, R. Brussee and L. Efimova. "Shared conceptualisations in
weblogs". In Thomas N. Burg (Ed.), BlogTalks 2.0: The European Conference
on Weblogs, pp 110-138. Danube University of Krems, 2004.
Informatics Institute
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Annual Report 2004
[2] M. van Assem, M. Menken, A.Th. Schreiber, J. Wielemaker and B.J.
Wielinga. A Method for Converting Thesauri to RDF/OWL. Proceedings of the
Third International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC04), pp. 17-31.
Hiroshima, Japan, 2004.
[3] B. Berendt, A. Hotho, D. Mladenic, M. van Someren, M. Spiliopoulou and
G. Stumme. A Roadmap for Web Mining. In B. Berendt, A. Hotho, D.
Mladenic, M. van Someren, M. Spiliopoulou and G. Stumme (eds) Web Mining:
From Web to Semantic Web, Springer, LNCS, ISBN 3-540-23258-3, ISSN 0302-
9743, pp.1-22, 2004.
[4] G. Biswas, B. Bredeweg, R.W.Ferguson, P.Struss and B. Sherin. Qualitative
Modeling and Cognitive Science. In K.D. Forbus, D. Gentner and T. Regier.
Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, p. 13,
Chicago, Illinois, August 5-7, 2004.
[5] T. van den Boogaard and M. van Someren. Grammar Induction in the
domain of postal addresses. In A. Nowe, T. Lenaerts and K. Steenhout,
Proceedings Benelearn 2004, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, pp.126-131, 2004.
[6] J. Breuker and R.Hoekstra. Direct: Ontology based discovery of
responsibility and causality in legal case descriptions. In T. Gordon, editor,
Legal Knowledge and Information Systems. Jurix 2004: The Seventeenth
Annual Conference, pages 59-68, Amsterdam. IOS Press. pp 59 – 68, 2004.
[7] J. Breuker and R. Hoekstra. Epistemology and ontology in core ontologies:
FOLaw and LRI-Core, two core ontologies for law. In Proceedings of EKAW
Workshop on Core ontologies.CEUR, http://CEUR-WS.org/Vol-118/ (23
pages), 2004.
[8] J. Breuker. Constructing a legal core ontology: LRI-Core, In F. Freitas, H.
Stuckenschmidt and Raphael Volz (Eds), Proceedings WONTO-2004,
Workshop on ontologies and their applications, LivroRapido, Porto Alegre, p
115 – 126, 2004.
[9] V. van Cappelle and V. Evers. Investigating the Effects of unsupervised computer
use on educationally disadvantaged children’s knowledge and understanding
of computers. In Sudweeks, F. and Ess, C. (eds) Proceedings of the Fourth
International Conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and
Communication. Karlstad, Sweden, 27 June-1 July 2004.

[10] N. Christoph, J. Sandberg and B.J.Wielinga. Measuring learning effects of a
gaming-simulation environment for the domain of knowledge management.
Proceedings of CELDA,Lissabon, Portugal, pp. 265-272, 2004.
[11] H.S.M. Cramer, V. Evers, E.V. Zudilova and P.M.A. Sloot. Heuristic
evaluation and context analysis to aid the development of a simulated vascular
reconstruction system, Proceedings of Virtual Reality Design and Evaluation
Workshop, 22-23rd January, 2004, Nottingham, United Kingdom, 2004.
[12] V. Evers, C. Luteijn, P. Damsma and J. Norgaard. Beyond physical and
cultural Barriers: The development of an international community environment
for seeing and visually impaired children. In Collier, H. (ed), International
Forum on Virtual Communities, 14-15 July, the Hague, the Netherlands, 2004.
[13] L. Hollink, G. Nguyen, A. Th. Schreiber, J. Wielemaker, B.J. Wielinga and
M. Worring. Adding Spatial Semantics to Image Annotations. 4th International
Workshop on Knowledge Markup and Semantic Annotation at ISWC'04, 2004.
[14] V. Hollink, M. van Someren and S. ten Hagen. Web Site Adaptation:
Recommendation and Automatic Generation of Navigation Menus. In A.
Abecker, S. Bickel, U. Brefeld, I. Drost, N. Henze, O. Herden, M. Minor, T.
Scheffer, L. Stojanovic and S. Weibelzahl (Eds), Proceedings of the Annual
Workshop of the SIG Adaptivity and User Modeling in Interactive Systems
2004, Berlin, Germany, Oktober 2004, pp. 33-35, 2004.
[15] G.R. Meijer and L.O. Hertzberger. Virtual collaboration: from science to
business. In Proceedings of Conference e-Challenges, Vienna, 27-29 October
2004.
[16] G.R. Meijer and N. Olink. The European Traveler in control: experience
with Mobile Ticketing. In Proceedings of Mobile&Wireless Communications
summit, Lyon, France, June 2004.
[17] G.R. Meijer. Acceptance of Mobile Ticketing- a case for user empowerment.
In Proceedings of ITS-in Europe 2004, Budapest, May 2004.
[18] W. Mulder and G.R. Meijer. SQUADS: Software development and maintenance
on the GRID by means of mobile virtual organisations using adaptive
information services. In Proceedings of the 5th IFOP Working Conference on
Virtual Enterprises, Toulouse, France, 22-27 August 2004.
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[19] M. Neumann and B. Bredeweg. A Qualitative Model of the Nutrient
Spiraling in Lotic Ecosystems to Support Decision Makers for River
Management. In K. Forbus and J. de Kleer (Eds.) Proceedings of the 18th
International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning (QR’04), pp. 159-164,
Evanston, Illinois, August 2-4, 2004.
[20] T. Nuttle, B. Bredeweg and P. Salles. Qualitative Reasoning about Food
Webs: Exploring Alternative Representations. In K. Forbus and J. de Kleer
(Eds.) Proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Qualitative
Reasoning (QR’04), pages ??-??, Evanston, Illinois, August 2-4, 2004.
[21] T. Nuttle, B. Bredeweg and P. Salles. Qualitative Reasoning about Food
Webs: Exploring Alternative Representations. In M. Oprea and M. Sanchèz-
Marrè, proceedings of the 4th ECAI Workshop on Binding Environmental
Sciences and Artificial Intelligence, pages 7.1-7.9, August 22-23, 2004.
[22] H. Salles, P. Salles and B. Bredeweg. Qualitative Reasoning in the
Education of deaf Students: Scientific Education and Acquisition of Portuguese
as a second Language. In J.C. Lester, R.M. Vicari and F. Paraguaçu (Eds.)
Intelligent Tutoring Systems: 7th International Conference, ITS 2004. Series
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3220, pp. 867-869, Berlin -
Heidelberg, Springer Verlag, 2004.
[23] H. Salles, P. Salles and B. Bredeweg. Qualitative Reasoning in the
Education of deaf Students: Scientific Education and Acquisition of Portuguese
as a second Language. In K. Forbus & J. de Kleer (Eds.) Proceedings of the 18th
International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning (QR’04), pages 97-104,
Evanston, Illinois, August 2-4, 2004.
[24] P. Salles, B. Bredeweg and N. Bensusan. The Ants’ Garden: Qualitative
Models of complex Interactions between Populations. In M. Oprea and M.
Sanchèz-Marrè, Proceedings of the 4th ECAI Workshop on Binding
Environmental Sciences and Artificial Intelligence, pages 6.1-6.8, August 22-23,
2004.
[25] P. Salles, B.Bredeweg and S. Araújo. Qualitative Models about Stream
Ecosystem Recovery: Exploratory Studies. In S. Dzeroski, M. Debeljak and B.
Zenko, Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Ecological Modelling ,
pages 107-108, September 27 - October 1, 2004.

[26] P. Salles, B. Bredeweg and N. Bensusan. The Ants’ Garden: Qualitative
models of complex Interactions between Populations. In S. Dzeroski, M.
Debeljak and B. Zenko Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on
Ecological Modelling, pages 109-110, September 27 - October 1, 2004.
[27] M. van Someren, S. ten Hagen and V. Hollink. Greedy recommending is
not optimal. In B. Berendt, A. Hotho, D. Mladenic, M. van Someren, M.
Spiliopoulou and G. Stumme (Eds), Web Mining: From Web to Semantic Web,
Springer, LNCS. P.148-163, 2004.
[28] F.P. Terpstra, A.Visser and G.R. Meijer. Intelligent Adaptive Traffic
Forecasting System using Data Assimilation for use in Traveler Information
Systems, The Symposium on Professional Practice in AI a stream within the
First IFIP Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations
AIAI-2004, Toulouse France, August 2004, ISBN 2-907801-05-8, 2004.
[29] F. P. Terpstra and E.E. van Loon. Assimilating radar observations in a bird
migration model. Dare2004 Workshop on Data Assimilation and Recursive
Estimation, Venice Italy, September 20-21, 2004.
[30] B.J. Wielinga, J. Wielemaker, A.Th. Schreiber and M. van Assem. Methods
for Porting Resources to the Semantic Web. In C. Bussler, J. Davies, D. Fensel
and R. Studer (Eds.), The Semantic Web: Research and Applications. Proceedings
First European Semantic Web Symposium ESWS 2004, Crete. Lecture Notes in
Computer Science (LNCS), volume 3053, pp. 299-311, May 2004.
[pm] H. Afsarmanesh, V. Guevara-Masis and L. O. Hertzberger. Federated
management of information for TeleCARE. In Proceedings of TELECARE
2004 – Int. Workshop on Tele-Care and Collaborative Virtual Communities in
Elderly Care, 13 Apr 2004, Porto, Portugal, INSTICC Press, pp 49-62, ISBN
972-8865-10-4, 2004.
[pm] L. M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. The emerging discipline of
collaborative networks. In Proceedings of PRO-VE’04 – Virtual Enterprises and
Collaborative Networks, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-8138-3,
pp 3-16, 23-26, Aug. 2004.
[pm] L. M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. TeleCARE: Collaborative
virtual elderly support communities. In Proceedings of TELECARE 2004 – Int.
Workshop on Tele-Care and Collaborative Virtual Communities in Elderly
Informatics Institute
72
Annual Report 2004
Care, 13 Apr 2004, Porto, Portugal, INSTICC Press, pp 1-12, ISBN 972-8865-
10-4, 2004.
[pm] V. Guevara-Masis, E. Kaletas, O. Unal, H. Afsarmanesh and L. O.
Hertzberger. Using ontologies for collaborative information management: Some
challenges & ideas. Presented at Advances in Information Systems (ADVIS’04),
Izmir, Turkey, 2004.
[pm] V. Guevara-Masis, H. Afsarmanesh and L.O. Hertzberger. Service-
Oriented Architecture for TeleCARE. Presented at On the Move to Meaningful
Internet Systems 2004: OTM 2004 workshops:OTM confederated International
Workshops and Posters, GADA, JTRES, MIOS, WORM, WOSE, PhDS, and
INTEROP 2004, Agia NAPA, Cyprus, 2004.
[pm] V. Guevara-Masis, H. Afsarmanesh and L. O. Hetzberger. Ontologybased
automatic data structure generation for collaborative networks. In
Proceedings of PRO-VE’04 – Virtual Enterprises and Collaborative Networks,
Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 1-4020-8138-3, pp 163-174, 23-26 Aug
2004.
[pm] E.C. Kaletas, H. Afsarmanesh and L. O. Hetzberger. Analysis of
requirements for collaborative scientific experimentation environments. In
Proceedings of BASYS’04 – Emerging Solutions for Future Manufacturing
Systems, Springer, ISBN 0-387-22828-4, pp. 251-262, 27-29 Sep 2004.
[pm] E.C. Kaletas, H. Afsarmanesh and L. O. Hertzberger. A Methodology for
Integrating New Scientific Domains and Applications in a Virtual Laboratory
Environment. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Enterprise
Information Systems (ICEIS 2004).
Reports
[1] A. Anjewierden, B. J. Wielinga, R. de Hoog and S. Kabel. Task and domain
ontologies for knowledge mapping in operational processes.Metis deliverable
2003/4.2. Universiteit van Amsterdam, February , 2004.
[2] F.A. Arts and A. Zweegers. E-government voor Multicultureel Zakelijk
Gebruik. Een onderzoek naar gebruiksvriendelijkheid van het
Ondernemersloket Oost-Watergraafsmeer en gebruikerservaring van multiculturele
zakelijke gebruikersgroepen. Beleidsonderzoeksrapport in opdracht
van de gemeente Amsterdam, 2004.

[3] F.A. Arts and A. Zweegers. Digitale ondernemersloketten vergeleken. Een
benchmark naar de kwaliteit en multi-culturele kenmerken van gemeentelijke
online dienstverlening aan ondernemers. Rapportage van een vergelijkende
studie in opdracht van de gemeente Amsterdam, 2004.
[4] F.A. Arts and A. Zweegers. Evaluatie van het online ondernemersloket. Een
evaluatie van de kwaliteit en multi-culturele kenmerken van het ondernemersloket
Oost-Watergraafsmeer. Onderzoeksrapport in opdracht van de gemeente
Amsterdam, 2004.
[5]B. Bredeweg, I.Russell and J.Thomas. Review on Integration of MBS&QR
with WWW. MONET - Network of Excellence on Model-based Systems and
Qualitative Reasoning (Contract No: IST-33540), Deliverable ED3, July 2004.
[6] B. Bredeweg, M. Neumann, T. Nuttle, C. Price, I. Russell, J. Thomas and F.
Wotowa. Education and Training Roadmap (version two). Technological roadmap.
MONET - Network of Excellence on Model-based Systems and
Qualitative Reasoning (Contract No: IST-33540), Deliverable ED5, November
2004.
[7] M. van Someren and D. Mladenic. European KDD Research and
Development. Deliverable KDNET, Fraunhofer Institute, pp 23, december
2004.
Other products
[1] SWI-Prolog. Logic programming environment with strong support for
(semantic) web and visualization. Over 150,000 downloads during 2004.
Available on all major Linux distributions. http://www.swi-prolog.org
Informatics Institute
73
Annual Report 2004

Appendix 2 Cooperations and Supporting Institutions
The Laboratory for Computing, System Architecture and
Programming
1. Computational Informatics
We have intensified our international collaborations. Within the framework of a
formal agreement between the Universiteit van Amsterdam and the Saint
Petersburg State University, Russian Federation, a joint laboratory for
computational science was established in Saint Petersburg. This lab works on
problem solving environments and applications. We formally collaborate with
CYFRONET, Cracow, Poland, through joint Ph.D. students in the field of
monitoring and scheduling for scientific computing on the Grid. In the
framework of a recently started NATO Science for Peace program we
collaborate with institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of
Science in the field of biomedical diagnostic systems. Finally, a strong research
cooperation is established with a number of USA based universities (Stanford
University, Mississippi State University).
Through the Virtual Lab project we strongly collaborate with the Computer
Architecture and Parallel Systems group. The theoretical work on evolving CA
is done in collaboration with the Algorithms and Complexity Theory group of
the ILLC.
International:
Dr. C. Bassarudin and Dr. B. Nazief, Computer Science, University of
Indonesia (Depok - Jakarta, Indonesia); Dr. D. Pooley, MIT (Boston, USA); Dr.
G. Kochneva, VECTOR institute (Novosibirsk, Russian Federation); Dr. G.
Videen, US Army Research Laboratory (Washington DC, USA); Dr. H.
Zinnecker, AIP (Germany); Dr. J. E. Kuebler, Department of Biology,
California State University; Dr. M. Bubak, Institute of Computer Science, AgH
(Cracow, POLAND); Dr. M.J.A. Vermeij, Cooperative Institute for Marine and
Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS); Rosenstiel School for Marine and Atmospheric
Science (RSMAS) at the University of Miami/ NOAA Southeast Science
Fisheries Center; Dr. M.J.H. van Oppen, Australian Institute of Marine Science
(Townsville, Australia); Dr. O. Santoso, Institute of Technology Bandung
(Bandung, Indonesia); Dr. P. Teuben, University of Maryland (USA); Prof. Dr.
C. Kesselman, USC (USA); Dr. R. Klessen, AIP (Germany); Dr. V. Maltsev,
Appendices
74
Annual Report 2004
Siberian Branch of Academy of Science (Novosibirsk, Russian Federation); J.
Bernsdorf, NEC Europe, C&C Research Laboratories (St. Augustin,
Germany); Prof Dr. C. Taylor (Stanford, USA); Prof Dr. L.Hluchy, Institute of
Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences (Bratislawa, Slovakia); Prof J. Makino,
University of Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan); Prof M. Livny, University of Wisconsin
(Madison, Wisconsin, USA); Prof P. Hut, Institute of Advanced Studies
(Princeton, USA); Prof. A.V. Bogdanov, Dr. Y.E. Gorbachev and others,
Institute for High Performance Computing and Information Systems
(St.Petersburg, Russia); Prof. Dr. A. Gruzdev, Insitute for Cytology and
Genetics (Novosibirsk, Russian Federation); Prof. Dr. A. Zomaya, University
of Sydney (Australia); Prof. Dr. B. Chopard, University of Geneva (Geneva,
Switzerland); Prof. Dr. D. Abramson, Monash University (Australia); Prof. Dr.
D. van Bockstaele, Antwerpen University Hospital and University of
Antwerpen (Antwerpen, Belgium); Prof. Dr. D.J. Miller, Comparative
Genomics Centre, James Cook University (Australia); Prof. Dr. M. Krafzyk,
Institut fur Computeranwendungen im bauingenieurwesen, TUB
(Braunschweig, Germany); Prof. Dr. T. Adriaansen, Telecommunications &
Industrial Physics, CSIRO (Australia); Prof. Dr. V. Loiko, Dr. V. Babenko,
Stepanov Institute of Physics (Minsk, Belarus); Prof. Dr. V. Sunderam, Emory
University (Atlanta, USA); Prof. Dr. W.E.G. Müller, Abt. Angewandte
Molekularbiologie, Universität Mainz (Germany); Prof. R. van Woesik,
Department Biological Sciences, Florida Institute of Technology; Prof. S.
McMillan, Drexel University (USA).
National:
Dr. A.H. van Kampen AMC-UvA (Amsterdam); Dr. Bouten, Earth Sciences,
Universiteit van Amsterdam; Dr. C. Boucher, AZU, University of Utrecht
(Utrecht); Dr. D. Kandhai, TUD (Delft); Dr. G. Streekstra, Dr H. Venema,
AMC-UvA (Amsterdam); Dr. M. Muller, Institute of Animal Sciences,
Wageningen University; Dr. R. van der Sman, Agricultural University
Wageningen; Prof D. Frenkel, Dr. H. Volten, AMOLF (Amsterdam); Prof E.P.J.
van den Heuvel, Prof. Dr L.B.F.M. Waters, Prof. Dr. J. Hovenier, Astronomy
Department, Universiteit van Amsterdam; Prof H.V. Westerhoff Microbial
Physiology, Free University of Amsterdam; Prof P. Hemker, Drs J.G Blom,
Prof. Dr. J. Verwer, Dr. M. Peletier (CWI Amsterdam); Prof P. Iedema,
Chemical Technology, Universiteit van Amsterdam; Prof. Dr. H. Reiber,
University of Leiden (Leiden); Prof. Dr. H. van As, Laboratory of Biophysics,
Wageningen University; Prof. Dr. Ir. H.E. Bal, Department of Computer
Science, Free University, Amsterdam; Prof. dr. ir. J. H. van Schuppen (CWI);
Prof. Dr. J. van Leeuwen, Department of Animal Sciences & Wageningen

Institute of Animal Sciences, Wageningen University; Prof. Dr. R.P.M. Bak,
NIOZ (Den Burg (Texel)); Prof. Dr. W. van der Zande, AMOLF, Amsterdam en
KUN Nijmegen; Prof. R van Driel, SILS-UvA.
The Computational Informatics Group is supported by:
Nato Science for Peace Program; European Union, 6th Framework Program;
KNAW; NWO (NCF, FOM, NOVA, MPR); Hogeschool van Amsterdam;
Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs ; Dutch Foundation for HPCN.
2. Advanced Computing Systems Engineering
International:
CSIN (Portugal); Instituto de Desenvolvimiento de Novas Tecnologías,
(Portugal); Roundrose Associates, Ltd (UK); Synkronix Incorporation, Ltd.
(UK); SKILL Consejeros de Gestión, SL. (Spain); Cámara de Comercio e
Industria - Unidad de Promoción y Desarrollo de Navarra, SL.(Spain); CSIC
(Spain); Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania (Greece); Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew (UK); University of Reading (UK); The Natural History
Museum (UK); University of Turku (Finland); OOEL (Austria); University of
Kiel (Germany); VIM (Germany); University of Copenhagen (Denmark); IBM
Life Sciences Solutions - La Gaude (France); IBM (USA), CERN (Swiss),
University of Illinois at Chigago (USA), HP, Apple, Force10, Calient,
GlimmerGlass.
National:
Biology Department of UvA; LogicaCMG Den Haag B.V.; KPN research;
Ministry of Transportation; FOM; AMOLF; CWI; Nikhef; SARA; AMC;
Philips Nederlandse Bedrijven BV; Sylogic BV; Free University; Technical
University Delft; Leiden University; NBIC; TNO; WCSF; Unilever
Netherlands; ATO; Friesland Coberco Diary Foods; IBM Netherlands; FEI
Electron Optics; Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences (UvA); University of
Nijmegen, Wageningen University, Zoological Museum (UvA); ETI
biodiversity Center; Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (UvA);
Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology; Association for Research on Flora and
Fauna; Dutch Butterfly Conservation; Royal Netherlands Air force; IBM Life
Sciences;
Appendices 75
Annual Report 2004
The CAPS group is supported by:
European Union, HPCN Foundation, Ministerie van Verkeer en Waterstaat,
NWO, STW/Progress,
ICES/KIS (Bsik), IFIP, Philips Nederlandse Bedrijven BV, Senter
3. Programming Methods and Programming Environments
National:
Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica; University of Utrecht; Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam; Vanenburg Group; SERC; PinkRoccade; AtosOrigin;
Software Improvement Group; Microsoft Research (GB)
The group is supported by:
The Dutch National Science Council NWO.
The Intelligent Systems Laboratory Amsterdam
1. Intelligent Sensory Information Systems
The ISIS group is supported by:
ICES-KIS, IOP-BV, IOP-MMI, EU, NWO-GBE, NWO-STW, Dutch forensic
Institute, TNO-TPD, TNO-FEL, TNO-LIFT, Océ, Philips CFT, Elsevier.
2. Intelligent Autonomous Systems
International
Science and Technology (AIST, Japan); KTH (Stockholm, Sweden); LAAS,
(Toulouse, France); Frauenhofer Insitute IPA (Stuttgart, Germany); EPFL
(Lausanne, Switzerland); Caltech (USA); University of Waterloo (Canada);
Arizona State University (USA); Cambridge University Engineering (GBR).
National
Stichting Neurale Netwerken (SNN); ITS, TUDelft; Korteweg de Vries
Institute for Mathematics (UvA); CWI, Amsterdam; Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam; University of Maastricht (Institute for Knowledge and Agent

Technology IKAT); University of Nijmegen (Institute for Cognitive Science,
Neuroscience, and Information Technology NICI, Max Planck Institute and
Department of Linguistics); University of Twente (Center for Telematics and
Information Technology,CTIT).
Industry:
TNO-D&V; TNO/TPD; Philips CFT; Philips Research: Sentient Machines
Research (SMR); Shell; Unilever; KiQ; Noldus BV; Eagle Vision; Epictoid;
Thales Nederland B.V.; 4Tec B.V.; DaimlerChrysler Research and Technology
(Ulm, Germany).
The Intelligent Autonomous Systems group is supported by:
Stichting Technische Wetenschappen (STW); NWO (ToKeN 2000); D&V-
TNO; Ministry of Economic Affairs; Ministry of Education; DECIS lab;
STW/PROGRESS; The European Commission (IST 6th framework program)
3. Information and language Processing Systems
International:
Alechina (Nottingham, UK); Becher (Buenos Aires); Bernardi (Bolzano);
Blackburn (Nancy); Demri (Paris), Fisher (Liverpool); Fundulaki (Bell Labs);
Gabbay (London); Gardent (Nancy); Lutz (Dresden); Montanari (Udine);
Muthukrishnan (Rutgers); de Nivelle (Saarbrücken); Ohlbach (München);
Sattler (Dresden); Schlingloff (Berlin); Striegnitz (Saarbrücken); UC Berkeley
(Haas School of Business); Technion (Haifa); Stanford University; IMS
Stuttgart, University of Manchester; Liverpool University; and Imperial and
King’s College (London); Universiteit van Antwerpen; IRIT (Toulouse).
National:
Hiemstra (Enschede); Moortgat (Utrecht); de Vries (CWI); Limburgs
Universitair Centrum.
Industry:
Bell Labs, Bolesian, Elsevier Science, IBM (Haifa), IRION, de Koninklijke
Bibliotheek, Xerox Europe, Unilever.
The ILPS group is supported by:
NWO, EU/CologNET, Elsevier Science Publishers, and a subproject of the
VL-e Virtual Lab project.
Appendices
76
Annual Report 2004
The Laboratory for Human Computer Studies
International:
University of Brazil (Brazil); University of Jena (Germany); University of
Wales (Uk, Wales); Northwestern University (USA); New University of Lisbon
(Portugal); VTT (Finland); UNINOVA (Portgal); TES (Italy); Virtual Fabrik
(Germany); Groupo Formula (Italy); SAGE (Spain); TXT (Italy); JSI (Slovenia)
BIBA (Germany); Czech University of Technology (Czech republic); Federal
University of Santa Caterina (Brazil); ITESM (Mexico); ENICMA (Germany);
CERTICON (Czech republic); France Telecom (France); Siemens (Austria);
AIESEC (Slovakia); ComArch (Poland); Roundrose Associates, Ltd. (The
United Kingdom); SKILL Consejeros de Gestión, SL. (Spain); Cámara de
Comercio e Industria - Unidad de Promoción y Desarrollo de Navarra, SL.,
(Spain); CSIC (Spain); Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania (Greece);
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (United Kingdom); University of Reading
(United Kingdom); The Natural History Museum (United Kingdom);
University of Turku (Finland); OOEL (Austria); University of Kiel (Germany);
University of Copenhagen (Denmark); IBM Life Sciences Solutions - La Gaude
(France); Jozef Stefan Institute and University of Ljubljana (Mladenic en
Urbancic); Telematica Instituut; European Center for Ontology Research
(ECOR, Germany); ISOCO (Madrid Spain); KU Leuven (Belgium).
National:
Alterra; Wageningen University; Interapy; Spin in het Web; Universiteit van
Amsterdam, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences; University of Nijmegen,
Centre for Molecular and Biomolecular Informatics; Leiden University, Leiden
University Medical Centre; Wageningen University, Laboratory of Molecular
Biology; Universiteit van Amsterdam, Zoological Museum; ETI biodiversity
Center,; Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Institute for Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Dynamics; Association for Research on Flora and Fauna; IBM Life
Sciences; LOGICA CMG; LUMC (Leiden Universitair Medisch Centrum);
TNO Prevention and Health (P. Toussaint); Thales Research & Technology
Netherlands; Acklin (van Aart); IBM (Zijlstra, Rongen), Textkernel (Zavrel),
Robosail, v. Aartrijk; TNO-TPD (Kolb); Free University (Amsterdam);
Sonokids (Amsterdam)
The Human Computer Studies group is supported by:
EC (6FP-IP, 5FP); ICES-KIS-2; Bsik ; NWO; IOP-MMI (Senter)

Appendix 3 Other contributions
The Laboratory for Computing, System Architecture and
Programming
1. Computational Informatics
The group takes the lead in the organisation of several important international
symposia and conferences. Foremost among these is the series of International
Conferences on Computational Science. ICCS 2004 was held in Cracow; ICCS
2005 will be held in Atlanta.
Editorial positions
G.D. van Albada: Computational Science - ICCS 2004, Cracow, Poland, in
series Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3036 - 3099, 2004, co-editor.
A.G. Hoekstra, Cellular Automata – ACRI 2004, Amsterdam, in series Lecture
Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3305, 2004, co-editor; FGCS, guest editor.
Jaap A. Kaandorp: Virtual Medical Worlds, member of the advisory board.
P.M.A. Sloot: Elsevier Science FGCS, editor in chief: International Journal on
Grid Computing, theory, methods and applications:
www.elsevier.com/locate/fgcs; Computational Science - ICCS 2004, Cracow,
Poland, in series Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3036 - 3099, 2004,
co-editor; Cellular Automata – ACRI 2004, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in
series Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3305, 2004, co-editor.
International functions
A.G. Hoekstra: Advanced School for Computing and Imaging (ASCI), member
of the Scientific Advisory Board.
J.A. Kaandorp: NWO, Member BCI ("open competitie informatica")
committee; member PhD committee C. Maier, title Phd thesis: The skeletal
isotopic composition as an indicator of ecological plasticity in the coral genus
{\em Madracis}, March 2004; member PhD committee D. Sipkema, title Phd
thesis: Cultivation of marine sponges: from sea to cell, October, 2004, Univerity
of Wageningen.
Appendices
77
Annual Report 2004
S.F. Portegies Zwart: Peer review committee APPEC for the design and
development of a European ground based gravitational wave interferometer
(Paris, 27-29 July 2004); Peer review committee NWO-EW (Utrecht, 24 Mei
2004)
P.M.A. Sloot: Informatica Kamer Nederland, member; NWO, member working
group on Biomolecular Informatics; NWO, member working group on
Computational Science; Foundation of Beta Companies, Amsterdam, advisor;
NIP: Nederlands Instituut in St. Peterburg, Russia, scientific advisor; Russian
Academy of Sciences, advisor; AgH University of Science and Technology,
Cracow, Poland, scientific advisor; Scientific Board Lorentz Center, Universiteit
Leiden; scientific advisor European HealthGrid Society; Advisory board EU:
Complex Systems; Included in 'who is who in computational science':
http://www.wwcse.com/; Visiting Professor WSZIB Poland:
http://artemis.wszib.edu.pl/~sloot/; NWO Begeleidings Commissie 'Citaten
Analyse'; NWO Verkennigs Cie Stedelijke Ruimte; SURF: Wetenschappelijke
Advies Raad; Lorentz Centre: Wetenschappelijke Adviesraad; NIP
Wetenschappelijke Adviesraad
Scientific events organised
G.D. van Albada: Workshop Chair of the International Conference on
Computational Science ICCS 2004, Cracow, 2004; Workshop Chair of the
International Conference on Computational Science ICCS 2005, Atlanta, 2005.
A.G. Hoekstra: Chair Scientific Committee European Grid Conference 2005;
Organisation Committee ACRI 2004 Sixth International conference on Cellular
Automata for Research and Industry; Workshop ‘Light Scattering Revisited’,
ISAC conference, Montpellier, 2004.
J.A. Kaandorp: Chair Symposium 1st Internationaal symposium on networks in
bio-informatics, March 22 - 23, 2004, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Science Park
Amsterdam; Chair Symposium 2nd Internationaal symposium on networks in
bio-informatics, May 23 - 25, 2005, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Science Park
Amsterdam.
V. Krzhizhanovskaya: Workshop on "Multi-Physics Multi-Scale Simulation" in
the International Conference on Computational Science June 2004 (ICCS 2004),
Cracow, Poland; Workshop on "Multi-Physics Multi-Scale Simulation" in the
International Conference on Computational Science May 2005 (ICCS 2005),
Atlanta, USA.

S.F. Portegies Zwart: MODEST-4b: Workshop on performing direct N-body
calculations on massive parallel distributed memory platforms with special
purpose hardware, June 7 and 8, 2004 in Amsterdam; MODEST-5c:
Gravitational N-body summer school, 24-30 July 2005 in Amsterdam.
P.M.A. Sloot; Overall Chair of the International Conference on Computational
Science ICCS 2005, Atlanta, 2005; Overall Chair of the International
Conference on Computational Science ICCS 2004, Cracow, 2004; Chair
Organisation Committee ACRI 2004 Sixth International conference on Cellular
Automata for Research and Industry.
E.V. Zudilova: Workshop on "Interactive Visualisation and Interaction
Technologies" in the International Conference on Computational Science June
2004 (ICCS 2004), Cracow, Poland.
Invited speaker
A.G. Hoekstra: Elastic Light Scattering in FCM – or – do you need to know
more than Mie scattering?, ISAC, Montpellier, France, May 2004; Towards Grid
Based Virtual Vascular Reconstruction, ICMCC, Den Haag, June 2004; Invited
lecture ICMMES, Braunschweig, Computational "Hemodynamics with the
Lattice Boltzmann Method", Braunschweig, July 2004.
J.A. Kaandorp: Modelling developmental regulatory networks, University of
Mainz,Germany, March 2004; Modelling and analysis of three-dimensional
morphologies of scleractinian corals using computer tomography, SYNTHE-
SIS: integrated infrastructure initiative (I3) Network activity F, Madrid, Spain
June 2004.
S.F. Portegies Zwart: Blue Gene/L workshop, Juelich, Germany, September
2004; On Massive Stars in Interacting Binaries, Montreal, Canada August 2004;
COSPAR meeting,Paris, July 2004; On the formation of intermediate mass
black hole X-ray binaries, workshop on X-ray binaries Amsterdam, July 2004;
On the emission of gravitational waves from young dense star clusters, ESTEC
Noordwijk, July 2004; Penn State University (USA), December, 2002;
Workshop on Gravitational wave astronomy, May 2003 and June 2004;
Americal Astronomical Society Atlanta, USA, January 2004; Two colloquia at
Leiden University, February 2004.
P.M.A. Sloot: IHPCIS Seminair, St. Petersburg State University, 19 Maart;
BREIN seminair: RIVM Bilthoven, 29 Maart; BioGrid, IEEE CCGrid Chicago,
Appendices
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Annual Report 2004
21 April; Computational Science Workshop, Poland Cracow AgH, 1 June;
Keynote, PARA 2004, Copenhagen Denmark, 22 June.
Program committees
G.D. van Albada: European Grid Conference 2005, Amsterdam; International
Conference on Computational Science 2004, Cracow; International Conference
on Computational Science 2005, Atlanta.
A.G. Hoekstra: European Grid Conference 2005, Amsterdam; International
Conference on Computational Science 2004, Cracow; International Conference
on Computational Science 2005, Atlanta.
J.A. Kaandorp: BioMED 2004, 2004 Innsbruck, Austria; ACRI 2004,
Amsterdam.
V.V. Krzhizhanovskaya: International Conference on Computational Science
2004, Cracow; International Conference on Computational Science 2005,
Atlanta.
S.F. Portegies Zwart: Conference on Massive Stars in Interacting Binaries,
Montreal, Canada 15--20 August 2004.
P.M.A. Sloot: European Grid Conference 2005, Amsterdam; International
Conference on Computational Science 2004, Cracow; International Conference
on Computational Science 2005, Atlanta; IEEE CCGrid; CARS 2004; IEEE
GRid 2004; EuroPar 2004; Para2004; IEEE Cluster 2004; ICMCC 2004; PaCT
2004; PPAM 2004; HiPC 2004.
E.V. Zudilova: International Conference on Computational Science 2004,
Cracow; International Conference on Computational Science 2005, Atlanta.
2. Advanced Computing Systems Engineering
Editorial positions
L.O. Hertzberger, Future Generation Computer Systems, editor in chief.
A.D. Pimentel, Proceedings of the 3rd and 4th Int. Workshop on Systems,
Architectures, MOdeling, and Simulation (SAMOS 2004), LNCS 3133, editor.

International functions
L.O. Hertzberger: member of advisory committee, IPDPS conference.
C. de Laat: Grid Forum Steering Group member; Gridforum.nl consortium,
chair.
A.D. Pimentel: member of the European Network of Excellence on High-
Performance Embedded Architecture and Compilation (HiPEAC)
National functions
L.O. Hertzberger: scientific adviser at Philips Research Laboratories,
Eindhoven; member of the management team of the ASCI school.
A.D. Pimentel: member of the Educational Board of the Advanced School for
Computing and Imaging (ASCI).
A. Visser: core member of the DECIS Lab, which is a collaboration to combine
the knowledge, insight and capabilities of the partners in the area of distributed
and intelligent decision support systems and related technologies.
Scientific events organised
A.D. Pimentel, ASCI Winterschool on Embedded Systems
Invited speaker
A. Belloum: EDG-tutorial Hands-on the Grid, October 2004, Amsterdam.
Y.. Demchenko: GGF12 Operational Security Workshop (Brussels); TF-EMC2
meeting, Joint Security Policy Group meeting (CERN); EGEE MWSG3
meetings (Stockholm+CERN).
L. Gommans: Nextgrid cross WP security workshop (Stockholm,S);KLM
workshop; Beeyond workshop, Gridnets 2004 (San Diego,USA); EU grid
technology days (Brussels,B); Gridforum.nl, SURFnet RoN day, MCNC
workshop (Chicago,USA); Optiputer Workshop (UCSD San Diego,USA);
ON*Vector photonics workshop (San Diego, USA); VL-e workshop;
Microsoft workshop.
C. de Laat: SURFnet relatiedagen, Universiteit Twente; e-IRG workshop, 2nd
MCNC workshop (Pittsburgh,USA); Amsterdam Internet Exchange member
meeting; GridNets conference (San Jose, USA); Lawrence Berkely Laboratory
Appendices
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Annual Report 2004
(Berkely, USA); 4th Global Lambda Integrated Facility meeting, NORTEL HQ
(Ottawa, CA); INET2004 (Barcelona, Sp); TF-NGN, Astro-Particle Physics
workshop (NIKHEF, Amsterdam); MCNC workshop (Chicago, USA);
DATATAG review (Geneva,CH); SURFnet, GNEW workshop, (Geneva,CH);
GGF 10 (Berlin, D); ON*VECTOR (San Diego, USA); LISHEP (Rio de
Janeiro, Br); FermiLab (Chicago,USA).
Program committees
A.D. Pimentel, Int. workshop on Systems, Architectures, Modeling, and
Simulation, Samos, Greece, July, Program Chair; 5th Workshop on Parallel and
Distributed Scientific and Engineering Computing, 2004, member.
3. Programming Methods and Programming Environments
Editorial positions
J.A. Bergstra: Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming, managing editor;
Science of Computer Programming, managing editor.
I. Bethke: Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming, editorial assistent.
P. Klint, IEE Proceedings – Software, editor; Science of Computer
Programming, editor.
A. Ponse, Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming, editor.
International functions
P. Klint: European Association for Programming Languages and Systems
(EAPLS), president; Steering Committee European Joint Conferences on
Theory and Practice of Programming (ETAPS), member; Scientific Directorate
Schloss Dagstuhl, member.
National functions
P. Klint, Chair Adviescommissie Informatica ACI (NWO), chair; IPN
(Informatica Platform Nederland), chair; ICT Forum, member; Program
Committee Jacquard (6 year NWO programme for stimulating software
engineering research), member; Board of Institute for Programming and
Algorithms (IPA), member.Program Board Lorentz Center, Leiden, member;
PhD committee: P. Klint, promotion of Y. Qian (Technical University

Eindhoven, June 2, 2004), member; PhD committee: P. Klint, promotion of M.
Schrage (University of Utrecht, October 15, 2004), member.
Program committees
P. Klint: Workshop on Rapid Integration of Software Engineering techniques
(RISE '04), member; Fifth Workshop on Language Definitions Tools and
Applications (LDTA '05), member.
The Intelligent Systems Laboratory Amsterdam
1. Intelligent Sensory Information Systems
Editorial positions
Th. Gevers: special issue on Colour for Image Indexing and Retrieval, Comp.
Vision & Im. Underst. (CVIU), 2004, guest editor.
M.L. Kersten: The VLDB Journal.
N. Sebe: Multimedia Information Retrieval research area section of the ACM
SIGMM (Special Interest Group on Multimedia).
A.W.M. Smeulders: IEEE Transactions on Multimedia; Int. J. Computer Vision.
A.W.M. Smeulders, T. Huang, Th. Gevers: Int J. Computer Vision, special issue
on Content-based image retrieval.
International Functions
M.L. Kersten: member scientific advisory board Helsinki Institute for
Information Technology; GMD IPSI, Darmstadt, Germany, member scientific
advisory board.
A.W.M. Smeulders: ICME2005 organizing committee, general chair; Committee
S.K. Fu distinguished career award, IAPR, member; European Networks of
Excellence: DELOS for digital libraries (with a special assignment in the EU -
NSF task force on cultural heritage), member; European Networks of
Excellence: ECVISION for computer vision; Muscle for Multimedia
understanding, member; European Networks of Excellence: Muscle for
Multimedia understanding, member.
Appendices
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Annual Report 2004
National Functions
J. M. Geusebroek: Kascommissie NVPHBV, member.
M.L. Kersten: Token 2000 research program committee, NWO, member;
Amsterdam New Media Association, member of board; Executive board Data
Distilleries B.V., Amsterdam, co-founder and member; Scientific Advisor
Philips Natlab; ToKeN2000 research programme committee, NWO, member.
A.W.M. Smeulders: MultimediaN, scientific director; ASCI research school,
scientific director; Kenniscentrum MediaMil UvA-TNO, non-executive
member;
TODS cooperation Dutch Forensic Lab – UvA; Scientific advisory board of the
Dutch Forensic Institute, member; IOP Beeldverwerken, 1995 - 2004, member
of the board.
P. Werkhoven, the Steering Group of the research consortium MultimediaN,
Member; The Research & Innovation Board of the Dutch Police, member; The
V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, Board member; SURF Foundation, the
higher education and research partnership organisation for network services
and ICT, member of the board.
M. Worring, TODS cooperation Dutch Forensic Lab - UvA, responsible;
MediaMill, co-director; Board of the Dutch chapter of the IAPR, member;
Evaluation committee NWO-Computer Science Open Competition,
member.
Invited speaker
J.M. Geusebroek: Instructor, Colour in image and video databases, IS&T Conf.
Color in Graphics, Image and Vision, Germany, 2004; Cognitive vision systems,
Computer vision workshop, Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and
Mathematics (IPM), Tehran, Iran, 2004; Color measurement and invariants in
image Processing, Computer vision workshop, Institute for Studies in
Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (IPM), Tehran, Iran, 2004.
Th. Gevers: Instructor, Colour in Image and Video Databases, IS&T Conf.
Color in Graphics, Image and Vision, Germany, 2004; Instructor,
Content-based Image Retrieval, Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (ICPR),
Cambridge, UK, 2004.

S. Ghebreab, C.J. Jaffe, A.W.M. Smeulders: Washington, 2004.
M.L.Kersten: Some open issues in database research, 11th Database
Conference, Amsterdam, March 23, 2004; Twin peaks or pits, how intelligent
applications affect a DBMS kernel, Philips Symposium on Intelligen
Applications, Eindhoven(Nederland) Dec 1-2, 2004.
H.T. Nguyen and A.W.M. Smeulders: Everything gets better all the time apart
from the amount of data, CIVR Dublin, 2004; Active learning using
pre-clustering, ICML Ottawa, 2004; Eur Conf Computer Vision, 2004.
N. Sebe: Tutorial on Human-Centered Multimedia Information Systems at the
5th Pacific Rim Conference on Multimedia, Tokyo, Japan, 2004.
A.W.M. Smeulders: Color image search engines, a tutorial, ICPR2004, London;
Intelligent Sensory Information Systems, Delos kick-off meeting, Versailles,
2004; MultimediaN, kick-off meeting, Amersfoort 2004; The future is
multimedia, Utrecht 2004; Forensics goes digital, EU-conference Making smart
combinations in forensics, Den Haag, 2004.
A.W.M. Smeulders and D. Koelma: Waarom weet een computer altijd alles?,
Nemo kinderlezingen, 2004.
AWM Smeulders and H.T. Nguyen: Active Annotation, Content based image
retrieval, Dagstuhl, 2004.
AWM Smeulders and F. de Jong: Multimedia information technology for
automatic annotation; what can and cannot be expected, IFTA/FIAT
International Federation of Television Archivists, Amsterdam, 2004.
A.W.M Smeulders and M. Worring: Content-based image retrieval, Hanoi 2004.
AWM Smeulders met J.M. Geusebroek: In den beginne het beeld, Maagdenhuis
op maandag, 2004.
C. Snoek: Annual Conference of the German Classification Society (GfKl)
University of Dortmund, March 9-11th, 2004; Mediamanagement Seminar, 20
maart 2004; Workshop on the Evaluation of Multimedia Retrieval, CWI,
Amsterdam, 24 november 2004;
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M. Worring: Interactive Multimodal Search in Video Archives, in Dagstuhl
Seminar, Content Based Retrieval; Multimodal Indexing of Video, in Changing
sceneries, changing roles, FIAT/IFTA Media Management Seminar
Program committees
J.M. Geusebroek: European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2004),
Prague, Czech Republic, 2004.
Th. Gevers: IS&T European Conference on Color in Graphics, Image and
Vision (CGIV), Germany, 2004; SPIE Electronic Imaging, Conference on
Internet Imaging (SPIE), San Jose, USA, 2004; International Conference on
Image and Video Retrieval, Dublin, Ireland, 2004; International Workshop on
Human Computer Interaction (in conjunction with the ECCV 2004), Prague,
2004; International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP04), Singapore, 2004;
12th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO04), Vienna, Austria,
2004; International Conference on Visual Information (Visual04), San
Francisco, USA, 2004; Brazilian Symposium on Computer Graphics and Image
Processing, Curitiba, Brazil, 2004;ACM SIGMM International Workshop on
Multimedia Information Retrieval, New York, NY, USA, 2004.
M.L.Kersten: COMAD 2004, Goa (India), 2004; WISE 2004, Brisbane
(Australia), 2004; IDEAS 2004, Coimbra (Portugal),2004; ICWS 2004, San
Diego (USA), 2004; SSDBM, Santorini (Greece), 2004; VLDB, Toronto
(Canada), 2004; VLDB 2005, Trondheim (Norway), co-chair; WISE 2005, New
York (USA), 2005; Thematic workshop on DL Architectures, Dagstuhl
(Germany), March 2005; DaMoN 2005, Baltimore (USA), 2005; VLDB 2006,
Seoul (Korea), co-chair; ICDE PhD/WS March/April 2004, Boston, USA;
DELOS workshop on Architectures for DL, May 2004, Dagsthul, Germany.
N. Sebe: 6th ACM SIGMM International Workshop on Multimedia
Information Retrieval (MIR04), New York, USA, October 2004, co-chair; 1st
International Workshop on Human Computer Interaction (HCI04), Prague,
Czech Republic, May 15, 2004, Co-Chair; special session on Immersive
Conferencing: Novel Interfaces and Paradigms for Remote Collaboration at the
5th Pacific Rim Conference on Multimedia, Tokyo, Japan, December 2004 5th
Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia, Tokyo, Japan, December 2004,
member; 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Technology for Education in
Developing Countries, TEDC 2004, Joensuu, Finland, August 31, 2004, member;
International Conference on Image and Video Retrieval – CIVR 2004,

Dublin, Ireland, 2004, member; IEEE International Conference on Multimedia
and Expo, ICME 2004, Taipei, Taiwan, 2004, member; 1st ACM SIGMOD
Workshop on Computer Vision and Databases, Paris, France, 2004, member.
A.W.M. Smeulders: CVPR 2004 Washington DC, member; ICPR 2004 London,
member; Challenge Image and Video Retrieval, 2004 Dublin, chairman;
International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, Taipei 2004, member;
J. van de Weijer: ICIP 2004, Singapore, member.
M. Worring: ICME, 2004, Taipei, Taiwan, member; SPIE: Document
Recognition and Retrieval XI, 2004, San Jose, USA, member; CIVR, 2004,
Dublin, Ireland, member; DAS, 2004, Florence, Italy, member; GREC, 2004,
Hong Kong, member; PCM, 2004, Tokyo Japan, member.
2. Intelligent Autonomous Systems
IAS is one of the partners of the Centre of Excellence "Intelligent Autonomous
Systems" a collaboration between the Universiteit van Amsterdam and TNO.
IAS is one of the partners of the DECIS lab, a Dutch collaboration om
intelligent Systems between Thales, TUD, UvA en TNO.
IAS actively participates in EURON-II, the 2nd phase of the European
Network of Excellence in robotics. Two staff members of the group are directly
involved in EURON activities related to publications and the conference
calendar.
Editorial positions
F.C.A. Groen, Book series: Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR).
N. Vlassis, EURON-II, conference calendar, editor.
International functions
F.C.A. Groen, International Robocup Federation, member advisory board;
EURON Adcom, key-area co-chair publications; TC-20 Instrumentation and
measurement society, chair; IAS Society, treasurer.
B.J.A. Kröse, IEEE TC on Service Robots.
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Annual Report 2004
National Functions
F.C.A.Groen, Scientific Advisor of TNO-FEL; Chairman of the Centre of
Expertise on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (UvA-TNO).
Scientific events organised
F.C.A. Groen, General chair of the International Conference on Intelligent
Autonomous Systems, IAS- 8, Amsterdam, 2004.
Invited speaker
L. Dorst, Estimating Rigid Body Motions of Point Clouds, in Geometric
Properties from Incomplete Data, Dagstuhl workshop, Germany, March 2004.
F.C.A.Groen, 1 December 2004, VU Brussel.
B.J.A. Kröse, A domestic robot companion which interacts with humans,
NICT, Kyoto, Japan 2004; A domestic robot companion which interacts with
humans, AIST-Tokyo Waterfront, Digital Human Research Center Tokyo,
Japan 2004; Keeping track of humans, Topical day on social robots, World
Computer Congress, Toulouse, 2004; Probabilistic methods for tracking and
localization, IPA Herftsdagen 2004, Callandsoog.
N. Vlassis, Sparse Cooperative Q-learning, CWI Amsterdam, February 2004;
Planning in partially observable environments, University of Thessaly, Greece,
January 2004.
Program committees
D.M. Gavrila, ECCV, Prague, 2004, member; Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft für
Mustererkennung (DAGM) Symposium, Tübingen, 2004, member.
F.C.A. Groen, AIA 2004, member; BNAIC 2004,member; ICRA 2004,
member; IMTC 2004, member; VECIMS 2004, member.
B.J.A. Kröse, IAS-8, 2004, organizing member; BNAIC, 2004, member; IROS,
2004, member.
N. Vlassis, IEEE SMC, 2004, member; RoboCup Symposium, 2004, member;
BNAIC, 2004, member; Benelearn, 2004, member

3. Information and Language Processing Systems
Editorial positions
M. de Rijke: Editor of ACM Transactions on Computational Logic, editor;
Studies in Logic, Language and Information (until August 1, 2004), editor in
chief; editor of Research on Language and Computation; Journal of Logic,
Language and Information, review editor.
International functions
K. Müller: Member of an international consortium which aims at establishing an
European Master’s program in Language Technology (Erasmus Mundus)
M. Marx: PhD Thesis External Review Committee of the ICT Graduate School
of the University of Trento, member.
M. de Rijke: Chair of the AiML Steering Committee (until September 1, 2004);
Chair of the ESSLLI Standing Committee (until August 1, 2004); European
Association for Logic, Language and Information (until March 1, 2004), Chief
executive officer; Dutch QA task in CLEF, coordinator; Evaluation committee
for the NWO-VIDI scheme, member; CLEF Steering Committee, member;
ICoS Steering Committee, member; IFCoLOG Executive Board, member; PhD
Thesis External Review Committee of the ICT Graduate School of the
University of Trento, member.
B. Sigurbjörnsson: Organizing Committee for the Initiative for the Evaluation
of XML Retrieval (INEX 2004), member.
Invited speaker
L. Afanasiev: XML Query Evaluation via CTL Symbolic Model Checking
October 22, DIES Seminar, University of Twente.
M. Marx: XPath like languages for reasoning about trees February 13, King’s
college, London; XPath with conditional axis relations, March 9, University of
Liverpool; Agents communicate in XML, April 19, Dagstuhl seminar on Logic
and Agents; Semantic Characterizations of XPath, May 3, Universiteit van
Antwerpen; Modal Logic, XPath and XML, September 11, Advances in Modal
Logic, Liverpool; Looping Caterpillars An example of formal language design,
Appendices
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Annual Report 2004
November 18, IRIT Toulouse; First order paths in trees, December 1,
University of Trento.
G. Mishne: Beyond IR: Answering Natural Language Questions, IBM Haifa
Research Seminars, October 2004; Linguistics and Ontologies in Question
Answering Systems, CS Seminar Series, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, January 2004.
K. Müller, Construction of a Question Treebank. Language and Information
Technology Seminar, Universität Amsterdam
M. de Rijke: Building a Multi-Lingual Web Retrieval Collection, CLIN 2004,
December 2004; Search, SIKS School, December 2004; Language Modelling and
Semistructured Information Retrieval, SIKS School on Information Retrieval,
December 2004; Search, Informatics Institute, November 2004; Natural
Language Processing for the Semantic Web, SIKS School on the Semantic Web,
November 2004; New Ideas, CLEF 2004, September 2004; Proposal for a
Multi-Lingual Web Track, CLEF 2004, September 2004; A Recall-Oriented
Approach to Question Answering, CLEF 2004, September 2004; Why? , ILLC,
Universiteit van Amsterdam, June 2004; Information Access at LIT, IMIX
Symposium, KUN Nijmegen, May 2004; Information Access at LIT, ISLA
Colloquium, Amsterdam, May 2004; The Effectiveness of Combining
Information Retrieval Strategies for European Languages, ACM Symposium on
Applied Computing, Cyprus, March 2004.
S. Schlobach: Type Checking in Open-Domain Question Answering, BNAIC,
Groningen, October 2004; Type Checking in Open-Domain Question
Answering, ECAI, Valencia, August 2004; Logical Support for Terminological
Modeling, MedInfo, San Francisco, Sept. 2004; Explaining Subsumption by
Optimal Interpolation, JELIA, Lisbon, September 2004.
Program committees
M. Marx: JELIA 2004 - Ninth European Conference on Logics in Artificial,
member.
K. Müller, COLING 2004, reviewer; Journal of Language and Speech, reviewer.
M. de Rijke: ACL 2004 workshop on Question Answering in Restricted
Domains, member; Advances in Modal Logic 2004 (AiML2004), member; The

Eleventh International Conference on Artificial Intelligence: Methodology,
Systems, Applications (AIMSA 2004), member; BNAIC 2004, member; the
International Workshop on Web Semantics (WebS 2004), member; SIGIR 2004
workshop on Information Retrieval for Question Answering, member; WI’04,
member; Workshop Programme Committee of the 27th Annual International
ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information
Retrieval (SIGIR), member.
S. Schlobach: Workshop on Ontologies and their Applications, member;
SWSDN, member.
B. Sigurbjörnsson: The First Twente Data Management Workshop - TDM’04,
member.
E. Tjong Kim Sang: 2004 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural
Language Processing (EMNLP), member; 42nd Annual Meeting of the
Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), member; Eighth Conference
on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL), member; Fourteenth
Meeting of Computational Linguistics in The Netherlands 2003 (CLIN),
member; Fifth International Conference on Knowledge Based Computer
Systems (KBCS), member.
Awards
M. Marx: Best newcomer and best paper award, ACM Conference on
Principles of Database systems, 2004.
B. Sigurbjörnsson: Fellowship from the EDBT Endowment for attending the
Seventh EDBT Summer School on XML and Databases.
B. Sigurbjörnsson: The Hyperion Student Travel Award for attending The 13th
Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2004).
The Laboratory for Human Computer Studies
Editorial positions
H. Afsarmanesh: International Journal of Networking and Virtual
Organizations (IJNVO), ISSN 1470-9503, member editorial board;
International Journal of Information Technology and Management (IJITM),
Appendices
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Annual Report 2004
ISSN 1461-4111, member editorial board; Journal of Evolutionary
Computation, currently published in Italian (Computazione Evolutiva),
member editorial board.
J. Breuker: IOS Press book series: ``Frontiers in Artificial Intellige and
Applications" (FAIA), chief editor; International Journal of Human Computer
Studies, editor; Cognitive Science Quarterly, editor; International Journal of
Artificial Intelligence and Education, member editorial board.
V. Evers: Proceedings of IWIPS, 2004, editor
B.J. Wielinga: International Journal of Human Computer Studies, editor;
TINFO, editor.
International functions
H. Afsarmanesh: Track chair for the "Networked Enterprises" at BASYS 2004
– the 6th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Information Technology for
Balanced Automation Systems in Manufacturing and Services, Vienna, Austria,
27-29 Sep 2004.
B. Bredeweg: International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society (AIED),
executive committee member; European Network of Excellence in Model
Based Systems and Qualitative Reasoning (MONET-2)Steering Committee
member; MONET-2 task-group on Education and Training, Chair; European
Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (ECAI’04), reviewer.
B.J. Wielinga: SIKS, member of the board.
Invited speaker
H. Afsarmanesh: IST Conference 2004 – IC Technology for the Enterprise of
the future, invited talk on "strategic Roadmap for Advanced Collaborative
Networks & Focus on ICT", 15 Nov 2004, The Hague, Netherlands.
B. Bredeweg: Invited seminar on ‘Qualitative Modeling and Cognitive Science’
at the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Chicago, Illinois,
August 5-7, 2004.
J. Breuker: Universititeit van Barcelona, Instituut voor Recht en technolgie 7

september 2004, (Foundational Ontologies and Semantic Web); Universiteit van
Leipzig, Fac. Informatik, 7 december 2004, (Foundational Ontologies);
Sorbonne (Paris-2), 2 december 2004 (Ontologies, Law and the Semantic Web)
V. Evers: Digital Communities Den Haag; Nederlands erfgoed.
G.R. Meijer: Virtual Distributed Collaboration, invited speech at IST conference
2004, Den Haag, 16 november 2004.
P. Adriaans: Keynote Speech: AI on the Ocean, AILS 04, 2nd Joint SAIS/SSLS
Workshop, 15-16 April 2004, Lund (Sweden); Panel discussion: GI and natural
language learning, some provocative statements. ICGI 2004, Athens Greece.
Program committees
P. Adriaans: ICGI-2004, 7th International Colloquium on Grammatical
Inference NCSR "Demokritos", Athens, Greece, October 11 - 13, 2004;
Programme Committee: Belgian-Netherlands Artificial Intelligence Conference,
BENELEARN 2004.
H. Afsarmanesh: BASYS 2004 – the 6th IFIP International Conference on
Information Technology for Balanced Automation Systems in Manufacturing
and Services, Vienna, Austria, 27-29 Sep 2004, member; WBC 2004 – the 4th
International Workshop on Web Based Collaboration, 30 Aug- 3 Sept 2004,
Zaragoza, Spain, member; DEXA 2004 – the 15th International Conference on
Database and Expert Systems Applications, 30 Aug- 3 Sept 2004, Zaragoza,
Spain, member; PRO-VE’04 – the 5th IFIP Working Conference on Virtual
Enterprises, Toulouse, France, 23-26 Aug 2004, member, TELECARE 2004 –
the 1st International Workshop on Tele-Care and Collaborative Virtual
Communities in Elderly Care, Porto, Portugal, 13 April 2004, PC
member;ICMCC 2004 – the International Congress on Medical and Care
Competencies, Hague, The Netherlands, 2-4 June, 2004, member.
B. Bredeweg: International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning (OR’04),
member; European Conference on Ecological Modelling (ECEM’04), member;
International Workshop on Binding Environmental Sciences and Artificial
Intelligence at ECAI (BESAI’04), member; 1st MONET Workshop on
Model-based Systems at ECAI (ECAI-MBS’04), member;
Appendices
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Annual Report 2004
V. Evers: P&SI, member; IWIPS 2005, member.
M. van Someren: IBERAMIA 2004, member; European Conference on
Machine Learning –Principles of Knowledge Discovery in Databases 2004,
member; European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning 2004, member;
European Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2004, member; International
Conference on Machine Learning ICML 2004, member; Belgian-Netherlands
Artificial Intelligence Conference, BENELEARN 2004, member; ROC
workshop ECAI 2004, member: International Conference on Data Mining
workshop Intelligent Data Mining 2004, member; Workshop Statistical
approaches to semantic web mining 2004, member.
B.J. Wielinga: KCAP, 2005, member.

Appendix 4 Contact Information
Last name Initials Prefix Group Visiting Phone Direct email
Acronym Address 525….
Abrahamyan Lilit L. CS K 403 7562 labraham@science.uva.nl
Abtroun Djamel M.A. A K 403 7566 abtroun@science.uva.nl
Adriaans Pieter P.W. HCS K 419 888 4693 pietera@sciene.uva.nl
Afanasiev Loredana L. ILPS K 403 7561 lafanasi@science.uva.nl
Afsarmanesh Hamideh H. HCS K 419 888 4672 hamideh@science.uva.nl
Ahn David D.D. ILPS K 403 5357 ahn@science.uva.nl
Albada Dick G.D. van CS K 403 7534 dick@science.uva.nl
Aldershoff Frank R.F. ISIS K 403 7540 aldersho@science.uva.nl
Alves de Inda Marcia M. K 318 7567 inda@science.uva.nl
Andree Bert H.M.A. A K 403 7598 handree@science.uva.nl
Anjewierden Anjo A.A. HCS K 419 888 4684 anjo@science.uva.nl
Arts Floor F.A. HCS K 419 888 4669 arts@science.uva.nl
Bakker Bram P.B. IAS K 403 7524 bram@science.uva.nl
Balen Richard R.F. van ISIS K 403 7580 rvbalen@science.uva.nl
Beek Riette M.E.A.B. van A K 403 7541 riette@science.uva.nl
Bekkum Suna S. van Secr. MN-ISIS K 403 7644 svbekkum@science.uva.nl
Belleman Robbert R.G. A K 403 7510 robbel@science.uva.nl
Belloum Adam A.S.Z. A K 403 7514 adam@science.uva.nl
Bergstra Jan J.A. Prog K 403 7591 janb@science.uva.nl
Bethke Inge I. Prog K 403 7583 inge@science.uva.nl
Bisselink Dorien D. Secr. CSA K 403 7596 dorien@science.uva.nl
Blom Hans J. A K 403 7533 jblom@science.uva.nl
Boasson Maarten M. A K 403 7597 boasson@science.uva.nl
Boer Piter P.T. de A K 403 7541 ptdeboer@science.uva.nl
Boer Victor V. de HCS K 419 888 4664 vdeboer@science.uva.nl
Booij Olaf O. IAS K 403 7564 obooij@science.uva.nl
Boomgaard Rein R. van den ISIS K 403 7560 rein@science.uva.nl
Bousias Kostas K. CSA K 403 7530 bousias@science.uva.nl
Bouwer Anders A.J. HCS K 419 888 4684 bouwer@science.uva.nl
Boven Peter P.F. A K 403 7914 boven@science.uva.nl
Bredeweg Bert B. HCS K 419 888 4688 bredeweg@science.uva.nl
Contact Information
86
Annual Report 2004

Contact Information
87
Annual Report 2004
Last name Initials Prefix Group Visiting Phone Direct email
Acronym Address 525….
Bredeweg Bert B. HCS K 419 888 4688 bredeweg@science.uva.nl
Breuker Joost J.A.P.J. HCS K 419 888 4698 breuker@science.uva.nl
Bruning Oskar O. K 318 7211 bruning@science.uva.nl
Burghouts Gert-Jan G.J. ISIS K 403 7540 burghout@science.uva.nl
Cate Balder B.D. ten ILPS K 403 5357 bcate@science.uva.nl
Cemgil Taylan A.T. IAS K 403 7581 cemgil@science.uva.nl
Choulakov Roman R. CS K 403 7574 rshulako@science.uva.nl
Christoph Noor L.H. HCS K 419 888 4671 noor@science.uva.nl
Collins Amanda A.R. Bedrijfsvoering K 403 7215 collins@science.uva.nl
Cramer Henriette H.S.M. HCS K 419 888 4660 hcramer@science.uva.nl
Cristina- Floriana Pana P. ILPS K 403 7515 panac@science.uva.nl
Cui Jiangjun J CS K 403 7530 jcui@science.uva.nl
Dang Kien T.K. ISIS K 403 7508 dang@science.uva.nl
Dekker Dirk T.J. gast K 403 7579 dirk@science.uva.nl
Dekkers Hans H.L. P 24 hdekker@science.uva.nl
Demchenko Yuri Y.D. A K 403 7586 demch@science.uva.nl
Diertens Bob B. Prog K 403 7593 bobd@science.uva.nl
Dijkstra Freek F. A K 403 7531 fdijkstr@science.uva.nl
Diplaros Aristeidis A. ISIS K 403 7518 diplaros@science.uva.nl
Dooijes Edo E.H. comp.museum K 403 7523/7465 edoh@science.uva.nl
Dorst Leo L. IAS K 403 7511 leo@science.uva.nl
Ekkel Laurens L. HCS K 419 888 4666 ekkel@science.uva.nl
Enserink Fransje F.M. Secr. ILPS K 403 7561 enserink@science.uva.nl
Erbas Cagkan C. A K 403 7898 cagkan@science.uva.nl
Ermilova Ekaterina E. HCS K 419 888 4662 ermilova@science.uva.nl
Evers Vanessa V. HCS K 419 888 4695 evers@science.uva.nl
Fissaha Adafre Sisay S. ILPS K 403 6730 sfissaha@science.uva.nl
Fomekong Nanfack Yves Y. CS K 403 7530 yvesf@science.uva.nl
Fontijne Daniel D. IAS K 403 7549 fontijne@science.uva.nl
Franceschet Massimo M. ILPS K 403 5357 francesc@science.uva.nl
Gavrila Dariu D.M. IAS K 403 7569 gavrila@science.uva.nl
Gemert Jan J. van ISIS K 403 7508 jvgemert@science.uva.nl
Geusebroek Jan-Mark J.M. ISIS K 403 7552 mark@science.uva.nl
Gevers Theo Th. ISIS K 403 7516 gevers@science.uva.nl

Last name Initials Prefix Group Visiting Phone Direct email
Acronym Address 525….
Gevers Theo Th. ISIS K 403 7516 gevers@science.uva.nl
Ghijssen Mattijs M. HCS K 419 888 4660 mattijs@science.uva.nl
Gommans Leon L.H.M. A K 403 7435 lgommans@science.uva.nl
Groen Derk D.J. CS K 403 7462 djgroen@science.uva.nl
Groen Frans F.C.A. IAS K 403 7571 groen@science.uva.nl
Groep David D.L. CS K 409 592 2073 davidg@science.uva.nl
Grosso Paola P. A K 403 7533 grosso@science.uva.nl
Gualandris Alessia A. CS/AI K 403 7582 alessiag@science.uva.nl
Guevara Masis Victor V.J. CS K 403 7566 vguevara@science.uva.nl
Ham Jeroen J.J. van der A K 403 7531 vdham@science.uva.nl
Haren Karen K.E.H. van
Heijboer Saskia S. Secr.IAS&IvI K 403 7461 heijboer@science.uva.nl
Hertzberger Bob L.O. A K 403 7572 bob@science.uva.nl
Hitipeuw Erik F.B. Secr.CS&Prog K 403 7462 erikh@science.uva.nl
Hoekstra Alfons A. CS K 403 7543 alfons@science.uva.nl
Hoeven Coco M.H. van der Secr.CS&Prog K 403 7358 cocovdh@science.uva.nl
Hoffmann Walter W. CS K 403 7358 walter@science.uva.nl
Hollink Vera V. HCS K 419 888 4686 vhollink@science.uva.nl
IJzereef Leonie L.H.L. ILPS K 403 7515 ijzereef@science.uva.nl
Inge Toto A. van A K 403 7541 toto@science.uva.nl
Iskra Kamil K. CS K 403 7535 kamil@science.uva.nl
Jansweijer Wouter W.N.H. HCS K 419 888 4665 jansw@science.uva.nl
Jesshope Chris C.R. CSA K 403 7570 jesshope@science.uva.nl
Jijkoun Valentin V. ILPS K 403 6730 jijkoun@science.uva.nl
Kaandorp Jaap J.A. CS K 403 7539 jaapk@science.uva.nl
Kaarsemaker Dennis D.A.A. dkaarsem@science.uva.nl
Kandhai Drona D. CS K 403 7562 kandhai@science.uva.nl
Kanter David D. de CS K 403 7576 davidk@science.uva.nl
Katrenko Sophia S. HCS K 419 888 4686 katrenko@science.uva.nl
Kellermann Deibel Richard R.J. Bedrijfsvoering K 403 7556 richardk@science.uva.nl
Kersten Martin M.L. ISIS K 413 592 4066 mk@science.uva.nl
Kircz Joost J.G. ILPS-gast K 403 7561 kircz@science.uva.nl
Kleef Jelle J.A. van 7529 jvanklee@science.uva.nl
Klint Paul P. Prog K 413 592 4126 paulk@science.uva.nl
Contact Information
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Last name Initials Prefix Group Visiting Phone Direct email
Acronym Address 525….
Koelma Dennis D.C. ISIS K 403 7580 koelma@science.uva.nl
Kok Jelle J.R. IAS K 403 7524 jellekok@science.uva.nl
Korkhov Vladimir V. A K 403 7548 vkorkhov@science.uva.nl
Koymans Karst C.P.J. A K 403 7531 ckoymans@science.uva.nl
Kröse Ben B.J.A. IAS K 403 7520 krose@science.uva.nl
Krzhizhanovskaya Valeriya V. valeria@science.uva.nl
Laat Cees C.Th.A.M. de A K 403 7590 delaat@science.uva.nl
Lagerberg Jose J.M. A K 403 7513 jose@science.uva.nl
Leeuw Karl K.M.M. de Prog K 403 7584 kleeuw@science.uva.nl
Liempt Michiel M. van ISIS K 403 7555 mliempt@science.uva.nl
Lith Peter P. van IAS-gast K 403 7461 peter@litph.nl
Loo Saskia S.M. van HCS K 419 888 4689 vanloo@science.uva.nl
Maris Marinus M. IAS K 403 7549 mmaris@science.uva.nl
Mark Wannes W. van der IAS K 403 7517 wvdmark@science.uva.nl
Marx Maarten M.J. ILPS K 403 2888 marx@science.uva.nl
Meijer Rob R.J. A K 403 7579 rmeijer@science.uva.nl
Meijer Geleyn G.R. HCS K 419 888 4693 geleyn@science.uva.nl
Mes Virginie V.M.J. Secr.ISIS K 403 7460 virginie@science.uva.nl
Mishne Gilad G.A. ILPS K 403 6731 gilad@science.uva.nl
Mobach Mendel I.B. mendel@science.uva.nl
Msanjila Simon S. HCS K 419 888 4661 msanjila@science.uva.nl
Muller Karin K.E. ILPS K 403 5355 kmueller@science.uva.nl
Neaga Irina I. HCS K 419 888 4667 neaga@science.uva.nl
Netten Niels C.P.M. HCS K 419 888 4687 netten@science.uva.nl
Nguyen Giang P.G. ISIS K 403 7528 giangnp@science.uva.nl
Nuallain Breanndan B.S. O' CS K 403 7530 bon@science.uva.nl
Nunnink Jan J.R.J. IAS K 403 7549 jnunnink@science.uva.nl
Olabarriaga Silvia S.D. A K 403 7541 silvia@science.uva.nl
Oude Patrick P. van den poude@science.uva.nl
Oudenaarde Bas S.M.C.M. van A K 403 7586 oudenaar@science.uva.nl
Pavlin Gregor G. IAS K 403 7517 gpavlin@science.uva.nl
Pham Thang T.V. ISIS K 403 7553 vietp@science.uva.nl
Pieterse-Goorsenberg Marianne M.H.A. Secr.AIR K 403 7589 pieterse@science.uva.nl
Pimentel Andy A.D. CSA K 403 7578 andy@science.uva.nl

Last name Initials Prefix Group Visiting Phone Direct email
Acronym Address 525….
Polstra Simon S. A K 403 7898 spolstra@science.uva.nl
Ponse Alban A. Prog K 403 7592 alban@science.uva.nl
Portegies Zwart Simon S.F. CS/AI K 403 7510 spz@science.uva.nl
Post Lennart L.J.G. K 318 7567 lpost@science.uva.nl
Pronk Tessa T.E. A K 403 7898 tepronk@science.uva.nl
Qiu Guangzhong G. CS K 403 7576 qiu@science.uva.nl
Raaijmakers Stephan S.A. ISIS K 403 7508 raaijmak@science.uva.nl
Rauwerda Han J. K 318 7201 rauwerda@science.uva.nl
Rest Jeroen J.H.C.V.R. van ISIS K 403 7507 rest@science.uva.nl
Rijke Maarten M. de ILPS K 403 5358 mdr@science.uva.nl
Rodenburg Piet P.H. Prog K 403 7589 pietr@science.uva.nl
Saadatmand S. ssaadatm@science.uva.nl
Sandberg Jacobijn J.A.C. HCS K 419 888 4697 sandberg@science.uva.nl
Scarpa Michael M. CS K 403 7574 mscarpa@science.uva.nl
Scheerder Jeroen J. A K 403 7534 js@science.uva.nl
Schipper Nellie N.W. ISIS K 403 7536 schipper@tpd.tno.nl
Sebe Nicu N. ISIS K 403 7552 nicu@science.uva.nl
Seinstra Frank F.J. ISIS K 403 7553 fjseins@science.uva.nl
Serov Igor I. K 318 7286 serov@science.uva.nl
Shamonin Denis D.P. CS K 403 7574 dshamoni@science.uva.nl
Sigurbjornsson Borkur B. ILPS K 403 6731 borkur@science.uva.nl
Simonse Lianne L.W.L. ISIS K 403 7588 lsimonse@science.uva.nl
Sipior Michael M.S. CS/AI K 403 7582 sipior@science.uva.nl
Sloot Peter P.M.A. CS K 403 7537 sloot@science.uva.nl
Smeulders Arnold A.W.M. ISIS K 403 7525 smeulders@science.uva.nl
Snel Jeroen J.G. A K 403 7532 jgsnel@science.uva.nl
Snoek Cees C.G.M. ISIS K 403 7507 cgmsnoek@science.uva.nl
Someren Maarten M.W. van HCS K 419 888 4691 maarten@science.uva.nl
Spaan Matthijs M.T.J. IAS K 403 7524 mtjspaan@science.uva.nl
Steenbakkers Martijn M. A K 403 7435 msteenba@science.uva.nl
Steffens Edwin E.H. Elektr K 403 7551 edwin@science.uva.nl
Stokman Harro H.M.G. ISIS K 403 7516 stokman@science.uva.nl
Sunyoto Harris H. sunyoto@science.uva.nl
Taal Arie A. A K 403 7586 taal@science.uva.nl
Contact Information
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Contact Information
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Last name Initials Prefix Group Visiting Phone Direct email
Acronym Address 525….
Terpstra Frank F.P. HCS K 419 888 4663 ftrpstra@science.uva.nl
Terwijn Bas B. IAS K 403 7517 bterwijn@science.uva.nl
Thompson Mark M. CSA K 403 7898 mthompsn@science.uva.nl
Tirado Ramos Alfredo A. CS K 403 7542 alfredo@science.uva.nl
Tjong Kim Sang Erik E.F. ILPS K 403 7565 erikt@science.uva.nl
Unal Ozgul O. HCS K 419 888 4677 ozgul@science.uva.nl
Vasunin Dmitri D.A. A K 403 7548 dvasunin@science.uva.nl
Veenman Cor C. ISIS K 403 7518 cveenman@science.uva.nl
Velde Jacqueline J. van der secr. A K 403 7464 jvelde@science.uva.nl
Verbeek Sjaak J. IAS K 403 7550 jverbeek@science.uva.nl
Vermolen Berry G.F. CS K 403 7562 vermolen@science.uva.nl
Verster Frans F.C. K 318 7211 fransve@science.uva.nl
Vidal Rodriguez Jordi J. CS K 403 7530 jrodrigu@science.uva.nl
Visser Arnoud A. A & IAS K 403 7532 arnoud@science.uva.nl
Vlassis Nikos N. IAS K 403 7522 vlassis@science.uva.nl
Vlijmen Bas S.F.M. van CS K 403 7584 vlijmen@science.uva.nl
Vries Frits F. de HCS K419 888 4694 fdevries@science.uva.nl
Vu Duong T.D. Prog K 403 7592 tdvu@science.uva.nl
Wan Fred A.D.M. A K 403 7586 wan@science.uva.nl
Weijer Joost J. van de ISIS K 403 7554 joostw@science.uva.nl
Werkhoven Peter P.J. ISIS K 403 7580 werkh@science.uva.nl
Wibisono Adianto A. A K 403 7565 wibisono@science.uva.nl
Wielemaker Jan J. HCS K 419 888 4671 wielemak@science.uva.nl
Wielinga Bob B. HCS K 419 888 4696 wielinga@science.uva.nl
Withagen Paul P.J. IAS K 403 7517 paulw@science.uva.nl
Worring Marcel M. ISIS K 403 7521 worring@science.uva.nl
Yakali Hakan H.H. A K 403 7514 yakali@science.uva.nl
Yurkin Maxim M.A. CS K 403 7562 myurkin@science.uva.nl
Zajdel Wojciec h W. IAS K 403 7550 wzajdel@science.uva.nl
Zhao Zhiming Z. A K 403 7530 zhiming@science.uva.nl
Zivkovic Zoran Z. IAS K 403 7564 zivkovic@science.uva.nl
Zoudilova Elena E.V. CS K 403 7542 elenaz@science.uva.nl
Zwaag Mark M.B. van der Prog K 403 7584 mbz@science.uva.nl
K= Kruislaan P= Plantage Muidergracht