The University of Twente’s CTIT research institute has a new Scientific Director: Professor Maarten van Steen. From 1 January 2015, Van Steen will stand at the head of one of the largest academic IT research institutes in Europe. The Executive Board has appointed him to this prestigious post for a period of five years. Van Steen is currently professor and director of the Department of Computer Science at VU University Amsterdam. He succeeds Professor Jaco van de Pol, who has done an outstanding job as interim director since January 2014. This enables Professor Van de Pol to once again devote his full attention to the Formal Methods and Tools research group and to his chair of the Computer Science department within the EEMCS Faculty.
About Maarten van Steen
Maarten van Steen is regarded as an authority in the field of distributed computer systems. He is an alumnus of the University of Twente where he graduated cum laude in 1983 in applied mathematics. After completing his PhD at the Computer Science department in Leiden, Van Steen worked at TNO Delft, where he carried out research on parallel computing and gained his first experience of management. He continued his academic career at Erasmus University Rotterdam and later at VU University Amsterdam, where he was appointed professor in 2002.
Working for the VU Network Institute, Professor Van Steen focuses on multidisciplinary research on large-scale wireless and mobile distributed systems for purposes such as tracking movement to achieve crowd control. In addition to his chairmanship of the VU Computer Science department, Maarten van Steen heads the national COMMIT project EWIDS (very large wireless sensor networks for well-being). He is also affiliated with IEEE Internet Computing, Springer Computing and Advances in Complex Systems. Van Steen is and was a member of several national and international assessment and selection committees, and also acts as an advisor to Amrita University in India.
Professor Van Steen reacted as follows to his appointment: “It’s an honour to give leadership to so many gifted scientists and contribute to the standards and the values that the University of Twente represents. The major challenge is to cement CTIT’s reputation as an internationally renowned research institute, a reputation it richly deserves. How can we achieve this? In any case by working from our strengths and by allowing the facts to speak for themselves.”
The University of Twente’s Executive Board is delighted with the appointment of Maarten van Steen. “We regard Professor Van Steen as a strong scientific director who has made a deep impression on us with his articulate and refreshing approach. He has set out a clear vision of the future of CTIT and his role as its director. Both the University of Twente and CTIT have set their sights high; Maarten van Steen will play an important part in achieving these ambitions. The Appointments Advisory Committee and the Institutional Council have both expressed their confidence in his ability to lead CTIT successfully,” says Victor van der Chijs, President of the Executive Board.
