Prof. Dr. Jos C.M. Baeten will be the new general director of CWI in Amsterdam. The General Board of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) confirmed his appointment on Monday 6 June. On 1 October 2011 Baeten succeeds the current general director, Prof. Dr. Jan Karel Lenstra, who will continue working at CWI as a senior researcher until his retirement in 2012. Baeten obtained a PhD in mathematics in 1985. Since 1991, he has been affiliated with the Eindhoven University of Technology as Professor of Theoretical Computer Science, and since 2010 as Professor of Systems Engineering. The Board of CWI describes Baeten as a very prominent researcher, with an excellent understanding of both mathematics and computer science, and extensive experience in attracting external funding. He has been successful in contract research and valorization and is a very experienced manager. Jos Baeten will succeed Jan Karel Lenstra as CWI representative for ERCIM.

Marie-Paule Cani received the Eurographics Outstanding Technical Contributions Award 2011. This internationally recognized distinction, given each year to an individual in computer graphics to highlight some outstanding technical achievement, rewards her work in implicit modelling, animation and interactive shape design. Marie-Paule Cani, a university professor in Grenoble, leads the EVASION research team, a joint INRIA Grenoble and Jean Kuntzmann laboratory team, which is affiliated with the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the universities of Grenoble. The Eurographics award is given for major contributions to the field of computer graphics that are both technologically advanced and creative. This is the case in Marie-Paule Cani's work on implicit surfaces and multiresolution deformable models. For example, she has developed several solutions for animation of nature scenes, and more recently, for animating characters' hair and clothing. Her work in creating interactive forms is also highly innovative. Based on theoretical concepts, her research has been applied in several domains: animated games and films, training simulators for surgical operations, industrial virtual prototyping, etc.

In April 2011, the 25th birthday of the .nl domain was celebrated. On 25 April 1986,.nl was registered by CWI, the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam. It was one of the first country domains in the world. Six days later, Piet Beertema, at that time system administrator, registered the first internet domain in the Netherlands: cwi.nl, which is still in use by CWI. Beertema was given the authority over the .nl domain and managed it for ten years. In 1996, authority was handed over to Stichting Internet Domeinregistratie Nederland (SIDN), co-founded by CWI. Currently, SIDN has administrated ca. 5.5 million unique domain names of which 4.2 million are active. Not only is this one of the highest numbers worldwide, the Netherlands also ranks second in the number of domains registered per inhabitant. SIDN celebrated 25 years of .nl with the publication of a magazine and an anniversary website, http://de25jaarvan.nl (in Dutch). The first open internet connection between Europe and the United States originated from CWI as well. On 17 November 1988, a short e-mail correspondence confirmed the connection of CWI to NSFnet, an American academic computer network and the forerunner of today’s internet. In these early days, most of the transatlantic internet traffic had to go through CWI.
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