Researchers

Faculty
Prof Dr E. van den Ban	(Lie groups)	UU	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr. G. Cavalcanti		UU
Dr F. Clauwens	(algebraic topology)	RUN	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Prof Dr G. Cornelissen	(algebraic geometry)	UU	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr M. Crainic	(differential geometry, Lie theory)	UU		Homepage	Publications
Prof Dr R.H. Dijkgraaf	(mathematical physics)	UvA	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Prof Dr J.J. Duistermaat	(geometric analysis)	UU	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Prof Dr G. van der Geer	(algebraic geometry)	UvA	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr W. Groeneveld	(special functions)	UvA		Homepage	Publications
Prof Dr G.J. Heckman	(Lie theory)	RUN	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr J. Heinloth	(algebraic geometry)	UvA		Homepage	Publications
Dr G.F. Helminck	(Lie groups)	UvA		Homepage	Publications
Dr A. Henriques	(topology and mathematical physics)	UU		Homepage	Publications
Dr L. Hoevenaars	(integrable systems)	UU	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr S. Igonin	(integrable systems)	UU			Publications
Dr W. van der Kallen	(algebraic groups)	UU	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr A.V. Kiselev	(Integrable systems, Mathematical Physics)	UU	Biography	Homepage
Prof Dr H.T. Koelink	(quantum groups)	RUN	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr. S.C.J. Kolb		UvA		Homepage	Publications
Prof Dr N.P. Landsman	(mathematical physics)	RUN	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr J. van de Leur	(integrable systems)	UU		Homepage	Publications
Prof Dr E.J.N. Looijenga	(geometry)	UU	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr J. Maassen	(mathematical physics)	RUN		Homepage	Publications
Prof Dr I. Moerdijk	(topology)	UU	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr B. Moonen	(algebraic geometry)	UvA	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr M. Mueger	(mathematical physics)	RUN	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Prof Dr E.M. Opdam	(representation theory)	UvA	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr J.A Plazas Vargas	(noncommutative geometry)	UU			Publications
Dr H. Posthuma	(mathematical physics)	UvA			Publications
Dr T. Quella	(mathematical physics)	UvA		Homepage	Publications
Dr. S. Shadrin	(geometry)	UvA		Homepage	Publications
Prof Dr D. Siersma	(singularity theory)	UU	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr K. Slooten	(affine Hecke algebras)	UU			Publications
Prof Dr J.H.M. Steenbrink	(algebraic geometry)	RUN	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr J. Stienstra	(algebraic geometry)	UU	Biography	Homepage	Publications
Dr J. Stokman	(quantum groups)	UvA		Homepage	Publications
Dr. I. Struchiner	(differential geometry)	UU
Dr W. van Suijlekom	(mathematical physics)	RUN	Biography	Homepage	Publications
PhD students
Arjen Baarsma		UU
Dana Balibanu		UU
Jord Boejink		RUN
Thijs van den Broek		RUN
Alexandr Buryak		UvA
David Carchedi		UU
Martijn Caspers		RUN
Bart van den Dries		UU
Martijn Grooten		RUN
Maarten Hoeve		UvA
Bas Janssens		UU
Jan Willem de Jong		UU
Janne Kool		UU
Job Kuit		UU
Andor Lukacs		UU
Jan Manschot		UvA
Ioan Marcut		UU
Michel van Meer		UvA
Pieter Naaijkens		RUN
Maria Amelia Salazar		UU
Maarten van Pruijssen		RUN
Marti Szilagyi		UU
Rudy Salomon		UvA
Loek Spitz		UvA
Roland van der Veen		UvA
Jan Jitse Venselaar		UU
Roel Willems		RUN
Former PhD students
Camillo Arias Abad		UU
Representations up to homotopy and cohomology of classifying spaces			advisors: Ieke Moerdijk and Marius Crainic	December 2008
Rogier Bos		RUN
Groupoids in geometric quantization			advisor: Klaas Landsman	September 2007
Alex Boer		UU
A unitary structure for the graded quotient of conformal coblocks			advisor: Eduard Looijenga	November 2008
Fokko van de Bult		UvA
Hyperbolic Hypergeometric Functions			advisor: E.M. Opdam, J.V. Stokman	November 2007
Jakub Byszewski		UU
Cohomoligical Aspects of Equivalent Deformation Theory			advisor: Gunther Cornelissen	Juni 2009
Pieter Eendebak		UU
Contact Structures of Partial Differential Equations			advisor: Hans Duistermaat	January 2007
Erdal Emsiz		UvA
Affine Weyl groups and integrable systems with delta-potentials			advisors: Erik Opdam and Jasper Stokman	August 2006
Chris Heunen		RUN
Categorical quantum models and logics			advisors: Klaas Landsman and Bart Jacobs	January 2010
Peter Hochs		RUN
Quantisation commutes with reduction for cocompact Hamiltonian group actions			advisors: Klaas Landsman and Gert Heckman	April 2008
Lotte Hollands		UvA
Topological Strings and Quantum Curves			advisors: Robbert Dijkgraaf	September 2009
Niels Kowalzig		UvA/UU
Hopf Algebroids and Their Cyclic Theory			advisors: Ieke Moerdijk and Klaas Landsman	June 2009
Oliver Lorscheid		UU
Toroidal automorphic forms for function fields			advisor: Gunther Cornelissen	May 2008
Vincent van der Noort		UU
Analytic parameter dependence of Harish-Chandra modules for real reductive Lie groups: A family affair			advisor: Erik van den Ban	December 2009
Alexander Quintero Velez		UU
Equivalence of D-brane categories			advisor: Hans Duistermaat and Jan Stienstra	March 2009
Sheer El-Showk		UvA
Puzzles in Quantum Gravity. What can a Black Hole Microstates teach us about Quantum Gravity?			advisor: J. de Boer	September 2009
Maarten Solleveld		UvA
Periodic cyclic homology of affine Hecke algebras			advisor: Eric Opdam	January 2007
Rogier Swierstra		UU
Moduli spaces of cubic hypersurfaces through a period map			advisor: Eduard Looijenga	April 2008
Giorgio Trentinaglia		UU
Tannaka duality for Lie groupoids			advisor: Ieke Moerdijk	September 2008
Ittay Weiss		UU
Dendroidal Sets			advisor: Ieke Moerdijk	September 2007

Advisors and Fellows

Board of Advisors:

Prof Dr G. 't Hooft (Theoretical physics, Utrecht)
Prof Dr V. Kac (MIT, USA)
Prof Dr M. Kontsevich (IHES, France)
Prof Dr A.N. Schellekens (Theoretical physics, Nijmegen, and NIKHEF)
Prof Dr E. Verlinde (Theoretical physics, Amsterdam)
Prof Dr A. Weinstein (UC Berkeley, USA)
Prof Dr E. Witten (Princeton, USA)

Fellows:

Prof Dr C.F. Faber (Johns Hopkins, algebraic geometry)
Prof Dr A.J. de Jong (Columbia, algebraic geometry)
Prof Dr L.N.M. van Geemen (Milan, Italy, algebraic geometry)
Prof Dr R. Sjamaar (Cornell University, USA, symplectic geometry)
Prof Dr D. van Straten (University of Mainz, Germany, singularity theory)

Curricula Vitae

Erik van den Ban

Erik van den Ban (1956) studied mathematics at Utrecht University where he obtained his PhD in 1982. In the academic year 1982/1983 he was a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. After having been post-doc at the Mathematical Centre (now CWI) in Amsterdam he became assistent professor in the Department of Mathematics of Utrecht University. He occupied short term visiting positions in Berkeley and in Copenhagen and in 1995 a four month visiting position at the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Djursholm, Sweden. In 2002 he was promoted to associate professor and in 2007 to professor in Lie theory.

Van den Ban's research area is analysis and representation theory for reductive Lie groups and symmetric spaces. He investigated the asymptotic behaviour of matrix coeffients, and the role of the principal series of representations in harmonic analysis on reductive symmetric spaces. In a long collaboration with Henrik Schlichtkrull from the University of Copenhagen he succeeded in obtaining Plancherel and Paley-Wiener theorems for such spaces.

Frans Clauwens

Frans Clauwens (1950) studied mathematics at the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (now Radboud Universiteit), where he obtained his PhD in 1975 and became an assistant professor. His research interests include algebraic and differential topology, in particular surgery theory, algebraic K- theory and algebraic L-theory. He is researching the peculiarities of lambda-rings with a view to using these to provide methods for calculating K- and L- groups in the nonfinite cases.

Gunther Cornelissen

Gunther Cornelissen (1971) works on automorphic forms over global function fields, the theory of non-archimedean uniformization and its links with non-commutative geometry, deformation theory of group actions on curves and complexity questions about rational points.

He received his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of Gent (Belgium) under the supervision of Jan Van Geel and Ernst-Ulrich Gekeler on a grant from the Belgian National Science Foundation, and then spent four years at the Max-Planck-Institute in Bonn (Germany), before accepting a position as lecturer-researcher at the University of Utrecht in 2001. In 2004-2009, he is the principal investigator of a VIDI-Innovational Research grant from the Dutch National Science Foundation. In 2007, he took up a Profile Chair in Mathematical Physics (interaction between mathematical physics and arithmetic geometry) at Utrecht University, initially funded by the GQT-cluster.

A description of research interest can be found here.

Robert Dijkgraaf

Robbert Dijkgraaf (1960) holds the chair of Mathematical Physics at the University of Amsterdam since 1992 (and is since 1998 Faculty Professor in the Faculty of Science). He studied theoretical physics and mathematics in Utrecht, where he obtained his PhD cum laude under supervision of Gerard 't Hooft in 1989. Subsequently he held a postdoctoral position at Princeton University and was a long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study. He has been a visiting professor in Berkeley, MIT, IAS, among others. Dijkgraaf research group works in string theory, quantum gravity, and the interface of mathematics and particle physics. He manages the FOM programs "Mathematical Physics" and "String Theory and Quantum Gravity."

Dijkgraaf gave an invited lecture at the ICM in Berlin (1998) and was a plenary lecturer at the International Congress of Mathematical Physics (London, 2000) and the European Congress of Mathematics (Barcelona, 2000). Dijkgraaf is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Koninklijke Hollandse Maatschappij van Wetenschappen. He was the recipient of the 2001 Physica Prize of the Dutch Physical Society. In 2003 he was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands.

Dijkgraaf is editor of Nuclear Physics B, Journal of Differential Geometry, Journal of Geometry and Physics, Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, International Mathematical Research Notices, Journal of Mathematical Physics, Reviews of Mathematical Physics, Elsevier Mathematical Library, Academische Boekengids, and was an editor of Communications in Mathematical Physics from 1992 to 2002. Dijkgraaf was a director of the spring school at the ICTP Trieste (1992-1996) and has served on various international scientific committees among other for the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, Max-Planck-Institut fur Mathematik in Bonn, Erwin Schroedinger Institut fur Mathematische Physik in Vienna, and the International Review of UK Mathematics.

Hans Duistermaat

J.J. (Hans) Duistermaat (1942) studied mathematics at Utrecht University from 1959-65 and obtained his PhD degree there in 1968. After a postdoctoral year 1969-70 in Lund (Sweden), where he learned Fourier integral operators from H�rmander, he went in 1971-74 to Nijmegen, where he became full professor in 1972. In 1974 he returned to Utrecht on the chair of professor Freudenthal, where he has stayed until now.

He became member of the KNAW (Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences) in 1982, and Academy Professor in 2004, which means that he is supposed to do research without being distracted by administrative duties until his retirement.

He has been `promotor' of 17 PhD students, of which 10 as the main thesis advior. Several of these were NWO projects, and one was research paid by Shell.

Duistermaat's current interests include classical mechanics, symplectic differential geometry, high-frequency asymptotics of solutions of linear partial differential equations, the differential geometric theory of arbitrarily nonlinear partial differential equations, and stochastically perturbed dynamical systems. Apart from 43 articles in refereed international journals, he has written 7 books, of which probably the introduction to Fourier integral operators is the most well known. His best known research is probably his article with Guillemin on spectra of elliptic operators and periodic bicharacteristics, his article with Heckman on the Duistermaat-Heckman formula, and his article with Gr�nbaum on the bispectral problem.

At the moment his main editing task is being co-ordinating editor of Indagationes Mathematicae, the mathematics journal of the KNAW.

Gerard van der Geer

Gerard van der Geer (1950) studied mathematics at the University of Leiden. He received his PhD from that university in 1977. Subsequently he worked at the Sonderforschungsbereich at Bonn University and then got a position at the University of Amsterdam, where he has been full professor in Algebra since 1987. He spent long visits at research institutes like MSRI at Berkeley and the Max-Planck-Institut at Bonn, and foreign universities like Harvard, the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University.

Van der Geer has been managing editor of Compositio Mathematica for more than ten years and is editor of Geometriae Dedicata and of the EMS Monograph series. He is member of the scientific committees of the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Mathematik in Bonn and the Research Institute in Oberwolfach. He has successfully supervised seven PhD theses (including those of C. Faber and G. Farkas) and is currently supervising another three. He was one of the initiators of the big NWO projects "Moduli" and "Algebraic curves and Riemann surfaces". He started the well-known series of Texel conferences.

Van der Geer has worked on Hilbert modular surfaces, on which he wrote the well-known volume "Hilbert Modular Surfaces" in the Ergebnisse series of Springer, on the Schottky problem, where he contributed with van Geemen a conjectural solution, on moduli of curves and abelian varieties, and on curves over finite fields. His current research deals with cohomology of local systems on moduli spaces and with moduli of Calabi-Yau varieties. He has published over 50 research papers in refereed journals.

Gert Heckman

Gert Heckman (1953) studied mathematics at the University of Leiden, where he obtained his PhD in 1980. After a period of 2 years as postdoc at MIT, he returned to Leiden as assistant professor until 1988, with a half year interruption as visiting associate professor at Universite Paris 7. From 1989 until now he has been at the University of Nijmegen, from 1999 on as professor of pure mathematics. He has trained 3 PhD students.

Heckman' s research interests include symplectic geometry and geometric quantization, algebraic geometric analysis (hypergeometric functions, differential Galois theory), and representation theory of reductive groups. About his joint work with Eric Opdam he was invited to give lectures at Seminair Bourbaki (1997) in Paris, and Current Developments in Mathematics (1996) at Harvard.

Luuk Hoevenaars

Research interests:
Integrable systems, Mathematical Physics, Frobenius manifolds.

Biographical data:
Born 17-06-1975 in Nijmegen
High school diploma at Nijmeegse Scholengemeenschap Groenewoud 1993
Master diploma in theoretical physics Utrecht University 1998, advisor prof. dr. B. de Wit
PhD in mathematics Twente University 2003, promotor prof. dr. R. Martini
postdoc position in Twente 2003-2004
VENI postdoc position in Utrecht 2005-present.

Wilberd van der Kallen

Wilberd van der Kallen studied mathematics (and undergraduate physics) at the Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht. There he also obtained his PhD in 1973 under professor Springer. He is a member of the Utrecht Mathematics Department since 1969. He has worked for some time in algebraic K-theory. His current interest involves representation theory of algebraic groups. He has repeatedly visited Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois, USA) and the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (Mumbay, India).

The main research interest of van der Kallen is in representations of reductive algebraic groups like the group of n by n matrices of determinant one. An important tool in his work has been the method of Frobenius splittings from algebraic geometry. Van der Kallen has conjectured connections between invariant theory, a topic from the nineteenth century, and the homological algebra of the represesentations of reductive algebraic groups.

Arthemy Kiselev

Research interests:
Integrable systems, mathematical physics

Biographical data:

Date of birth: April 5th, 1978

Arthemy V. Kiselev graduated summa cum laude from Lomonosov MSU (Moscow), having also been a student at the Independent University of Moscow. His PhD dissertation at Moscow State University was supported with an INTAS grant and a scholarship of the Government of the Russian Federation. After the PhD defence in 2004, with Prof. I.S.Krasil'shchik as the promotor, Arthemy Kiselev held post-doc positions at University of Montreal and Brock University (Canada), and at Middle-East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey). In 2005-2007, A.Kiselev had Assistant Professorship in Higher Mathematics at Ivanovo State Power University (Russia). During these years, he also visited Max Planck Institute for Mathematics (Bonn), IHES, Utrecht University, and University of Lecce (Italy). Arthemy Kiselev has a VENI grant at Utrecht University since 2008.

Erik Koelink

Personal data

Born April 30, 1964, Coevorden, the Netherlands Married, 3 children

Scientific education

1982-1987: Mathematics study at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Minor: computer science. Master thesis (in dutch) Singular integral operators in analysis under prof. E.G.F. Thomas
1987: teaching degree
1988-1991: PhD-student mathematics at the Universiteit Leiden. PhD-thesis On quantum groups and q-special functions (December 4, 1991). Promotores: prof. G. van Dijk and prof. T.H. Koornwinder.

Work experience

1985-1987: student-assistant at the math department of Faculty of Econometry and Actuarial Sciences of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
1988-1991: aio (PhD-student) at the math department of the Universiteit Leiden.
1992-1993: engineer at the National Aerospace Laboratory Amsterdam at the department Mathematical Modelling and Methods.
1993-1995: post-doc at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, hosted by prof. W. Van Assche and prof. A. Van Daele
1995-1998: postdoc at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, hosted by prof. T.H. Koornwinder.
1998-2007: assistant (later associate) professor at Technische Universiteit Delft
2007-onwards: professor at Radboud Universiteit.

Klaas Landsman

N.P. (Klaas) Landsman (1963) studied theoretical physics and mathematics at the University of Amsterdam, and got his PhD degree cum laude from the same institution in 1989. He worked at the University of Cambridge from 1989-1997, initially as a Research Assistant in theoretical physics and subsequently as a 5-year Advanced Research Fellow in mathematics. He interrupted his stay at Cambridge for a year in 1993-94 to work in Hamburg. He returned to Amsterdam in 1997 as a KNAW Fellow, and was appointed full professor of mathematical physics in 2002. From September 2004 he will be a professor of analysis at the University of Nijmegen.

His research Awards include an SERC Advanced Fellowship, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship a KNAW Fellowship, and an NWO Pioneer Grant of 1 ME. Over the last five years he held four additional project grants from NWO and/or FOM. He has been a Board Member of the Dutch Association for Mathematical Physics since 2000, and has been running a Master's Degree Program in Mathematical Physics at Amsterdam since 2001. He supervised four PhD students at Cambridge and Amsterdam, and is currently training three more.

Landsman's active research interests include noncommutative geometry, geometric and deformation quantization, index theory, Lie groupoids and algebroids, particularly in connection with each other. He is the author of the acclaimed monograph Mathematical Topics Between Classical and Quantum Mechanics (Springer, New York, 1998), and is the author of more than 50 refereed papers. He founded a series of conferences on the quantization of singular Poisson spaces at Oberwolfach and elsewhere. He is an editor of the International Journal of Geometric Methods in Physics, and an Honorary Member of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science.

Eduard Looijenga

Eduard Looijenga (1948) obtained his Masters's degree in mathematics at the University of Amsterdam in 1971. From 1971 till 1973 he stayed as a junior fellow at the Institut des Hautes �tudes Scientifiques and in 1974 he took his doctoral degree at the University of Amsterdam. After holding a postdoc position at the University of Liverpool (1974-75), he was appointed Professor at the University of Nijmegen (1975). From 1987 till 1990 he was at the University of Amsterdam and in 1991 he took his current position at the University of Utrecht. He held visiting positions at Yale (1980), U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1985), Columbia U. (1987), U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor (1990), U. of Utah (1991).

His research started in singularity theory, but migrated via Torelli problems (often related to rational surfaces and K3 surfaces) to locally symmetric varieties, then to mapping class groups and moduli spaces of curves, while his recent work is concerned with automorphic forms with poles along Heegner divisors and (jointly with Heckman and Couwenberg) generalizations of Lauricella functions.

Looijenga was an invited speaker at the ICM in 1978 and at the ECM in 1992. He was on the selection panel for Algebraic Geometry of the ICM in 1994, the Prize Committee of the ECM in 2000 and the Scientific Committee of the ECM in 2004. Since 1995 he is an ordinary member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He is currently editor of Comp. Math., Michigan Math. J. and the J. of the Eur. Math. Soc..

Ieke Moerdijk

Izak (Ieke) Moerdijk (1958) studied mathematics, philosophy and general linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. He received his PhD in Mathematics from the same institution in 1985, with the distinction Cum Laude. Subsequently he worked at the University of Chicago and at the University of Cambridge, before joining the Mathematics Department of the University of Utrecht in 1988, where he has been a Professor of Topology since 1996. Moerdijk was awarded a Huygens Fellowship from NWO in 1986 and a PIONIER grant, again from NWO, in 1995. Moerdijk held visiting positions in Cambridge (St John's College), Montreal (McGill University), Sydney (University) and Aarhus, among others. He was an invited speaker at the ECM 2000.

At Utrecht, Moerdijk has successfully supervised nine PhD theses, and is supervising another three at present.

Moerdijk's current research interests include algebraic and differential topology (operads, Lie groupoids, ...), and applications of topological structures in mathematical logic. He is the coauthor of several well-known books, including "Sheaves in Logic and Geometry" with S. Mac Lane (Springer-Verlag, 1992, 1994), and "Introduction to Foliations and Lie Groupoids" with J. Mrcun (Cambridge UP, 2003). He has published over 60 research papers in refereed journals. Together with C. Berger, he recently provided a solution to the problem of the existence of homotopy model structures for operads and their algebras.

Moerdijk is editor of The Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, of The Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra, and of Theory and Applications of Categories, and is a member of the Advisory Board of North-Holland Mathematical Library.

Ben Moonen

Ben Moonen studied mathematics at the University of Utrecht. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard during the Spring of 1994. After receiving his PhD at the University of Utrecht in 1995, he held postdoctoral positions in Muenster and Princeton, after which he obtained a KNAW Fellowship. In 2001 he moved to the University of Amsterdam, where he is now UHD. His main research interests lie in the domain of Arithmetic Algebraic Geometry, and include Abelian Varieties, Shimura Varieties, and Moduli theory. He is managing editor of Compositio Mathematica.

Michael Mueger

Michael Mueger (1965) studied physics at the Technical University Darmstadt, where he obtained his diploma in 1992. He received his PhD in mathematical physics from Hamburg University in 1997. From then until 2004 he worked as a postdoc in the mathematics departments of the universities Tor Vergata and La Sapienza (Rome), of Universite Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg), where he obtained his habilitation diriger des recherches in 2002, at the School of Mathematics of Tel Aviv University, at MSRI (Berkeley) and at the Korteweg-de Vries Institute (UvA). Since 2004 he works at Radboud University (Nijmegen), now as universitair docent in Analysis and Mathematical Physics.

Mueger's research currently focuses on category theory, low dimensional topology, quantum groups, operator algebras and rigorous quantum field theory (axiomatic, constructive, conformal, topological).

Eric Opdam

Eric M. Opdam (1960) studied mathematics at the University of Leiden. He received his PhD in Mathematics in 1988, also at the University of Leiden. He worked at the University of Utrecht and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before accepting a permanent position at the University of Leiden in 1989. He stayed in Leiden until 1999 when he was appointed as professor in Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam.

Opdam has held positions as a visiting professor at several occasions in Ann Arbor (MI, USA), Paris, Marseille and Kyoto. He was invited speaker at the EMC in 2000 and at the ICM in 2006. In 2000 he was awarded a prestigious Pionier grant from NWO. He has successfully supervised 2 PhD students, and he is currently training three more. In 2001 he was honorary promotor when Ian Macdonald was granted an honorary doctorate degree at the University of Amsterdam.

Opdam's research interests include representation theory, Lie groups and algebraic groups, Hecke algebras, integrable systems, special functions, and operator algebras. In his work he has paid special attention to applications of techniques across traditional borders. This has led to active contacts with researchers in various disciplines, ranging from algebraic combinatorics to Langlands philosophy.

Dirk Siersma

Dirk Siersma (1943) studied mathematics and meteorology at the University of Amsterdam. After a teaching position at a secondary school he returned to this university , where he received a PhD in 1974. His supervisor was Nicolaas H. Kuiper. He became associate professor in Utrecht in 1976 and full professor in 1980.

Siersma's active research interest is singularity theory and applications. His principal work includes classification of singularities, geometry and topology of non-isolated singularities, behaviour of singularities at infinity and more recently the study of the conflict set of the distance function. He was one of the founding members of the Dutch Singularity School. He has approximately 30 refereed research papers and supervised 11 PhD students.

Siersma has many East-European contacts: he has been coordinator of three consecutive INTAS programs with the former Soviet union and two NWO-programs with Russia. Moreover he has been main organizor of the Singularity Semester at the Newton Institute in Cambridge (Fall 2000) and (co)organizor of many international scientific meetings in his field, e.g. in the framework of the European Singularity Network. Recently he was invited guest at IHES (2 months), Banach Center (1 month) and the University of Lille (1 month).

Siersma was the first scientific director of the Mathematical Research Institute (MRI) in The Netherlands and the initiator of its scheme of international Master Classes.

Joseph Steenbrink

Joseph Steenbrink (1947) studied mathematics at the University of Nijmegen, where he got his degree in 1969. He received his PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 1974, where Frans Oort was his supervisor. Subsequently he spent a year at the IHES at Bures sur Yvette, invited by Pierre Deligne. He was supported by an NWO stipend. He became assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam and full professor at Leiden University in 1978. Since 1988 he has the chair in geometry at the University of Nijmegen. He supervised nine PhD students, several of whom (Van Straten, Stevens, de Jong) now are full professor. His main research interest is algebraic geometry, where he has developed tools in mixed Hodge theory and applied these to singularity theory. He was one of the leaders of the successful NWO-projects in Singularity Theory and Arithmetic Algebraic Geometry. He was invited speaker at many international events, notably at the ICM 1990 in Kyoto. He has been Managing Editor of Compositio Mathematica from 1982 till 1993, and is a member of the Advisory Boards of North-Holland Mathematical Library and Epsilon Uitgaven. He was dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics during six years, and scientific director of the Mathematical Research Institute. His current research interests are: geometry of moduli spaces and of certain special threefolds. He published 50 research papers in refereed journals.

Jan Stienstra

Jan Stienstra's research interests:
Relations between the theory of motives and string theory. This includes, in concreto, research on toric geometry/GKZ hypergeometric systems/mirror symmetry, Picard-Fuchs equations/crystalline cohomology/large complex structure limit, Mahler measure/L-functions/melting crystals/dimer models.

Walter van Suijlekom

Walter D. van Suijlekom studied Theoretical Physics at the University of Amsterdam from 1996 to 2001, and wrote his master's thesis under supervision of drs. G.G.A. Bauerle. After a year of Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam, he was a guest-researcher in the group of Prof. dr. N. P. Landsman at the Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics. In 2005, van Suijlekom obtained his PhD-degree at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy, under supervision of Prof. L. Dabrowski and Prof. G. Landi.

From November 2005 until December 2006, van Suijlekom is a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany. In January 2007, he will start as a postdoc at the IMAPP in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Van Suijlekom's field of research is noncommutative geometry; his work concentrates at its interaction with quantum group theory as well as its applications to quantum Yang-Mills gauge theories.