Radboud University Nijmegen

Short Curriculum Vitae

IRIS was the winged goddess of the rainbow and the messenger of the Olympian gods.

Th.P. van der Weide received his masters degree Mathematics at the Technical University Eindhoven, the Netherlands in 1975, and the degree of Ph.D in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Leiden, the Netherlands in 1980.

He is currently full professor in Information Retrieval and Information Systems (IRIS) in the section Digital Security of the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (ICIS) at Faculty of Science from the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the oldest city in the Netherlands.

Research

His main research interests include information systems, information retrieval, hypertext and knowledge based systems. He is involved in the Information Foraging Lab, an interdepartmental research group focusing on the development of models and techniques supporting modern knowledge workers. IFL is a collaboration between researchers from the Institute of Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) from the Faculty of Science and the Language and Speech Unit of the Faculty of Arts, both at Radboud University Nijmegen.

He also is involved in an extensive research program with public universities in Uganda, supported by Nuffic. For more information, see uganda.cs.ru.nl. His research activities in this project concentrate on

• introducing ICT in a developing context (for example, setting up an eHealth infrastructure based on mobile techniques, and employing agent technology in a secure way),
• using ICT in the educational process both on schools (primary, secondary and tertiary level) as in telecenters
• the impact of ICT on society, its culture and policy.

His research in information retrieval and information systems is concerned with

1. developing solutions to problems that arise in retrieving documents from modern distributed information systems, such as the World Wide Webs
2. adaptive and time-dependent information filtering using natural language and
3. characterization of documents using various types of index expressions.
4. the nature of the communication language for information retrieval using grammatical and algebraic methods.
5. natural language based requirements elicitation, especially in the context of information modelling but also in the context of query negotiation in the context of information retrieval.

Teaching

Currently I am the coordinator for the Information Sciences Program an involved in the following courses in the Informatics program and the Information Sciences program, both on bachelor and master level:

• Domein Modellering (Domain Modeling).
  Bachelor Course
  This course teaches the basic principles of natural language based domain modeling. Students will learn
  • how to construct a communication grammar from a concrete Universe of Discourse description, using the Object Role Modeling (ORM) and Lisa-D technology.
  • how to (formally) reason in terms of this communication grammar
  • how to transform the resulting conceptual model into an SQL implementation.
  Students will also get an extensive introduction to SQL, and are trained in the construction of advanced queries. Behavior modeling aspects are considered in the context of ORM, and related to the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
  There are lecture notes available for the first part of the course.
  (Course Description)

• Opslaan en Terugvinden (Storage and Retrieval)
  Bachelor Course
  This course teaches the various technique for efficient storage and retrieval of information.
  1. First the characteristics from storage media are discussed followed by the way how data is organized in modern file systems.
  2. This is followed by an introduction into relational algebra and a scheme to translate SQL queries and to bring them into pushdown normalform. Advanced file structures like hashing and B-trees are discussed in the context of their performance of the elementary operations of relational algebra.
  3. Finally, information retrieval aspects are presented, followed by an extended introduction to structured documents and their processing (XML). Finally, concurrency and security issues are discussed.
  (Course Description)

• Information Retrieval
  Master Course
  This course teaches the basic principles of Information Retrieval, and its applications on the Internet. Topics like indexing and discussed in-depth, both from a formal point of view, and from the aspects of human cognition. The Internet gets special attention from the search engine aspect, including such topics as page rank.
  (Course Description)

• ICT Community Outreach Project
  Bachelor Course
  In this course students particpate in a community outreach project. The project is done in a location with a poor ICT structure. The students will learn to orientate themselves on the special circumstances of this location, and to define their own role in this context. This will give them better insight in the applicability of their knowledge and skills in a new context.

  The weekly lectures

  Projects are located in South Africa, Ethiopia, Zambia, Ghana, India and Nepal.

  See ICT4Kids for the project descriptions.

  (Course Description)

• Information and Communication Technology in a different culture
  Master Course
  This course is intended as an international broadening course to explore levels, practice, opportunities and threats for Information and Communication Technology in a non-western context. The participants will do a small research in the country that is visited. The students prepare themselves by have special lectures. During the visit they carry out their research. Afterwards they write a small article about their findings. The course closes with a seminar in which the results are presented.

  Coming year (2009/2010) we will visit India (Hyderabad and Kerala). In 2008/2009 the study tour went to Pretoria. Also in 2007/2008 India has been the centre of interest. In 2006/2007 the student trip has been in Uganda.

  See Information and Communication Technology in a different culture for more course information.

  Course Description See also: Een kort verslag.

Special Projects

A special project I am working at is the project ICT4kids. The aim of ICT4kids is to bridge the gap of ICT knowledge and usage in the poor black communities by supporting existing and new small ICT related projects, set-up by its own inhabitants. ICT is rapidly developing in South-Africa and people need to possess the basic computer skills

Address Info

A summary of my address information: