Research

Department of Advanced Computing Sciences

The Department of Advanced Computing Sciences is Maastricht University’s largest and oldest department broadly covering the fields of artificial intelligence, data science, computer science, mathematics and robotics.

Over 100 researchers work in the department, whose roots trace back to 1987.

About us

The department’s activities span the entire spectrum from curiosity-driven research to responsible societal applications, often taking on an interdisciplinary character. Our contributions to areas such as multi-agent systems, (medical) signal and image processing, FAIR principles, game theory, intelligent search techniques and affective computing are internationally recognized.

With staff and students coming from over 50 different countries, the Department of Advanced Computing Sciences maintains an inclusive and highly international working environment. We embrace team science, interdisciplinary thinking and flat hierarchies as core values of our community.

Internally, the department is organized in several dynamic research area groups. Furthermore, a total of 11 chairs are associated with the Department of Advanced Computing Sciences. Navigate through the menu to learn more about our research area groups and chairs.

Research area groups

Our research area groups foster collaboration and knowledge exchange between colleagues working on similar methods. Researchers move freely between these groups, which themselves evolve according to the latest advances in the various branches of computing sciences.

Each research area group is led by a dedicated coordinator.

Current research area groups and coordinators

Algorithms | Coordinator: Steven Kelk
Cognitive Systems | Coordinator: Enrique Hortal Quesada
Explainable Artificial Intelligence | Coordinator: Tjitze Rienstra
Games | Coordinator: Barbara Franci
Quantum and High-Performance Computing | Coordinator: Menica Dibenedetto
Systems and Control | Coordinator: Joël Karel
Data Science | Director of the Institute of Data Science: Michel Dumontier
Computing Sciences Education | Coordinator: Martijn Boussé

Director of research: Nava Tintarev
Chair: Mark Winands

Professors and chairs

Distinguished university professor

Prof. dr. Michel Dumontier: Data Science | View profile
Prof. Dumontier's research focuses on the development of novel computational methods for responsible data science and artificial intelligence with applications computational drug discovery and personalized medicine. This includes developing approaches in formal knowledge representation (knowledge graphs), machine and deep learning (predictive models and synthetic data), and data quality and data sharing (FAIR principles).

Full professors

Prof. dr. Adriana (Anda) Iamnitchi: Computational Social Sciences | View profile
Prof. Iamnitchi’s research efforts focus on developing and applying computational approaches to extract knowledge from massive amounts of data in order to analyze, model and simulate users’ collective and individual behavior on cyber-social systems.

Prof. dr. ir. Ralf Peeters: Mathematical Aspects of Knowledge Engineering | View profile
The focus of Prof. Peeters' chair is on data-driven methods of mathematical modelling, control and optimization, including signal and image processing and machine learning. Applications lie in health, systems biology, engineering and industry.

Prof. dr. Frank Thuijsman: Strategic Optimisation and Data science | View profile
Research focus is on dynamic (evolutionary) game theory particularly and on operations research (planning and scheduling) more generally. Applications in the bio(medical) domain on the one hand and the industrial domain on the other are a driving force on Prof. Thuijsman's research agenda, and AI tools are used for data analysis.

Prof. dr. Nava Tintarev: Explainable Artificial Intelligence | View profile
As AI systems’ actions and decisions will significantly affect their users, it is important to be able to understand how and why an AI system produced the effect that it did. One key aim of Prof. Tintarev's chair is therefore to make the inner workings of AI systems more accessible and transparent in a human-understandable way.

Prof. dr. Gerhard Weiss: Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science | View profile
This chair’s research focus is on automated knowledge processing and on theoretical foundations and practical applications of intelligent systems. Prof. Weiss is particularly interested in the design and analysis of methods and techniques that enable such systems to cooperate and compete with each other in a flexible and autonomous way.

Prof. dr. Anna Wilbik: Data Fusion and Intelligent Interaction | View profile
This chair bridges the gap between the meaning of data and human understanding in complex application environments, where data can be of various natures. Prof. Wilbik’s research focus lies on supporting interaction between machine and human for joint decision-making, information and data fusion, and decision contextualizing.

Prof. dr. Mark Winands: Machine Reasoning | View profile
Machine Reasoning involves algorithms to efficiently search in general solution spaces, and methods specifically for planning and scheduling, game theory, reasoning under uncertainty, adaptive strategies, and constraint satisfaction. This chair operates on the interface of AI and Mathematics and Operations Research, as many of these algorithms originate from the latter.

Professors holding endowed chairs

Prof. dr. Christopher Brewster: Application of Emerging Technologies | View profile
The chair in Application of Emerging Technologies is supported by TNO.
Prof. Brewster's research interests include Semantic Technologies, Open and Linked Data, Interoperability Architectures and Data Governance, with a focus on food and agriculture, and the wider issues of the impact of technology on the environment.

Prof. dr. David Groep: e-Infrastructure | View profile
The chair in e-Infrastructure is supported by Nikhef.
This chair focuses on the integration of computing systems, networks, and storage; the evolution of algorithms that exploit the novel systems architectures; and the secure collaboration mechanisms that make this a collective, global ecosystem. This e-Infrastructure is then used in data-processing intensive applications to validate the results in real-life.

Prof. dr. Jan Scholtes: Text-Mining | View profile
The chair in Text-Mining is supported by ZyLAB.
Text mining aims to provide deeper understanding and new insights of large collections of textual data as faced in legal, medical, law enforcement, intelligence, social sciences, humanities or marketing applications. Text-mining research applies advanced techniques from the fields of information retrieval (search engines) and advanced natural language processing (NLP).

News, grants and media appearances

Research news

Thanks to AI, we can play a Roman game again

A rectangle incised with diagonal and straight lines, hewn from limestone quarried in France, a thrilling strategy game can look deceptively simple. The Romans used glass, bone or earthenware pieces. Players took turns trying to block each other’s pieces; whoever did it in the least number of moves.

AI generated image of 2 Romans in a historically accurate setting playing a game

New master in Responsible Data Science: for ethical and sustainable AI developments.

As of September 2026, the new Responsible Data Science master’s programme at Maastricht University prepares students to become professionals who deploy artificial intelligence and other digital technologies with respect for both people and the planet.

Coulorfull annimation showing how the complexity of AI is unraveled. Knotted lines in a humans head are unraveled

Nava Tintarev takes a leading role in national computer science platforms

As of January 2026, Nava Tintarev, Professor of Explainable AI at Maastricht University’s Department of Advanced Computing Sciences (DACS), will join the boards of two of the Netherlands’ most prestigious computer science platforms.

DigiMach: Digital Transformation of the Machining Value Chain for Sustainable Growth

Researchers

DigiMach is a transnational 3-year collaborative approach that will transform manufacturing across the Meuse-Rhine region by bringing AI, IoT, and robotics to small and medium-sized enterprises in the machining sector. The project will assist more than 150 SMEs to adopt smart, digital tools, through...

Maastricht will host the 2026 World Conference on Computational Intelligence

In 2026, three major conferences on computational intelligence will convene in Maastricht simultaneously. The IEEE World Conference on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI) will be the world's largest technical event in computer science, focusing on applications such as artificial intelligence.

organisers of the 2026 IEEE WCCI world conference - photo by Jonathan Vos

Recent grants and awards

Horizon consortium: AIDAVA

Start September 2022
Distinguished Professor Michel Dumontier and Assistant Professor Remzi Celebi will lead AIDAVA, a new EU-funded Horizon project receiving €7.7 million in total. Together with 14 academic and industry partners, AIDAVA will develop and validate an AI-powered virtual assistant to improve the effectiveness of clinical care and support clinical research.

Horizon consortium: EU Farmbook

Start August 2022
Prof. Christopher Brewster participates in the EU Farmbook project, an EU-funded Horizon consortium supporting knowledge exchange between actors in the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) in the European Union. Prof. Brewster receives €1.5 million for leading a work package on data management and technical infrastructure.

Erasmus+ grant for JOINclusion

April 2022
Dr. Enrique Hortal is part of the JOINclusion partnership, which will build a collaborative serious game to help children in primary schools train empathy. JOINclusion is looking to foster the social inclusion of young immigrants and of refugees specifically. The project receives €290k in total.

Maastricht Young Academy Interdisciplinary Grant

February 2022
Dr. Amir Ebrahimi Fard and prof. Nava Tintarev (both DKE) team up with Dr. Giulia Piccillo and Prof. Tina Comes (SBE) for the project The impact of repeated exposure to rumours on the belief system. The Maastricht Young Academy supports the project with a €15k grant for interdisciplinary projects.

Sustainability seed fund

January 2022
The interdisciplinary collaboration FOODSY - featuring prof. Anna Wilbik (DKE), prof. Ralf Peeters (DKE), prof. Frank Thuijsman (DKE), prof. Theo de Kok (TGX), prof. Pim Martens (UCV) and prof. Yvonne van der Meer (AMIBM) - receives a €20k Seed Fund for Sustainability Research Spearheads for the project Developing Sustainable Food Systems.

Multi-million investment for Green Transport Delta

30 November 2021
As part of the Green Transport Delta consortium on electrification - which focuses on batteries as part of the transition towards sustainable mobility - Prof. Mark Winands, Prof. Frank Thuijsman, Prof. Anna Wilbik and Dr. Matúš Mihalák receive over €500.000.

Mateusz Wiza wins Q-Park Student Award

4 November 2021
Dutch parking multinational Q-Park announced the winners of its annual Student Awards this week. Mateusz Wiza, a recent graduate of the bachelor’s programme in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, was one of the winners to receive a €1.500 cash prize for his thesis.

Mateusz Wiza, winner of the 2021 Q-Park Student Award

UM part of ROBUST: Trustworthy AI-based systems for sustainable growth

20 September 2021
Prof. Nava Tintarev is a co-applicant in ROBUST, an NWO Long Term Programme led by Prof. Maarten de Rijke (University of Amsterdam/ICAI). The ROBUST consortium wants to carry out multi-year research into reliable artificial intelligence.

Alexey Chervonenkis Award for Best Student Paper at COPA 2021

10 September 2021
William Lopez Jaramillo and supervisor Dr. Evgueni Smirnov win the award for the paper "Shapley-value based inductive conformal prediction" at the 10th Symposium on Conformal and Probabilistic Prediction with Applications.

Douglas Engelbart Best Paper Award at ACM Hypertext 2021

2 September 2021
For the paper "This Item Might Reinforce Your Opinion: Obfuscation and Labeling of Search Results to Mitigate Confirmation Bias" by Alisa Rieger, Tim Draws (both TU Delft), Mariët Theune (Twente University) and Nava Tintarev (DKE/TU Delft).

Best Paper 2nd Runner Up Award at IJCB 2021

August 2021
For the paper 'Contrastive Self-supervised Learning for Sensor-based Human Activity Recognition' by Bulat Khaertdinov, Dr. Esam Ghaleb and Dr. Stelios Asteriadis, at the 2021 International Joint Conference on Biometrics.

Dr. Chiara Sironi wins LNVH Distinguished Women Scientists Travel Fund

May 2021
The Dutch Network of Women Professors announced the recipients of their annual travel fund earlier this month. Dr. Chiara Sironi will use the funds to travel to China.

ASDI grant for Dr. Daniel Cámpora and colleagues

5 April 2021
Together with Dr. Roel Aaij (PI, Nikhef) and Dr. Jacco de Vries (GWFP/Maastricht University), Dr. Cámpora receives €252k funding from the Netherlands eScience Center for the project High-throughput GPU computing for New Physics searches with electrons in LHCb.

Horizon 2020 consortium: CoRoSect

15 January 2021
Dr. Rico Möckel coordinates the European CoRoSect consortium - funded through a €7 million grant from the European Commission's Horizon 2020 programme - which will work towards automated insect farming.

NWO ‘Stairway to Impact’ prize for Dr. Kateřina Staňková

2 December 2020
The new NWO Science Domain awards recognize inspirational scientists in five categories, among which societal impact. Staňková receives the €50.000 cash prize for her contributions to mathematics-based cancer therapies.

Dr. Mathias Staudigl receives PGMO grant

September 2020
A one-year grant from the Gaspard Monge Program, which funds a postdoc position to study privacy-preserving algorithms for the distributed control of energy markets together with French energy company EDF.

Horizon 2020 ITN: EvoGamesPlus

22 July 2020
The European Commission has awarded nearly 4 million euros to the Innovative Training Network (ITN), which focuses on evolutionary game theory and is coordinated by Dr. Kateřina Staňková.

NWO KLEIN-1 grant for Dr. Steven Kelk

20 July 2020
The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) awards a KLEIN-1 grant to the project 'Shrinking the tree(s) of life to better understand the evolution of species'.

LHCb Early Career Researcher Award for Dr. Daniel Cámpora

11 June 2020
Starting in 2021, the LHCb detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider will use the GPU-powered Allen system to filter data; Dr. Cámpora was awarded the prize for his contribution to this innovation.

EU H2020 grant: A Secure Healthcare Environment for Informatics Resilience (HEIR)

01 September 2020 (start)
Dr. Apostolis Zarras is part of the HEIR consortium, which will provide threat identification and a cybersecurity knowledge base system for healthcare.

NWO KLEIN-2 grant for Dr. Kateřina Staňková

16 April 2020
The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) awards €570.000 for mathematics to aid metastatic cancer treatment.

Best Poster Award for Maria M. Truşcă and Dr. Jerry Spanakis

24 February 2020
Awarded for the paper 'Hybrid Tiled Convolutional Neural Networks (HTCNN) Text Sentiment Classification' during ICAART2020 in Valletta, Malta.

EU H2020 grant: PROCare4Life

01 January 2020
Dr. Stelios Asteriadis & team participate in the PROCare4Life consortium, which will build an integrated care ecosystem for elderly patients. They will focus on artificial intelligence for activity recognition and heterogeneous data fusion.

Best Paper Award for #MeTooMaastricht chatbot

20 September 2019
The #MeTooMaastricht chatbot prototype won Best Paper Award at the 4th Workshop on Data Science for Social Good (SoGood 2019) in Würzburg, Germany.

EU H2020 grant: PREVISION

01 May 2019
Dr. Apostolis Zarras partakes in consortium aimed at providing data science tools for law enforcement agencies fighting against (cyber)crime and terrorism.

EU H2020 grant: MindSpaces

14 January 2019
Dr. Alexia Briassouli partakes in consortium set to design indoor and outdoor spaces, based on VR/AR environments that dynamically adapt to the end user’s experience.

First prize ($50.000) at Integrated Math Oncology workshop

13 December 2018
Dr. Kateřina Staňková co-leads winning team devising a multi-disciplinary approach for treatment of metastatic thyroid cancer.

Silver Reimagine Education Awards for KE@Work

04 December 2018
Honours path KE@Work wins international education prizes for Best University-Employer Partnership and in the category 'Engineering & IT'.

Best paper award for Dr. Apostolis Zarras and colleagues

03 December 2018
‘Hiding in the Shadows: Empowering ARM for Stealthy Virtual Machine Introspection’ wins best paper award at ACSAC 2018.

ERC Consolidator grant for Dr. Cameron Browne

01 April 2018
€2 million to start the Digital Ludeme Project at DKE, aiming to reconstruct and inter-relate 1,000 ancient games using artificial intelligence.

DKE - Ancient games and Artificial Intelligence

Data Science Research Proposal Award for DKE staff and students

25 January 2018
8 DKE students and 5 DKE researchers win €5000 with colleagues from SBE, FPN and LAW.

Poster prize for Dr. Rico Möckel and colleagues

29 November 2017
‘An fNIRS-based brain-machine interface for remote robot control’ wins poster prize at rtFIN2017.

Dr. Rico Möckel wins Impact Course competition

06 October 2017
€1000 for intelligent robotic game devices assessing cognitive, physical and social capabilities in children and elderly people.

Best paper award for Dr. Rico Möckel and colleagues

05 June 2017
Best paper award at the 2017 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation.

DKE student wins Student StarCraft AI Tournament

28 March 2017
Martin Rooijackers (Master’s student Artificial Intelligence) wins both the student-division and the mixed division at SSCAIT.

Multiple awards for DKE student

11 October 2016
Dennis Soemers (Master’s student Artificial Intelligence) wins best student paper at IEEE CIG 2016 and the General Video Game AI competition.

EU H2020 grant: MaTHiSiS

01 February 2016
Dr. Stelios Asteriadis partakes in consortium set to develop innovative educational tools for learning in formal and informal settings.

EU H2020 grant: ICT4Life

19 January 2016
Dr. Stelios Asteriadis partakes in consortium set to develop ICT care solutions for patients with dementias.

Best paper award for Dr. Nico Roos and colleagues

19 July 2015
‘Matching Terminological Heterogeneous Ontologies by Exploiting Partial Alignments’ wins best paper award at SEMAPRO 2015.

Researchers in the media

What was the first board game ever played?

Dr. Walter Crist (Digital Ludeme Project) answers this question in an online lecture for Universiteit van Nederland.

Walter Crist for Universiteit van Nederland

Digital Ludeme Project in Dutch and Belgian newspapers

Dutch newspaper Parool and Belgian newspaper De Morgen ask for Dr. Cameron Browne's opinion on a new archeological game find (article in Dutch).

Digital Ludeme Project in the Middle East edition of WIRED

Article in English: Rules to these ancient games seemed lost forever. Then AI made its move

Smart robots on the insect farm: BNR Nieuwsradio

Dr. Rico Möckel and Kamil Bujnarowski discuss CoRoSect in a radio segment for BNR Nieuwsradio (interview in Dutch and English).

Digital Ludeme Project featured on WIRED

This AI Resurrects Ancient Board Games—and Lets You Play Them features Dr. Cameron Browne and Dr. Walter Crist.

Memberships, affiliations and networks

Within Maastricht University

Institute of Data Science

The Institute of Data Science (IDS) is committed to research in data science and artificial intelligence, collaborating across disciplines, institutions, and sectors. The goal is to accelerate scientific discovery, improve clinical care and well-being, and to strengthen communities.

Visit website

The Institute of Data Science is part of the Department of Advanced Computing Sciences.

Law & Tech Lab

Our researchers participate in the Law & Tech Lab, which operates at the intersections of law, technology, data science and knowledge engineering.

MaCSBio

The Maastricht Centre for Systems Biology (MaCSBio) develops computational and mathematical models to advance understanding of biological systems. Our researchers collaborate as associate members.

Mathematics Centre Maastricht

Our department is a one of two core departments of the Mathematics Centre Maastricht (MCM), which unites research, education and outreach in mathematics across Maastricht University.

Studio Europa

Studio Europa Maastricht is a centre of expertise for Europe-related debate and research. We participate in interdisciplinary research into fairness and transparency in the digital ecosystem.

Quantum Computing @ UM

Quantum Computing at Maastricht University (QC@UM) is a collaboration between our department and the Gravitational Waves & Fundamental Physics group. QC@UM explores the potential of quantum computers for future state-of-the-art physics detectors.

Brightlands Robotics Initiative

The Brightlands Robotics Initiative develops smart robots to drive regional activities. The Initiative is fully embedded within the Department of Advanced Computing Sciences.

Website coming soon

Brightlands Institute for Smart Society

The Brightlands Institute for Smart Society (BISS) connects Maastricht University’s academic knowledge and expertise in data science with societal needs. Professor Anna Wilbik and Professor Michel Dumontier are part of the BISS team.

Brightlands Smart Services Campus

Our department has its own office on the Brightlands Smart Services Campus in Heerlen, which focuses on bringing together different partners around the topic of data science.

Cross-faculty collaborations

We collaborate with researchers in all six faculties of Maastricht University, and we are always open to exploring the possibility of new collaborations. If you would like to work together, do not hesitate to reach out.

External networks

The Department of Advanced Computing Sciences is a member of, or involved in, the following networks: