Networks & big data

Abstract

Once a year, the NWO cluster Stochastics – Theoretical and Applied Research (STAR) organises a STAR Outreach Day, a one-day event around a theme that is of a broad interest to the stochastics community in the Netherlands. The last Outreach Day took place at Eurandom on 12 December 2014. The theme of the day was ‘Networks & Big Data’. The topic is very timely. The Vision document 2025 of the PlatformWiskunde Nederland (PWN) mentions big data as one of the six “major societal and scientific trends that influence the mathematical sciences”. In 2014 a ten-year Gravitation programme ‘NETWORKS’ inmathematics was awarded by NWO. The STAR Outreach Day has presented an exciting opportunity to promote these topics and their numerous applications in life and science. Organisers Nelly Litvak and Frank van der Meulen look back on this event