News: I’m receiving a Veni research grant

I am honoured to announce that I am among the 2024 NWO Veni research grant recipients!

NWO Veni grants

NWO (Dutch Research Council) is one of the main suppliers of science funding in the Netherlands. Its role in funding fundamental research is especially important in the Dutch research funding landscape. The Veni grants are part of the NWO Talent Programme, and are awarded yearly to early-career researchers who have visionary research ideas, the CV to back them up, and the potential to become leaders in their research fields. This year, 15% of applications were awarded with a grant. Grant awardees receive a maximum of € 320 000.

Click here for more information about NWO, and here to read more about the Veni, Vidi, Vici NWO Talent Programme.

My proposal

My proposal is titled “Finding Variables that Matter”, and I’m sharing the public summaries in English and Dutch below. Once I actually have the money and have taken the first steps in executing the research, I will be able to share more details. Keep an eye on this blog for updates!

English summary

Real-world decision-making often relies on best guesses from domain experts. Even when a computer model is used to inform decisions, inputs are often based on expert opinion. We can gain more accurate estimates for these variables by gathering more data, which is expensive. Therefore, we want to know which parameters are most important in a problem, to allocate our resources wisely. Existing methods rely on expensive simulations, which might miss important variables. This project will conduct the first research into how to use independent supports to exploit the structure of problems to identify the variables that really matter in decision-making.

Dutch summary

We maken vaak beslissingen op basis van schattingen van experts. Zelfs wanneer we een computermodel gebruiken om te helpen met onze beslissingen, worden de inputwaardes afgeschat door experts. We kunnen nauwkeurigere schattingen maken door meer informatie te vergaren. Dit is typisch een duur process. Daarom willen we graag weten welke inputwaardes en beslissingen het belangrijkst zijn voor de uitkomst van een probleem, zodat we weten naar welke waardes we meer onderzoek moeten doen. Bestaande methodes gebruiken simulaties. Deze zijn duur, en kunnen belangrijke variabelen missen. In dit project gebruiken we de structuur van een probleem om belangrijke variabelen te identificeren.

Acknowledgements

Even though Veni grants are personal grants, I firmly believe that Siegfried’s assertion that no piece of research ever is the product of just one person also holds for grants. I received a tremendous amount of training, help, support, trust, and encouragement by a number of people, and I want to name a few of them explicitly.

First: dr. ir. Sicco Verwer and dr. Tina Nane. Sicco has been my academic mentor since I arrived at TU Delft just over a year ago, and has been invaluable for me. He’s been coaching me in how to approach this grant application, and pushing me to not let myself be paralised by my perfectionism. He’s been incredibly important for me in learning how to present my research, and helped me brainstorm and finetune my ideas. Tina’s support has also been incredibly important to me in this process. Not knowing me at all, she was nevertheless kind enough to listen to the vague ideas I had at the start of writing this proposal, and to help me sharpen them. It is through her that I get to expand my knowledge and experience, by tackling real-world problems. I look forward to working with her in the later phases of the project.

Next: dr. ir. Corine Meuleman and dr. Tom Breukel were my main coaches from TU Delft’s impact and innovation office. They helped me even when I was missing deadlines or showed up underprepared. I learned so much from them and they were so patient and kind in their support. I’m also grateful to my other trainers, including Bas Verbruggen and dr. Maria Sovago.

I also want to acknowledge my colleagues, prof. dr. Mathijs de Weerdt and dr. Sebastijan Dumančić in particular. Both Mathijs and Sebastijan were crucial in me staying sane, despite the stress of applying to this grant. Both made time for me to provide me with professional advice, and friendly support when putting all of it in perspective. They helped me figure out the story and the framing of my ideas, and patiently gave feedback on early drafts.

Many of my other colleagues helped me by letting me vent, asking how things were going, or giving me feedback on my proposal and presentation. Shoutout to dr. ir. Fabian Mies, dr. Gabriel de Albuquerque Gleizer, dr. Harm Griffioen, dr. ir. Irene Martínez, and dr. Marc Rovira Navarro in particular. I enjoyed my training sessions with them, value their feedback, and congratulate them on also seeing their Veni research proposals granted!

A somewhat hidden group of people I want to acknowledge are the those who run NWO, and the anonymous reviewers who kindly read and critiqued my proposal. I am also grateful to the committee who had to read all full proposals in the Science domain, interview all candidates, and finally make decisions on who gets the grant and who doesn’t.

Of course, I owe a great debt to my academic advisers from earlier years. This may be a personal grant, reflecting my research ideas, but I am the product of their expertise and mentoring. I particularly hear the voices of prof. dr. Kuldeep Meel, dr. Siegfried Nijssen, prof. dr. Holger Hoos and prof. dr. Fahiem Bacchus in my own writing and ideas.

Finally, my friends and family have been incredibly patient with me during this entire process. I know it isn’t healthy, but I couldn’t escape sometimes having a meeting while the others went to the beach, or leaving my loved-ones to do the dishes while I returned to my laptop to make a deadline. I hope they are proud of me.

Further reading

• NWO’s news release about this year’s recipients: 200 Researchers receive Veni grants
• TU Delft’s news release about Delft’s recipients: Record number Veni grants for leading TU Delft researchers
• The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science’s coverage about the Veni grants received at our faculty: Six Veni grants for EEMCS researchers

Reminder: I’m hiring!. Please apply no later than 31 August 2025!