Network Institute
Last week, we had our celebratory end-of-the year event where all of our Academy Assistants presented the final results of their projects. Beyond scientific insights, the students shared what they learned about interdisciplinary collaboration while working along researchers from two … Continue reading
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam hosted the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA 2026) from 22 to 26 June 2026. ICSA is a premier venue for researchers and practitioners in software architecture, component-based software engineering, and software quality. It is … Continue reading
The Research Visits are our initiative for enabling interdisciplinary research on the topic of digital society across universities worldwide. Since 2022, we have hosted a total of 18 Research Visitors. We welcome the following Research Visitors for 2026: Isadora Vitória … Continue reading
We are thrilled to announce the CvB has formally decided to help us with VU Research Means (VUO) to further develop our AI-platform Nebula. From 2027 onwards the Network Institute together with IT for Research (ItvO) will look into the … Continue reading
What are the planetary burdens of media technology? What cultural and aesthetic frameworks shape how nature is depicted on screen? The international symposium media/environment: Screens and Streams in the Age of Climate Crisis confronts the question of how media both … Continue reading
The Network Institute organized a summer school fully dedicated to the usage of Generative AI in academia. The summer school is being held at the Social, Economic, and Organisational Psychology department of Leiden University, who are kindly hosting us for … Continue reading
We congratulate Dr. Mengyuan Zhang and Dr. Lianying Zhao on their recent publication. One of VU’s Network institute Research Visits has produced a paper published at the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (presented in Barcelona Spain … Continue reading
The wait is over. You can now register for Hack4Her VU! We are kicking things off with a day of hands-on workshops open to all students, followed by a two-day hackathon specifically for female students. Whether you want to join … Continue reading
Apply for an interdisciplinary research project and work with 2 student assistants! Deadline June 15th (Monday), 2026 at 23.59 pm The Network Institute’s (NI) Academy Assistants program (NIAA) is now entering its 16th year. Initially funded through a KNAW grant … Continue reading
Last summer, Dr. Jieying Chen from the Department of Computer Science and Dr. Chendi Wang from the Department of Political Science received funding through the Network Institute Academy Assistants programme to support two research assistants working on the interdisciplinary project … Continue reading
We are beyond pleased to announce that our consortium got awarded the grant for the ByteMe project alongside TU Delft, Open Universiteit, SURF, Tilburg Universiteit, and Utrecht Universiteit. The aim of the project is to facilitate responsible LLM use in … Continue reading
Overview The Network Institute (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) invites applications for its “Network Institute Research visits” program. The program offers scholars the opportunity to spend up to one month at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam to conduct research on the theme of … Continue reading
A research funding has been awarded to Elena Beretta, Ilaria Tiddi, Radu Apsan, and Ivano Malavolta from the “Sustainable Research Fund” call. The call was launched in 2025 by NWO and the Dutch Climate Research Initiative (KIN) to stimulate sustainable … Continue reading
Participans of the IWDS 2026 workshop are exclusively eligible to apply for research vouchers offered by the Network Institute. The application process involves sending a short joint research proposal (minimum 2 researchers). All proposals will go through a double-blind peer … Continue reading
We would like to invite you to the next KINTalk on May 19 at 17.30. Digital sovereignty is increasingly prominent in policy discourse — but what does implementation actually look like in practice? Wolf Marcuse, Managing Director at Dawn Technology, … Continue reading
The Network Institute invites participants of the 2026 Interdisciplinary Workshop on Digital Society (IWDS) to apply for Research Vouchers supporting interdisciplinary research on digital society. Three vouchers will be awarded (€2,500, €1,500, and €1,000) to joint research proposals following a … Continue reading
We would like to formally invite you to the next event on Regenerative Leadership in the Age of AI, organized by the Regenerative Business Leaders, on Wednesday 15 April 9:00-17:00 in the Hotel Crowne Plaza, Utrecht. Looking back on the … Continue reading
We look back on a successful fifth edition of the Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Digital Society (IWDS). A keynote talk by Dr. Laura Hollink on “Bias in Linked Data” was followed by a lightning talk and poster presentations by nine (teams … Continue reading
Imagine a handful of companies which own every piece of infrastructure in your city. One company owns every road, every sign, every map. Thats their platform: they decide which streets are visible and where traffic flows. That is the state … Continue reading
Just a friendly reminder that March 26 the Network Institute will organize the fifth edition of the Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Digital Society. We are happy to invite researchers, students, and practitioners from all disciplines to participate in the Interdisciplinary … Continue reading
Ivano Malatova, director at the Network Institute, and Radu Apsan, Scientific Software Engineer at the Network Institute, visited the Plastic Surgery Department at Utrecht UMC to present and discuss how Generative AI can be successfully used in Science. The title … Continue reading
How do we move towards a more inclusive and sustainable city where the technology we adopt is under our own collective control? What is needed to make progress on that journey and what is the role of academia, governments, societal … Continue reading
Does the use of metaphors improve comprehension of, and shape attitudes toward, quantum technology? We want to congratulate Aletta Meinsma and Gudrun Reijnierse on their recent publication on this question in Metaphor and the Social World. From September till November 2023, … Continue reading
Over these past few weeks, we’ve been working hard on making the Nebula onboarding process smoother, and less time-consuming. So, in the spirit of convenience, we released the Nebula User Guide available for everyone. The guide talks in depth about … Continue reading
We are excited to invite researchers, students, and practitioners from all disciplines to participate in the Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Digital Society (IWDS’26). The workshop features a packed program combining talks, posters, and interactive sessions. Whether you are presenting your … Continue reading
We want to congratulate Jakub Frąc and Alexander Schmatz, our 2024-2025 cohort of Network Institute Academy Assistants, and their supervisors Qiang Li, Guido Van Wingen, and Shujian Yu, on the forthcoming presentation of their project “Adapting HFMCA to Graph Data: Self-Supervised Learning … Continue reading
The Winter School ‘Generative AI in Academia’ is an Aurora winter course within the Digital Society and Global Citizenship hub at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Open to students and faculty across all disciplines and nationalities, it focuses on integrating generative AI … Continue reading
The VU’s Environmental Humanities Center and Chair for Media and Culture are jointly organizing a lunch lecture that may be of interest to Network Institute members: “An Energy History and Future of Computing” by Dr. Anne Pasek When: Tuesday, 10 March … Continue reading
Join us for the KINTalk with Tim Vermeulen from Alliander (Liander). Tim will talk about the evolution of AI and the ethical safeguards needed to manage the Dutch power grid responsibly. We’ll discuss: Efficiency vs. fairness in automated decisions Avoiding … Continue reading
As part of the master’s course on Software Language Engineering, we have a special guest lecture from artist + programmer Daniel Temkin on February 13, 11:00-12:45. You are all kindly invited to join the seminar. Abstract: In his new book, … Continue reading
We’re excited to have received so much interest in the upcoming Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Digital Society. The number of submissions shows a strong engagement with the workshop’s topics, and we’re grateful to everyone who sent in their work. This … Continue reading
We are pleased to share that the paper, Before Robots Learn, Students Must: Trade-offs in Educating Future Roboticists, has been accepted for presentation at the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) conference 2026. This research was made possible through funding from the Network … Continue reading
With the Winter School in GenAI for Academia coming to an end, we got to explore how Nebula behaved under continuous stress from a larger number of users, and the results are more than satisfying. As an added bonus for … Continue reading
After two weeks of lectures, labs, feedback sessions and a grand finale of project presentations, the Winter School in GenAI for Academia has concluded. Over these two weeks, we got valuable insight into how AI is made, how it works, … Continue reading
Just a quick reminder for the Call for Submissions for IWDS 26! We welcome submissions from all faculties. Are you a Master or PhD student? We encourage you to submit too! IWDS is an accessible event where you can connect … Continue reading
What is your new year’s resolution? We at the Network Institute want to share this short article in Nature by Laurel Raffington, promoting a healthy work-life balance. Something that is not always easy to maintain, especially for scientists. Our jobs … Continue reading
As our latest visiting researcher Mara Floris (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele) has concluded her project too, we can look back on three fruitful research visits in 2025. Floris’ project investigated how generative AI can be used as a pedagogical tool … Continue reading
What would you like to learn about AI ethics that’d be relevant for your own work? The AIOLIA project (in collaboration with VUmc) would like to hear about your needs, and would greatly appreciate if you would fill in their … Continue reading
We want to remind you that we are taking a short break from the Research Lunches in January. The Research Lunches are meant to be gatherings where fellow researchers from the Network Institute can meet, connect, and be inspired. Lately, … Continue reading
This week, we start with our Winter School on Generative AI. Here, we guide (aspiring) researchers on how to enhance their research, from data analysis to ethics, for all disciplines. Participants are gaining hands-on experience with state-of-the-art generative AI models … Continue reading
Thursday 29 January, 14:00 – 17:30 at the Waag, Anatomical Theatre How do we move towards a more inclusive and sustainable city where the technology we adopt is under our own collective control? What is needed to make progress on … Continue reading
Since 2023, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) has awarded an annual dissertation prize of €10,000, to recognize research of exceptional interdisciplinary nature that bridges the boundaries between the classical humanities, sciences, and social sciences. The prize … Continue reading
Santa also happened to pass by the Techlabs this winter, and we are very happy to announce that we have two new high performance GPUs that are ready to go on Nebula. The RTX Pro 6000 GPUs support: – Bigger … Continue reading
The 5th Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Digital Society will be a half-day event held on Thursday, March 26th, 2026 at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, organized by the Network Institute. We invite researchers working in any area related to the Digital … Continue reading
As we are approaching the end of the year, we can look back on three fruitful research visits in 2025. The first two research reports are now available on our website: Fabian Stiehle (Technical University of Munich, TUM) aimed at … Continue reading
We want to inform you that we are taking a short break from the research lunches for now. They are meant to be a place where fellow researchers can be inspired, meet each other and connect. Lately, we have been … Continue reading
To give researchers access to more powerful LLMs, the Societal Analytics Laboratory and the Network Institute have started a collaboration. Both groups invested in buying more and more powerful hardware that will be handled by the Network Institute to supercharge … Continue reading
Nebula is a new Network Institute initiative that aims to provide researchers from all departments with safe, seamless access to open-source large language models (LLMs). Nebula is one of the first fully-localized Large Language Model (LLM) deployments in the Netherlands—and likely … Continue reading
Join us at the KINtalk with Nicholas Fredriksz, Manager Security Testing at Cyber Defence Center (CDC) of UWV (Dutch Benefits Agency). Fredriksz will offer an inside look at the organization that protects one of the most frequently visited government websites … Continue reading
The Research team of the Network Institute is starting to organize the next edition of the workshop IWDS 2026, that will take place in Spring. We will share more info about it and its call for participation to all of … Continue reading
We would like to invite you to the next Research Lunch, organised by the Network Institute to facilitate exchange between researchers at the VU across faculties and disciplines. On November 13th, the team behind Civinc will give a talk … Continue reading
We would like to invite you to a talk on October 21st by our visiting researcher Fabian Stiehle: Can the EU Digital Markets Act Guide Ethical Platform Design? Abstract:The early internet promised a world of openness and shared knowledge. … Continue reading
In September, we partnered with Mondragon University (Spain), Universita degli Studi del Sannio (Italy), Simula Research Laboratory (Norway), Oslo Metropilitan University (Norway), University of Malaga (Spain), and Zurcher Hochschule Fur Angewandte Wissenschaften (Switzerland) to host a mini hackathon challenge on … Continue reading
With the summer holidays over, we want to welcome you back with two new models available on Nebula: GPT-OSS:20B and Gemma3:12B. Along with the new models we also want to present some of our favourite features of Nebula. OpenAI API … Continue reading
Earlier this year, we launched Nebula, a private, locally-hosted, open-source, large language model (LLM) platform. Since the launch we have been running around telling everybody about how nice Nebula is, and how much it can help you with research. Today, … Continue reading
As our Nebula user base is expanding, more and more people look for more information about what Nebula is and what it can do. As a result, we have updated and greatly expanded the scope of the Nebula page on … Continue reading
The ETCBC has a long history of developing digitals tools to study the text of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). In the meantime, Cognitive Linguistic methods are increasingly applied to the study of Biblical Hebrew. A variety of these approaches … Continue reading
Guest Researcher Lianying Zhao (Associate Professor from Carleton University) hosted the Network Institute’s monthly Research Lunch on September 25th, and gave a talk on his research as well as his collaboration here. The meeting was chaired by Lea Krause and … Continue reading
We would like to invite you to the next Research Lunch, organised by the Network Institute to facilitate exchange between researchers at the VU across faculties and disciplines. On October 16th, Swarupa Hardikar will give a talk about Concept Mining … Continue reading
Are you an artist curious about AI technologies and the future of human–machine collaboration? The Hybrid Intelligence Centre is launching its first Artist-in-Residence program (Spring 2026). We invite artists of all disciplines to explore new intersections between art, science and … Continue reading
The faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities has introduced the LUCE funding scheme, a new initiative aimed at fostering innovative and interdisciplinary research within the School of Humanities. While the funding is restricted to researchers affiliated with the School of … Continue reading
We would like to invite you to the next Research Lunch, organised by the Network Institute to facilitate exchange between researchers at the VU across faculties and disciplines. On September 25th, Dr. Lianying Zhao, associate professor in the Computer Science … Continue reading
Interested in what our Academy program has to offer to students and researchers? Come to our kick-off lunch on October 2nd (12:30-13:30) in room HG-05A16 (main building) and see what this years’ teams are up to! Lunch will be provided!
The 2nd CEPIS International Conference on Digital Skills and IT Professionalism (ICODSIP) will be hosted by Universidad de Alcalá (UAH), Spain, on 6th and 7th November 2025. Submission deadline for full papers, short papers and project presentations has been extended … Continue reading
We congratulate Network Institute researcher Dr. Ellen Droog, who is part of the BIO-COMPaSS consortium (BIOlogical age-driven, COMmunal, Personalized System for Sustainable health promotion) that has been awarded a €6.8 million grant from the NWA-route Sport en Bewegen. The project addresses one of the … Continue reading
Last year, the Network Institute helped with a study on the energy efficiency of LLM-generated code. This year, we are thrilled to announce that the study was accepted for the main track of the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), … Continue reading
The Network Institute is organizing a Winter School about the use of generative AI in Academia, VU researchers from any discipline and at any level are welcome to join it. We are going to explore how AI can be leveraged … Continue reading
Are you preparing a Horizon Europe or NWO proposal? Strengthen it by including Nebula, the VU Network Institute’s dedicated computational facility for research with generative AI and large language models (LLMs). Nebula offers secure access to 1,500+ open-source LLMs, dedicated … Continue reading
We’re excited to invite you to an engaging afternoon of talks, tech, and networking centered around the latest developments in the Wolfram Language and its powerful ecosystem. Jon McLoone, Technical Director of Wolfram Research Europe, will share an update on … Continue reading