Wil Schilders wins award

The NWO Stairway to Impact Award is granted to a person who is very active and effective in using science to tackle societal problems and to strengthen Dutch economy.

Wil satisfies the criteria for this award in very broad terms. A few examples: 

• Within the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Wil acquired and successfully led very many industry-oriented research projects and he has set up the Project Development Office. 
• Nationally, as director of the Platform Wiskunde Nederland, he undertook various activities for mathematics in the Netherlands, from setting up the national Sectorplan Beta en Techniek for mathematics institutes at Dutch universities, to acquiring funding for the nice mathematics journal Pythagoras for children. 
• Internationally, as president of the European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry he has been very active in strengthening applied mathematics in Europe. 

Although Wil is not far from his retirement (this morning he indicated not to know the meaning of this word 😉), he is still very active. He is always working on challenging projects and events, for instance:

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  Three months from now, Wil will organize the Computational Science and Engineering Conference of SIAM. The conference will be held in Amsterdam, for the first time outside the USA, with as expected number of participants: 2200. Registration is open: https://www.siam.org/conferences/cm/registration/cse23-registration.
• In October 2023, Wil will become president of ICIAM, an influential position.
• Meanwhile, he still finds time to supervise students, to teach mathematics now and then, to write Sudoku books for the general public, and more.
  

Congratulations with the award Wil, very well deserved!

Barry Koren