Symposium in honor of Cees de Laat and Leon Gommans

A symposium entitled ‘From Systems and Networks to Complex Cyber Infrastructures’ took place on 9th December 2022 in honor of Cees de Laat and Leon Gommans. On the one hand, Cees de Laat, the former Chair of CCI, retired recently. This symposium looked at where the systems, networking and complex cyber infrastructures field stands today, a field to which Cees has contributed greatly. On the other hand, the symposium celebrated Leon Gommans for becoming Professor by Special Appointment in the area of Complex Cyber Infrastructure for Data Exchange Systems within CCI.

An afternoon with a lot of insights, personal memories, and fun

The Turing Zaal in Amsterdam Science Park was packed with people, some of whom came from other continents to salute Cees and Leon on this special occasion. The audience enjoyed talks by a lineup of distinguished speakers. The symposium was opened by Paola Grosso from the Multiscale Networked Systems group. In the first talk, Leon Gommans explained how multi-domain authorization research evolved into data exchange systems research. Leon was followed by John Shalf, Department Head for Computer Science at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who talked about the future of computing beyond exascale. The first session ended with a very personal talk by Henri Bal from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, entitled “Networking with Cees”. After the break, Dutch Internet pioneer Kees Neggers took the floor with a historical overview from ARPANET to complex cyber infrastructures. In the sequel, the second speaker from the USA, Frank Würthwein, Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, focused on the future of open research platforms. The last talk was given by Cees de Laat, who shared several insights as well as numerous funny and memorable moments from his career.

The symposium, which was organized by the Multiscale Networked Systems group, the Parallel Computing Systems group, and CCI, ended with a reception, giving the attendants the opportunity to meet old and new friends. For sure, this afternoon will be a pleasant and inspiring memory for the people who had the honor to be present.