Personal Information
Born: 19 May 1976 in Breda, The Netherlands
Citizenship: Dutch
Pronouns: him/his
OrcID: 0000-0003-4383-7786
ResearcherID: J-3036-2012
Google Scholar
Social media: LinkedIn and Twitter
Education and professional skills
Academic Leadership Programme (Opleidingstraject academisch leiderschap, 2019), Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Senior University Teaching Qualification (UKO, 2016), Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
University Teaching Qualification (BKO, 2012), Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Ph.D. in Computer Science (2005-2009), Utrecht University, The Netherlands
M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence (2002-2006), Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science (1997-2005), Open University, The Netherlands
Employment
2024- Full Professor, Donders Center for Cognition and Artificial Intelligence Department, Radboud University Nijmegen.
2020-2024 Associate Professor, Donders Center for Cognition and Artificial Intelligence Department, Radboud University Nijmegen.
2016-2020 Assistant Professor, Donders Center for Cognition and Artificial Intelligence Department, Radboud University Nijmegen.
2013-2016 Senior lecturer, Artificial Intelligence Department, Radboud University Nijmegen.
2012-2016 Postdoc, Donders Center for Cognition, Radboud University Nijmegen.
2012 Lecturer, Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, Leiden University.
2009-2011 Postdoc, Institute of Computing and Information Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen.
2005-2009 Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University.
2005 Research Assistant, Donders Center for Cognition (then Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information), Radboud University Nijmegen.
1999-2005 Software Engineer, Observator Instruments, Ridderkerk, the Netherlands.
Publications
see here
Presentations / keynotes / invited talks
see here
Major grants
2023 AINED XS Europe grant for one year project "Exploiting Covariance for MCMC Computation". Applicant: Johan Kwisthout. €80,000.
2023 NWO Emerging Key Enabling Technologies grant "Disruptively green neuromorphic scientific computing leveraging stochasticity". Main Applicant: Johan Mentink. Co-applicants: Johan Kwisthout, Theo Rasing, Mathias Klaui, and Inge Leermakers €1.087.211 (excl in-cash cofunding; €290.000 for our group).
2022 NWO AES Perspectief grant for 5 year consortium project "PersOn: Explainable, Maintainable, and Trustworthy Decision Support Systems for Personalised Care in Oncology". Main Applicant: Johan Kwisthout. €3,255,500 (excl in-kind and in-cash cofunding).
2022 NWO ENW M1 grant for 4 year PhD project "From approximate weighted model counting to approximate Bayesian inference". Applicant: Johan Kwisthout. €258,500.
2021 Green IT voucher for project "Neuromorphic Scientific Computing: Towards New Hardware". Main applicant: Johan Mentink; co-applicants: Johan Kwisthout, Theo Rasing, Sascha Caron, Sagar Dolas (SURF), Heike Riel (IBM). €30,000.
2020 Internal DCC grant for 4 year PhD project "How to grow an internal model: A toolbox for the computational modeller". Main applicant: Johan Kwisthout; co-applicant: Iris van Rooij. €239,000.
2018 Intel Neuromorphic Research Community grant. Applicant: Johan Kwisthout. €20,500.
2017 Internal DCC grant for 4 year PhD project "Understanding predictive processing in development: Modelling the generation of generative models". Joint applicants: Johan Kwisthout and Sabine Hunnius. €212,000.
2016 NWO EW TOP grant (compartment 2) for 4 year PhD project "Parameterized complexity of approximate Bayesian inferences". Applicant: Johan Kwisthout. €216,500.
2016 Lorentz Center grant for organizing workshop "Perspectives on Developmental Robotics". Main applicant: Lorijn Zaadnoordijk; Co-applicants: Matthias Rolf, Matthew Schlesinger, Johan Kwisthout. €18,500. Additional grants obtained from NWO, KNAW and others worth €8,500.
2013 Lorentz Center grant for organizing workshop "Perspectives on Human Probabilistic Inferences". Main applicant: Johan Kwisthout; Co-applicants: Bill Phillips, Anil Seth, Iris van Rooij, Andy Clark. €13,000. Additional grants obtained from NWO, KNAW, and others worth €11,500.
2013 Internal DCC grant for 4 year PhD project "Turing's razor: Computationally realistic architectures for a Bayesian brain". Main applicant: Iris van Rooij; Co-applicant: Johan Kwisthout. €205,000.
Teaching
A full list of teaching experience can be found here. I am currently AI degree programme director. I teach / taught the following courses:
  • 2022-2023 (RU Nijmegen): Neuromorphic Computing (MSc.); AI: Principles and Techniques (BSc., second year), Intro AI (partial, BSc., first year).
  • 2021-2022 (RU Nijmegen): Neuromorphic Computing (MSc.); AI: Principles and Techniques (BSc., second year).
  • 2020-2021 (RU Nijmegen): Neuromorphic Computing (MSc.); Theoretical Foundations for Cognitive Agents (MSc.); AI: Principles and Techniques (BSc., second year).
  • 2019-2020 (RU Nijmegen): Neuromorphic Computing (MSc.); Theoretical Foundations for Cognitive Agents (MSc.); AI: Principles and Techniques (BSc., second year).
  • 2018-2019 (RU Nijmegen): Research Seminar Neuromorphic Computing (MSc.); Theoretical Foundations for Cognitive Agents (MSc.); AI: Search, Planning, and Machine Learning (partial plus course coordination, BSc., second year), Representation and Interaction (partial plus course coordination, BSc., third year), Intro AI (partial, BSc., first year).
  • 2017-2018 (RU Nijmegen): Social Robotics (partial plus course coordination, MSc.); Theoretical Foundations for Cognitive Agents (MSc.); AI: Search, Planning, and Machine Learning (partial plus course coordination, BSc., second year), Representation and Interaction (partial plus course coordination, BSc., third year).
  • 2016-2017 (RU Nijmegen): Theoretical Foundations for Cognitive Agents (MSc.); AI: Search, Planning, and Machine Learning (partial plus course coordination, BSc., second year), Representation and Interaction (partial plus course coordination, BSc., third year).
  • 2015-2016 (RU Nijmegen): Theoretical Foundations for Cognitive Agents (MSc.); Developmental Robotics (MSc., special capita selecta course); AI: Search, Planning, and Machine Learning (partial plus course coordination, BSc., second year), Robotics 2 (partial plus course coordination, BSc., second year); Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (partial plus course coordination, BSc., third year).
  • 2014-2015 (RU Nijmegen): AI: Search, Planning, and Machine Learning (partial plus course coordination, BSc., second year), Robotics 2 (partial plus course coordination, BSc., second year); Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (partial, BSc., third year).
  • 2013-2014 (RU Nijmegen): AI: Search, Planning, and Machine Learning (partial plus course coordination, BSc., second year, AI, Nijmegen)
  • 2013: Cognition and Complexity (Mini-course (8 hours) at the IK2013 spring school)
  • 2012-2013 (LIACS Leiden): Algorithms (BSc., first year)
  • 2012-2013 (LIACS Leiden): Complexity (BSc., second year)
  • 2011-2012 (RU Nijmegen): Introduction in AI (partial, BSc., first year)
  • 2010-2011 (RU Nijmegen): Introduction in AI (partial, BSc., first year)
I guest-lectured in various courses in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, and Mathematics, assisted in a number of courses, and (co-)supervised several dozens of BSc. and MSc. students in the Artificial Intelligence curricula in Nijmegen and Computer Science at the LIACS. Currently I am (co-)supervising six PhD candidates at the DCC: Nils Donselaar (with Hans Bodlaender - UU), Danaja Rutar ( with Sabine Hunnius), Erwin de Wolff, Arne Diehl, and Andi Lin. I supervise one Postdoc: Leila Bagheriye.
Editorial Activities
Action Editor, Brain and Cognition, since April 2016.
Associate Editor, Topics in Cognitive Science special issue "Developing models of the world", forthcoming.
Guest Editor (with Bill Phillips, Anil Seth, Iris van Rooij, and Andy Clark), Brain and Cognition. Special issue on "Perspectives on Human Probabilistic Inferences", February 2017.
Program Committees
As program (co-)chair: BNAIC 2014, PGM 2024.
As (permanent) program committee member: UAI 2020-; IJCAI/ECAI 2018-; ICCM 2016-; AAAI 2016-; BNAIC 2015-; PGM 2014-.
Incidental PC reviews.: CogSci PC 2017; Annotation, Recognition and Evaluation of Actions workshop, LREC 2018; Alan Turing Year Philosophy and Computation Workshop.
Ad-hoc Reviewing and Assessment Activities
Scientific Bodies (as committee member): Dutch Research Council (NWO); Nederlands-Vlaamse Accreditatieorganisatie (NVAO)
Scientific Bodies (as reviewer): Dutch Research Council (NWO); Austrian Science Fund (FWF); Israel Science Foundation (ISF); Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).
Scientific Societies (as reviewer): Mathematical Reviews (AMS).
Scientific Publishers (as reviewer): Cambridge University Press, MIT Press.
Journals: Artificial Intelligence; Brain and Cognition; Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research; AIMS Neuroscience; Journal of Logic, Language and Information; Topics in Cognitive Science; International Journal of Approximate Reasoning; Biological Cybernetics; AI in Medicine; Patterns; Frontiers in Cognition; Cognitive Computation; Transactions on Evolutionary Computation; Expert Systems with Applications; Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems; Journal of Information Sciences; ETRI journal.
Other: Chair of midterm review panel, Free University Amsterdam, Faculty of Science; several internal and external grant panels and application and promotion committees.
Academic Services
2023- Programme Manager of Personalised Care in Oncology consortium.
2023- Work Package Leader of Radboud Healthy Data consortium.
2020- Director of AI educational programme; Radboud University Nijmegen.
2016-2020 Coordinator MSc in Artificial Intelligence; Radboud University Nijmegen.
2016-2020 AI Master thesis and internship coordinator; Radboud University Nijmegen.
2015-2016 Chair of Degree Program Committee Bachelor Artificial Intelligence; Radboud University Nijmegen.
2015-2016 Chair of Degree Program Committee Master Artificial Intelligence; Radboud University Nijmegen.
2015-2016 Track leader (interim) Robot Cognition specialization Master Artificial Intelligence; Radboud University Nijmegen.
2013-2015 Member of Degree Program Committee Bachelor Artificial Intelligence; Radboud University Nijmegen.
2013-2014 Deputy Member of Postdoc Advisory Committee on behalf of the Donders Center for Cognition; Radboud University Nijmegen.
2007-2009 Member of Departmental Advisory Committee; Department of Computer Science, Utrecht University.
Conference, Workshop and Symposia involvement
2021 Co-organiser Lorentz Workshop "Developing Models of the World" (with Danaja Rutar, Tomer Ullman, and Wanja Wiese, 17-21th May 2021).
2017 Co-organiser Lorentz Workshop "Perspectives on Developmental Robotics" (with Lorijn Zaadnoordijk, Matthias Rolf, and Matthew Schlesinger - Leiden, 15-19th May 2017).
2016 Co-organiser ICDL 2016 workshop Predictive Processing and Infant Development: The Current State-of-the-art. (with Ezgi Kayhan). Paris, 19 September 2016.
2016 Co-organiser PGM 2016 tutorial Computational Complexity of Bayesian Networks and Markov Random Fields. (with Cassio de Campos). Lugano, 6-9 September 2016.
2015 Co-organiser UAI 2015 tutorial Computational Complexity of Bayesian Networks (with Cassio de Campos). Amsterdam, 16th July 2015.
2015 Co-organiser Nijmegen Symposium on Predictive Processing and Autism Spectrum Conditions (with Ricarda Braukmann, Christian Utzerath, and Edita Poljac). Nijmegen, 25th June 2015.
2014 General Chair (and Program co-Chair) Benelux Conference on Artificial Intelligence (BNAIC 2014). Nijmegen, 6-7th November 2014.
2014 Co-organiser Lorentz Workshop "Perspectives on Human Probabilistic Inferences" (with Bill Phillips, Iris van Rooij, Anil Seth, and Andy Clark - Leiden, 12-16th May 2014).
2013 Co-organiser JF Schouten Graduate School Workshop "Scaling models of cognition to the real world" (with Iris van Rooij, Todd Wareham, and Mark Blokpoel - Eindhoven, 24th November 2013).
2013 Co-organiser CogSci 2013 Symposium "Constraints on Bayesian Explanations" (with Iris van Rooij, David Reichert, Matteo Colombo and Carlos Zednik).
2013 Co-organiser CogSci 2013 Tutorial "Computational Complexity Analysis for Cognitive Scientists" (with Iris van Rooij, Todd Wareham, and Mark Blokpoel).
2012 Co-organiser ICCM 2012 Workshop "Scaling models of cognition to the real world" (with Iris van Rooij; speakers Jakub Szymanik, Daniel Reichman, Todd Wareham, and Mark Blokpoel).
2006-2007 Member of local organising team BNAIC 2007.
Invited workshop participation
April 2015 Modeling Minds Workshop
March 2015 Leuven Workshop on Linking predictive coding and global-local processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder
August 2014 Dagstuhl seminar on Resource-bounded Problem Solving
September 2011 Dagstuhl seminar on Computer Science & Problem Solving
Trivia
I have Erdős-number 3. Lineage is Paul Erdős → Dieter Kratsch → Hans Bodlaender → Johan Kwisthout.