Inside NWO-I April 2025

Newsletter for NWO-I employees

April 2025

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Meet Wout Jan Ykema, Head Accommodation and Manager Real Estate at NWO-I

"Real estate must be adaptable to the organisation’s evolving requirements"

Guaranteeing premium accommodation that fulfils colleagues’ requirements is the goal of the three-member Real Estate team at the NWO-I office. Wout Jan Ykema has led this team responsible for all NWO-I buildings since late 2024. After touring the institutes, Wout Jan has a clear picture of the buildings’ maintenance status and capacity. He is excited about NWO’s sustainability ambition: “We aim to achieve climate neutrality ahead of 2050.”

Read the interview with Wout Jan Ykema

Getting married or divorced? This has consequences for your pension.

Pension at NWO-I: your pension pot for later

Credits: shutterstock.com

Getting married or divorced? This has consequences for your pension. You are getting married or entering into a registered partnership, you decide to move in together or are divorcing your partner. All these steps in your life affect your future pension benefits, as well as those of your partner or ex-partner(s). This month in our series on pension, we explain what committing to a partner, or splitting up, means for your pension. Also, AMOLF colleague Petra Vastenhouw tells about her experience with pension agreements after her divorce.

Read the article on pension and getting married or divorced

Recap Women+ event: Bias and AI

In honour of International Women’s day the NWO/NWO-I Women+ ERG organised a symposium on Bias and AI. Theme of the meeting, that took place on March 13, was: how do gender (and other) biases creep into artificial intelligent systems like ChatGPT, and how can we fix that? The afternoon was dedicated to learn about (gender) biases in AI. There was a lecture on gender bias in natural language processing, two pitches from researchers of CWI’s Human-Centered Data Analytics (HCDA) group, a lively panel discussion and informal discussion during drinks & bites. Around 40 people joined from different institutes, NWO-I office and NWO-D.

Speakers at the meeting. Fltr: Andrei Nesterov, Mae Sosto and Camilla Damian

Read the recap of the Women+ event

Highlight Nikhef and NIOZ: KM3NeT detects neutrino with record-breaking energy

A piece of the K3MNeT-telescope is put into the water of the Meditteranean Sea

An important discovery in the world of the smallest particles: the KM3NeT telescope (a collaboration between Nikhef, NIOZ and NWO-I, among others) has discovered a neutrino (an electrically uncharged, subatomic elementary particle) with record-breaking energy. The particle was observed in February 2023 in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea. Never before had a neutrino with this energy, 220 million billion electron volts, been seen. It is also the first proof that neutrinos with such high energies originate in the universe. After meticulous analysis and interpretation of the experimental data, an article was published in Nature on 12 February 2025; the news was then shared worldwide by news platforms.

NWO/NWO-I reflects on the International Day of Transgender Visibility

13 March was the International Day of Transgender Visibility. On this day, NWO/NWO-I reflected on the existence of transgender persons and the discrimination they face worldwide. Transgender persons are people who experience a difference between their perception or expression of gender and the sex assigned to them at birth.

NSCR achieves ISO 27001 certification for their Secure Analytics Lab

The handing over of the ISO certificate to Femke Tabak (center) and Jolanta Kulicki (left) by Bart Versluijs of Brand Compliance.

The ISO 27001 standard confirms that the Secure Analytics Lab, part of the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), meets high standards of information security. On Monday 14 April, Brand Compliance officially presented NSCR with the certificate. Femke Tabak, institute manager: "With the certificate, we as NSCR show that we handle all kinds of data very carefully, whether it is bodycam images or personal data. It's a fantastic achievement by the team that has laid down the policy for this and set up the IT and processes".

Read the news item about the certification for NSCR

News from the works council

In recent months, the NWO Central Works Council (COR NWO) considered the governance of NWO-I, a new complaints regulation and advised on the accession of HFML-FELIX to NWO-I. The COR NWO also advised positively on the appointment of NWO’s new vice president. The NWO-I Group Works Council (GOR NWO-I) discussed the Occupational Health and Safety Annual Plan 2025 and was briefed on knowledge security and a new leadership programme at NWO-I. The GOR NWO-I and the COR NWO also took a close look at their own working methods. Previously, a member of the GOR NWO-I was also a member of the COR NWO. From now on, local councils can directly delegate a member to the COR NWO, without the ‘intermediate step’ of the GOR NWO-I.