Veni grant for CogniGron PI Serte Donderwinkel

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded a Veni grant of up to €320,000 each to 21 researchers of the University of Groningen and the UMCG. The Veni grants are designed for outstanding researchers who have recently gained a PhD.

We are proud to announce that CogniGron PI Serte Donderwinkel has been awarded a Veni grant for her project "Why efficient networks look alike: universal laws of optimized systems". The project aims to discover whether the large-scale shape of networks (which need to stay connected while using resources efficiently) is universal: independent of the fine details of how the network is built, its geometry, or how strictly it is optimized. These results will explain why and how efficient global structures can emerge from local rules, with relevance for network science, algorithms, and self-organising systems such as adaptive materials and future computing hardware.