Featured Keynote Speakers

Title: TBD

Abstract: TBD

Biography: Herbert Bos is full professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and co-leads the VUSec Systems Security research group with Cristiano Giuffrida, Erik van der Kouwe, Bala Chandrasekaran and Klaus von Gleissenthall. In 2023, he was appointed by royal degree to membership of the Electoral Council (founded 1917), the central authority and advisory body for Dutch elections. Later that same year, he was appointed to membership of the Cyber Security Council (CSR), a national, independent advisory body of the Dutch government and the business community (through the government) composed of high-ranking representatives from public and private sector organisations and the scientific community.

He obtained an ERC Starting Grant to work on reverse engineering and an NWO VICI grant to work on vulnerability detection. In 2024, he was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for research on detecting, analysing and mitigation transient execution attacks (such as Spectre, Meltdown and MDS) and an NWO Gravitation Grant for building a secure foundation for computer systems. These and other systems security topics are still close to his heart. Other research interests include OS design, microarchitectural attacks and defenses, fuzzing, exploitation, networking, and dependable systems.

Title: Bug-free embedded software: a realisable dream? (and how VerCors will help…)

Abstract: Software is everywhere, and (almost) everything we do relies on software. But can we actually rely on software? Software bugs are just as old as software, and frequently cause major disruptions, such as the recent CrowdStrike’s outage due to a software update.

I will argue that it should be possible to improve this situation by developing program verification tools that can be used efficiently to provide guarantees about programs in different programming languages, and for a wide range of properties. I will outline how we work towards this dream with the VerCors team. In particular, I will discuss some of the recent developments around VerCors on various use cases for program verification.

Biography: Marieke Huisman is well-known for her work on specification and verification of parallel software. At the University of Twente, she heads the CS department and leads the Formal Methods and Tools group. With her team, she develops the VerCors verifier, a practical verifier for concurrent software verification. She advances the field of program verification, but also actively collaborates with industry on practical case studies and usability studies. Her work has been supported by several grants, such as the ERC Starting Grant for the VerCors project (2011), the EU project CARP (2011), NWO Top project VerDi (2015), VICI project Mercedes (2018), NWO OTP project Cheops (2019), and the SAVES project with WWU Münster (2020). She chairs IPN, the Platform of Dutch Computer Science researchers, and is actively involved in various organisations such as the Netherlands Academy of Engineering, ETAPS, and VerifyThis. She received the Netherlands Prize for ICT research 2013.

Title: Scaling replication: Insights from NWO’s Replication Studies Programme

Abstract: Since 2016, NWO has supported replication research across disciplines through their Replication Studies Programme. In this talk, we cover its origins, the 4 funding rounds (2016–2025), and the key lessons and takeaways on it’s design, reception and uptake. We talk about the programme redesign under Open Science NL and about the results from the 2025 call through experiences by recent laureates. We reflect on some of the publication outcomes, methodological diversity, and on how the programme helps foster a culture of credible, transparent, and future-proof science. Finally, we outline the upcoming funding call.

Biography: Jochem Spaans is a program officer at NWO and Open Science NL, where he focuses on the Replication Studies programme. He has a background in psychology and a PhD in developmental neuroscience. Alongside his work on Replication Studies, Jochem is actively involved in evaluating and improving aspects of NWO’s funding processes. He also has a broad interest in strengthening the reliability and transparancy of research.