The Netherlands Research School for Information and Knowledge Systems (SIKS) is a Dutch Research School established in 1996 and successively accredited by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 1998, 2003 and 2009. Then, in 2016, SIKS was successfully evaluated under the Standard Evaluation Protocol for Public Research Organisations (SEP), having performed an extensive self-study prior to evaluation.
SIKS received its most recent international recognition in May 2022, after a positive quality assessment by an international review committee which was established under auspices of VSNU, NWO and KNAW. The committee was asked to perform an external review of the research in Computer Science in the Netherlands of nine universities and three research schools. The quality assessment was conducted in accordance with the Standard Evaluation Protocol for Public Research Organisations (SEP) of 2015 specified by VSNU, NWO and KNAW. Prior to this assessment, SIKS conducted a self-study with relevant facts and figures, a review of past activities and a concise overview of future plans.
SIKS is a self-organized and self-financed network organization in which currently over 500 IKS-researchers cooperate, including nearly 250 PhD-students. Representing the vast majority of IKS researchers in the Netherlands, it provides these researchers with a platform for cooperation, information exchange and dissemination of knowledge. In SIKS these researchers shape a nationwide Educational Program in a way that cannot easily be achieved by local faculties or graduate schools. At present, SIKS brings together nearly 50 research groups from 11 Dutch universities and the CWI (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science), headed by over 50 full professors. In the period 2009-2021 over 550 SIKS PhD-students have successfully defended their theses and published their work in the SIKS Dissertation Series.
Institutes participating in the research school:
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (“administrative university”)
- Utrecht University
- University of Twente
- University of Amsterdam
- Delft University of Technology
- Eindhoven University of Technology
- Radboud University (Nijmegen)
- Maastricht University
- Tilburg University
- Open Universiteit
- University of Leiden
- University of Groningen
- Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica
