We encourage all PhDs to go through our PhD welcome booklet that has been carefully curated with details on everything you need to get started and beyond.
You can also reach The Council at PhD Council IvI
Mission
Our mission is to create a supportive and inclusive environment for PhDs, fostering their academic and personal development through communication and collaboration among candidates, supervisors and advisors, and research groups. We are also committed to addressing the issues and challenges that arise during the PhD journey and bringing them to the attention of the Informatics Institute as well as when necessary to a larger scale at the Science Faculty and the University.
Vision
Our vision is to create a community of PhD candidates who are empowered to achieve their full potential. We wish to be an open channel of communication for PhD candidates to rely on, as well as act as a facilitator to promote collaboration and social engagement within the Institute.
Responsibilities
To achieve our mission and vision, we will organise various initiatives throughout the year, including workshops, seminars, social events, and cultural activities. These initiatives are designed to promote academic excellence, professional development, and a healthy work-life balance among our members.
We also recognize the importance of advocacy and representation for the PhD community. As a council, we work closely with the university to ensure that the needs and concerns of PhD candidates are heard and addressed.
The Council meets on a monthly basis to discuss the ongoing activities and plan for future events. The monthly meeting is coordinated by the Chairperson and Co-chairperson, with the Secretary taking minutes of the meeting to share among council members.
Activities
Coming Soon
Communication
The Council will communicate all news and promotion of events with PhD candidates of the IvI via an email which is drafted by Council members. You can also reach out to the council via email.
Finances
The Council receives its funding annually from the Informatics Institute to conduct various activities. The budget outlines costs for administration, events, and unforeseen expenses.
Council Roles

Chairperson
Frederike Oetker is a PhD student in the Computational Science Lab (CSL) at the IvI, and is responsible for reviving the IvI council in 2023. Her research investigates the disruption of criminal cocaine networks through agent-based-modelling, simulating interventions and role and tie changes on the networks in order to find efficient destabilisation strategies. Outside of the IvI, Frederike co-organizes the annual STEAM Summer School, a 10 day workshop for science communication through the arts.

Co-Chairperson
Shruti Rao is a first year PhD student at the Digital Interactions (DI) lab. Her research is at the intersection of affective computing (emotion recognition) and human computer interaction. She is interested in developing and designing systems for the affective comfort of humans within intelligent buildings.
Secretary
Marius Herget is a PhD candidate in the Parallel Computing Systems group at the University of Amsterdam. He specialises in developing efficient and scalable system-level Design Space Exploration (DSE) methods for complex, distributed Cyber-Physical Systems (dCPS). Marius is passionate about bridging the gap between theoretical research and practical applications in academia and industry.
Overview of Current Council Representatives for All Groups
Research Group |
Council Representative |
Amsterdam Machine Learning Lab (AMLab) |
Evgenii Egorov |
Complex Cyber Infrastructure (CCI) |
Damian Frolich |
Computational Science Lab (CSL) |
Ebo Peerbooms, Frederike Oetker |
Computer Vision research group (CV) |
|
Digital Interactions Lab (DIL) |
Shruti Rao |
Information Retrieval Lab (IRLab) |
Philipp Hager |
INtelligent Data Engineering Lab (INDElab) |
Zeyu Zhang |
Language Technology Lab (LTL) |
Baohao Liao |
Multimedia Analytics Lab Amsterdam (MultiX) |
Wangyuan Ding, Carlo Bretti |
MultiScale Networked Systems (MNS) |
|
Parallel Computing Systems (PCS) |
Marius Herget |
Quantitative Healthcare Analysis (qurAI) group |
|
Socially Intelligent Artificial Systems (SIAS) group |
Dimitris Michailidis |
Theory of Computer Science (TCS) |
|
Video & Image Sense Lab (VIS) |
Mohammadreza Salehi, Ilze Amanda Auzina |