The Dutch Prize for ICT Research 2025 has been awarded to Prof. dr. Hannes Mühleisen, senior researcher at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam and Professor of Data Engineering at Radboud University Nijmegen.

Mühleisen is rewarded for his main contribution, the DuckDB system. DuckDB is an open-source column-oriented relational database management system that executes complex queries on large databases and focuses on online analytical processing. DuckDB was created as part of the ongoing research into database architectures at CWI together with former student Dr. Mark Raasveldt. The impact of DuckDB is impressive: the system is simple and is downloaded more than 10 million times per month. It is in active production use by Fortune 500 companies. DuckDB is at the core of several innovative start-up companies world-wide, for example, MotherDuck has raised over $100 million to build a data warehouse product using DuckDB. The project team has spun off of CWI into a separate company, DuckDB Labs, which provides commercial services around DuckDB which was co-founded by Mühleisen and Raasveldt. The project is governed by the non-profit DuckDB Foundation, whose bylaws ensure that DuckDB remains open source under the MIT license.

The jury for the Dutch Prize for ICT Research 2025 consists of Prof. dr. ir. S. (Stefano) Stramigioli, University of Twente, Prof. dr. R.C. (Remco) Veltkamp, Utrecht University, and Prof. dr. J.N. (Joost) Kok, Eindhoven University of Technology. The jury meeting was chaired by KHMW societal member mr. dr. N.U. (Artie) Ramsodit and attended by prof. dr. A.P. (Ad) IJzerman, KHMW board member. The jury decided to declare Mühleisen the winner because his work is important as it bridges the gap between data science and database development, enabling new insights through powerful data processing tools, and changes the way data is used and analysed. The work of Mühleisen has cemented the strong visibility of data management research in the Netherlands.

Prof. dr. Hannes Mühleisen will receive his award at a ceremony during NWO ICT.OPEN2025, which will take place on 15 and 16 April 2025 in Utrecht.

The prestigious Dutch Prize for ICT research is awarded annually to a scientific researcher who has conducted innovative research or who has been responsible for a scientific breakthrough in ICT within 15 years of earning their PhD. Since 2023 the prize is funded all members* of the ICT research platform Netherlands (IPN) with a grant from COMMIT/, through the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW). In addition to the prize money Mühleisen will also record a video to explain his award-winning work and its significance. This will be distributed to schools and other knowledge institutes.

The previous winners of the Dutch Prize for ICT research are:

• Dr. Ivano Malavolta– VU University (2024)
• Dr. Cristiano Giuffrida– VU University (2023)
• Dr. Jasmin Blanchette – VU University (2022)
• Dr. Felienne Hermans – Leiden University (2021)
• Dr. Pablo Cesar – Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) (2020)
• Professor Elmar Eisemann – Delft University of Technology (2019)
• Professor Joost Batenburg – CWI/ Leiden University (2018)
• Dr. Peter Schwabe – Nijmegen University (2017)
• Professor Alexandru Iosup – Delft University of Technology/ VU Amsterdam (2016)
• Dr. Birna van Riemsdijk – Delft University of Technology (2015)
• Professor Marieke Huisman – University of Twente (2013)
• Dr. Cees Snoek – University of Amsterdam (2012)
• Professor Bettina Speckmann – Eindhoven University of Technology (2011)

About KHMW

The Royal Holland Society for Sciences and Humanities was founded in 1752. Its goal is to promote science and to build bridges between science and society. It does so by holding competitions, presenting awards for scientific achievements, organizing lectures, and staging scientific conferences. The Royal Holland Society for Sciences and Humanities has been based at Hodshon House in Haarlem since 1841. www.khmw.nl

* Except WUR