At the core of connections
Maarten van Steen, recipient of the first ever IPN Distinguished Service Award, is all about making and understanding connections: Connections between individual devices to design, develop and improve large-scale distributed computer systems, and connections between people to advance the field of computer science as a whole.
From mathematics to computer science
It was, in a sense, a matter of coincidence that Maarten van Steen ended up in computer science, he says. ‘It had been a very deliberate choice to study applied mathematics at the University of Twente, which was rather close to where I grew up. After obtaining my master’s, I wanted to spread my wings, and started looking for a PhD position somewhere else. We are talking the 1980’s here, when finding such a position was far from easy. During a conversation at Leiden University about a teaching job, I asked if I could do research there as well. That indeed was possible, albeit in an applied computer science topic. Since during my studies I had specialized in discrete mathematics, focusing on topics like graphs, the step to computer science turned out to be a rather small one.’
Networked computer systems
Eventually, Van Steen ended up building a research career on the topic of large scale distributed computer systems. ‘I have always had a love for technical subjects. In fact, at one point I even considered combining my studies in mathematics with following a course program in electrical engineering,’ he recalls. Van Steen is interested in large, complex systems. ‘For me, the challenge is to find simplicity in them. Why does a certain system behave the way it does? How do you combine individual devices into a larger system that meets all of the requirements?’ Over the years, his research has touched upon many different subjects. ‘My advice to any scientist always is: work seventy percent of your time on subjects that are safe, and in which you have already built a reputation. Use the other thirty percent of your time to try out new things, and dive into fields you’re not familiar with yet.’
Inspired by others
In choosing his research subjects, Van Steen often drew inspiration from the people he worked with, he concludes, looking back. ‘For example, I once came into contact with a colleague at the VU Amsterdam who came from an AI angle, and worked on parallel computing of epidemic algorithms. To me, the problem presented itself as a computer system challenge, and we managed to do some nice things together on so-called gossiping protocols.
It’s good to change course every so many years; it keeps you on your toes. And if you enter a new field as a non-expert, you are often able to obtain results fairly quickly, if only because you ask different questions.’
Maarten van Steen studied Applied Mathematics in Twente and continued in computer science in Leiden, where he obtained his PhD in 1988. After his doctoral studies, he worked for TNO for five years. In 1992, he became an assistant professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam and eventually joined the renowned Computer Systems group at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, headed by Andrew Tanenbaum. In 2002 he was appointed full professor, followed in 2007 by an appointment as director of all VU Computer Science curricula. Van Steen was appointed to head the CS department in 2010. In 2015 he transferred to the University of Twente, where he has been acting as the scientific director of the Digital Society Institute ever since. From 2015-2020, Van Steen chaired IPN.
Deliberate shifts
In addition to being inspired by others to take a different turn, Van Steen also deliberately shifted course a couple of times during his longstanding career. ‘For example, my transfer from Erasmus University Rotterdam to Andrew Tanenbaum’s distributed systems group at VU Amsterdam was the result of a conscious decision to start something new. And about fifteen years ago, when I was working at VU Amsterdam and had a younger colleague with similar interests to mine, I decided to move towards sensor networking to provide him with room to grow.’
Privacy-friendly counting
To Van Steen, a problem becomes interesting as soon as it involves a technical challenge to which there is no obvious solution. ‘Often there is some contradiction involved: a system should be both correct and scalable, or it should be fast and cheap.’ In recent years, partly as a result of some intensified contacts with cybersecurity experts, Van Steen has developed an interest in a seemingly simple question, he explains: ‘Can I automatically count the number of people moving from A to B in such a way that no one – including myself as the creator of the counting system – can ever find out who exactly it is I am counting?’ This question is very relevant for crowd control, for example when you would want to redirect attendees of a festival to less crowded spaces. ‘The problem is that, in order to count, you must be able to uniquely identify individuals at point A and at point B. But how do you do that without being able to figure out who it is? That is where security techniques like homomorphic encryption come in.’
Making an impact as a manager
Over the past decade however, Van Steen got to do little research of his own. Since January 2015 he has been the Scientific Director of The Digital Society Institute of the University of Twente. ‘Nowadays, I am mostly a research manager, mainly because I like knowing what others are doing and helping them achieve their goals. Besides, I think being a research manager is a nice way to be meaningful. It is very satisfying to have the feeling that I can make a useful contribution to something.’
Chairing the IPN board
One of the reasons why Van Steen was awarded the IPN Distinguished Service Award, is because of his merits as IPN chairman from 2015 to 2020. Looking back on this period, there are two things he is most proud of. ‘First of all, the fact that we have transformed the organization by including all of the computer science departments in the Netherlands. The second thing I look back on with satisfaction is the process leading up to the implementation of the first computer science sector plan. We had to decide among ourselves which university would get faculty positions on which themes. We managed to piece together that complex puzzle in a mere 2,5 hours, with eventually everyone being happy with the result. I am glad that I was able to play a role in that, initiating the organizational change and ensuring that everyone had a say and felt heard.’
Vision toward the future
As a computer scientist with ample experience in managing research, both at a local and a national level, Van Steen has strong opinions on where the field should be heading. ‘We should be there where informatics is used, because that is where we can make an impact and help shape the digital society. Having computer science as an independent discipline certainly is important, and this importance is also reflected by the ever increasing size of our community. But pursuing computer science for computer science’s sake bears the risk of becoming irrelevant. We should obviously not concentrate on today’s problems, but rather ask ourselves what we think we are going to run into in the future, inspired by challenges other disciplines are facing. Take a topic like neuromorphic computing, which is now almost exclusively studied from a physics or electrical engineering point of view. We should be involved in that development as well. Or take something like programming quantum computers. Regardless of the fact whether or not such a quantum computer will ever work in practice, that type of research is very important.’
Strengthen the voice of computer science
Looking at IPN today, Van Steen is very pleased with some of its recent initiatives. ‘The fact that IPN has started training computer scientists for strategic and managerial tasks, is something I really applaud. The computer science community in the Netherlands has matured. We have a lot of talented people, and the quality of the research is good. But IT professionals still have a lot to learn when it comes to thinking and acting strategically and being present in the right forums.
This all starts with acting as each other’s ambassadors toward the outside world, saying meaningful things, and making sure we’re heard. And not only for our own sake, but for the sake of society as a whole. Informatics is everywhere, and will only gain in importance in the future. So, we have the moral obligation to make sure that we are not an isolated field, but that we stay in contact with other disciplines to tackle our digitizing society’s increasingly complex problems together.’
Foto: Sjoerd van der Hucht