The Information Universe homepage     

Information Universe Conference channel   2018,2020, 2022 
The third edition was held on-line november 2020
The second edition took place 3-6 July 2018  in DOTliveplanetarium Groningen

The first  Information Universe Conference  was held at the Infoversum Groningen- Oct 2015

On 13 May 2008 I gave a public lecture (oratie) at the occasion of my formal inauguration:

The Information Universe
.pdf of the lecture - booklet ISBN 978-90-367-3473-8

                       my works direct at "Information as a whole"

26 August 2011 Noorderzon festival Groningen, QU3,  presenting  at the  Target floor the act:   "God is an eJ"    attended by over 5600 visitors.   Watch God  is an eJ.

World premiere to public  MS's World Wide Telescope with Kinect

In 2015 my first full 3D dome production From the sun to the sun made in collaboration with Mirage3D was released (12 minutes) . It was premiered at the opening of the Infoversum and next to the  NL and Eng version is now also translated in German and shown at the Hafengeburtstage in Hamburg 2015.
It tells the story of energy in the universe, down to the gas fields in Groningen and contains the best 3D CG animation of a city.

Postal address:

CV

I did my PhD at the Sterrewacht Leiden, on Radio Investigations of Clusters of Galaxies with Prof H. van der Laan as supervisor (1978), studying the intra cluster medium, cluster radio haloes and head-tail radio sources.

After that, I worked on X-ray astronomy (Einstein observatory,) and optical surface photometry, studying cooling flows, at the European Southern Observatory in Geneva and Garching, Munich (1979-1984). At ESO I was chairman of the working groups supervising the development of the MIDAS image analysis system.

In 1984 I returned to the Netherlands to help building up the new UK-NL optical observatory at La Palma (Canarias) and studied dark matter in dumbbell and cD galaxies. In 1989 I published with A. Lauberts the first large digital image survey (ESO-LV), which led to my paper on the opacities and dust content of spiral galaxies (Nature 1990).

During the 90's I worked at SRON-Groningen and ESA Villafranca- Madrid to build and commission the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) satellite's Short Wave Spectrometer, which I used to pioneer the detection of cool extragalactic molecular hydrogen- unseen matter in the universe. The detection of relatively cool molecular hydrogen in NGC 6034 and NGC 891 was the first of its kind and is still unique.

Since 1998 I work at the Kapteyn Institute for the OmegaCAM project which led to the founding of the OmegaCEN data center (2002) and the Astro-WISE information system (2001), one of the first distributed Big Data information systems. In 2005 I was appointed as bijzonder professor Astronomical Information technology at the  Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

Leading the Target project, which started in 2009 with a 32M Euro programme - a collaborative project between public institutions (RuG, UMCG, Astron) and companies (IBM, Oracle, Target Holding)  in which very large data collections from astronomy, medical and historical origin are handled  with similar techniques. From Target  I  initiated new enterprises  in Groningen, such as the Target Holding bv, the  NL- Science datacentre for the  Euclid satellite and the  Infoversum which is now operated by DOT.

National project manager for the Euclid satellite - in 2016 we got a 2M Euro grant from NWO-groot to build the NL National datacenter in Groningen for  Euclid.
In 2017 Target continued its programme  with the Target Fieldlab "Mining Big data", and the tender valorisation programme "de intelligente zwerm", together a 8.3M Euro programme, with a contribution from SNN and Provincie Groningen. 

Today, OmegaCEN continues to support  the Fieldlab, Astro-WISE, OmegaCAM at the VST, the Euclid Science Ground Segment and  Micado at the ELT.

My current research focuses on  data modeling,  extreme data-lineage  and Big Data handling with the Center for  Information Technology in Groningen: the entanglement of information, both in our computer systems and in physics.

My astronomical research focuses on observing and understanding dark matter  and the role of information in our Universe, with the DOTliveplanetarium as  a beautiful laboratory.

I have lot of fun as creative director of DOTliveplanetarium with a great team, delivering  weekly live planetarium shows and producing  live planetarium music shows  (produced by my company IntrInfo) with great musicians like Jacco Gardner, Emma Royakers, Koenraad Spijker, Pieter de Graaf , Thomas Azier.

Assignments

current:

• 2022 Leading the Target Fieldlab at Faculty Science and Engineering, University Groningen, with a.o. DOTliveplanetarium and startups.
• National project manager for the Euclid Satellite Science Ground Segment
• Advising  OmegaCEN a National datacenter for wide field astronomical imaging, supported by the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy NOVA.
• Chair "the Information Universe Conference"
• Directing the DOTliveplanetarium shows in  DOT (former Infoversum)
  
• Coordinator of Astro-WISE an European network linking National datacenters involved in astronomical wide field imaging- particular at INAF Italy
  

past:

• Pi of e-Visualisation of Big Data - with NL e-science center
• Member of the National e-plan kernel group"
• NOVA programme manager for the Calibration and the Data reduction of OmegaCAM - a one square degree wide field imager for the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at Paranal Chile
• Board member, NL representative and partner in the European Virtual Observatory, the EU-FP6 Data center Alliance Euro-VO-DCA and the EU FP7 EURO-VO 2014
• Member of RUG  "ICT - strategy committee" 2010-2017
• Partner of the Lofar Radio Telescope project: designing and building the Long term Archive
• 2018-2022 Coordinating the Target Fieldlab "Mining Big data" and partner  in the  Target Holding ( now Slimmer.ai ) led programme "the internet of things", together a 8.3M Euro programme, with contributions from SNN and Provincie Groningen.  Chair of the Steering Committee Target.
• Co-I of various OmegaCAM programmes, like Fornax survey  and KIDS and VIKING
  
• PI with Prof Kuijken  of The Netherlands Science ground Segment Facility for the Euclid Satellite supported by RUG, NOVA,  SRON and NWO (NWO-Groot 2016-2022)
• Member of the Scientific Technical Council of SURF (2015 -2024)
  

Lectures

• In dec 2006 -Jan 2007 I organized a Lecture series on "Virtual Observations" at the Kapteyn Institute.
• Second course - fall of 2008. Programme of course Virtual Observatories Fall 2008 Announcement Advanced course Virtual observatories fall 2008 (+ viewgraphs of last year course)
• Third course - spring 2010: Modern Data Mining in Astronomy - interacademiaal Utrecht feb-may 2010
• Fourth course: Virtual Observations and datamining in Astronomy- fall 2010 - Kapteyn Institute.
• Fifth course in the fall of 2012 : Virtual Observations and Datamining in Astronomy
• Sixth course 2016: Virtual Observations and Data mining in Astronomy
• Seventh course in semester 1b November  2018 Januari 2019: Astronomical Data science,  master (5 ects)
  
• Powers of Two  - Data science -2021
  

The founding fathers of Astro-WISE

The GANG of Astro-WISE - the founding farthers of the Astro-WISE architecture in the days the system was perceived- Nice April 2001.

Picture by Emmanual Bertin, from left to right: Drs Danny Boxhoorn, Dr Kor Begeman, Dr Edwin A. Valentijn, Dr Roeland Rengelink and Dr Erik Deul.

Press releases/ in the press

• NWO-Groot Grant for Euclid Datacenter in Groningen
  
• RTV Noord
  
• see Target for many recent Target related press releases
• Interview Gasterra 2014
  
• 7 March 2012: ESO Photorelease of our VST image of the Hercules supercluster

• 26 August 2011:  " God is an eJ "  at QU3 Noorderzon performing arts festival
  
• July 2011: OmegaCAM@VST Photo release 
• 
  
• June 2011: VST and 268 Mpix OmegaCAM start work
• June 2011: Interview RTV Noord  - video
• June 2011: Interview Oog TV - video
  
• See Target website for recent  (>2009) Target related press
  
• 31 January 2011: Interview in Bits&Chips
• 32 M budget of Target approved by SNN- April 2009
• Euro-VO AIDA project funded in EU FP7 programme - October 2007
• The Target project at the University of Groningen - Interview in Pictogram - August 2007
• Astro-WISE delivered and heading for the future - August 2007 - brochure published by OmegaCEN
• 30 Januari 2006: Benoeming RUG
• 13 March 2002: Wide Angle on the Universe and additional - Press info on Wide Angle on the Universe - .pdf format
• 17 August 1999: ISO-SWS results of H2 survey - ISO DETECTS SIGNAL FROM DARK MATTER --

The ESO-LV project

The first large digital imaging project with 32000 images scanned in the '80s

• ESO-LV home page
• Access to ESO-LV Galactic Extinction model, Choloniewski and Valentijn

Publications

Books

• Radio Investigations of Clusters of Galaxies, PhD , 1979, Sterrewacht Leiden

• The Surface Photometry Catalogue of the ESO-Uppsala Galaxies, Andris Lauberts, Edwin A. Valentijn, ESO 1989
  

• AstroWISE  Topical Issue Experimental Astronomy 2013 - Springer - 400 pages , Edts. A. Belikov and E.A. Valentijn

• Powers of Two,   Edt. Edwin A. Valentijn, Springer-Nature 2021 and as e-book

Up-to-date overviews are available at:

• Pure system of the RuG
  
• ADS (not including computational science papers)
• Astro-WISE
• Target
• Index and further access to my publications < 2005
• Access to old electronic reprints and PREPRINTS, Choloniewski- Valentijn papers on Galactic extinction

Presentations

• Some (not so) recent presentations and links < 2008

• NOVA review march 2010- presentation OmegaCEN

• CHEP2013, Beurs van Berlage Amsterdam,  "Probing Big data for answers using Data about data", 16 Oct 2013
• SciOps at ESA Madrid,  "The Astro-WISE Information system"- From AstroWise to Wise technologies- 12 Sept 2013
• ICT Open- Eindhoven, " Probing Big data for answers, using Data about Data", 28 Nov 2013
• Data Driven Visualisation Symposium Amsterdam,  "Connecting Big data to the users"- 2 Juni 2014
• Target Conference Groningen, "Target Data federations North Netherlands",  Nov 2014
• e-science Symposium Almere, "Target Data federations", 6-11-2014
• In the period June 2014- June 2015 I gave 40 presentations in the Infoversum, mostly about Big Data
  
• Data science and Systems Complexity opening Symposium Groningen, "Data federations" June 2015
• Information Universe Conference, Groningen, "The Information Universe in vivo in vitro" - Oct 2015
• SCIops conference Munchen,  "Data federations and its applications",  27 Nov 2015
• Data federations and its applications, 8 Januari 2016 Santa Cruz de La Palma
• Data federations and its applications, 20 Oktober 2016, IAU symposium Astroinformatics, Sorrento, Italy
• Data Science, Data federations, Science works Symposium, Societeit de Witte Den Haag,  24 November 2016
• Light on Dark matter,  Capodimonte, Napoli Feb 2017
  
• Big Data in Space, Big data in our computers at  EWASS 2017, June Prague
• Entanglement in Information systems, Astroinformatics, Cape Town SA, November 2017
• Data validation beyond Big data Napoli, June 2018
• Dwarf galaxies as Dark Matter tracers, Groningen, March 2019
  
• The Information Universe, Dagstuhl, Germany, June 2019
• Euclid, a space mission to map the dark Universe, Spotlight Groningen, November 2019 
  
• 
  

• Machine learning, Causality lost in translation              Picariello lecture on Data science,  Unina.it feb 2022


• 
• Testing Gravity Models- at MOND40 conference St Andrews 2023

Arts and Science Telluride 2024 - Ken- the nature of  Information

Current

In 2011 we delivered  our wide field imaging camera to ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile  see VST and 268 Mpix OmegaCAM start work
Here one of our first pictures, reduced at OmegaCEN with Astro-WISE of  M17- Omega Nebula
In 2023 the KiDS team delivered the final data release DS5 of the KiDS Survey 1347 square degree of deep multi colour (9 bands) observations

                                                                  OmegaCEN staff 2017

We are completing the handling  of the data of  our Guaranteed time observations and the KiDS1500 Square degree survey.
In 2017  Target continued with the Target Fieldlab "Mining Big data", and the tender valorisation programme "the internet of things", together a 8.3M Euro programme, with contributions from SNN and Provincie Groningen. 

OmegaCEN continues to support Astro-WISE, OmegaCAM at the VST,  MUSE at the VLT and prepares for the Euclid satellite and  Micado at the ELT.

In 2022 the Target Fieldlab continued its programme at the Faculty Science and Engineering, University Groningen, with a.o. DOTliveplanetarium and new start-ups.

My current research focuses on  data modeling,  extreme data-lineage  and Big Data handling with the Center for  Information Technology in Groningen: the entanglement of information, both in our computer systems and in physics.

 DOTliveplanetarium

The greatest show on earth  21 November 2017 
photo by Teymoor Saifollani

I  build a fantastic dome theater downtown in Groningen.
On 31 March 2014 the building  was delivered to the Infoversum Foundation and the theater officially opened on 17 June 2014.

Footing of Founder-2014

 
After a wonderful  year with over 80.000 visitors the city of Groningen withdraw from the enterprise and it closed down in December 2015.
The venue is now operated by DOT and in October 2017  the RUG started a new programme

DOTliveplanetarium Agenda on Facebook 

DOTLiveplanetarium Home page
coordinated by Prof R. Peletier,  Jorick Lania (chief operator)  and myself. 

Sailing

I owned, sailed and maintained an oak- wooden French sailing cutter (Dundee) for 25 years. Steven Gerritsen is now essentially re-building her see Orion. Like the fantastic "Theater te Water" on the ship the "Verwondering" the "Vrijhaven" of Groningen made me (amoungst other things) move to Groningen in the 80's.

In Auguste every year I guide on the sail charter SENTA Waddenzeilen to view the Perseides in the dark on the Wadden.

Last update 2-jan-2025