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My curriculum vitae is briefly described on this page. As you already know, I am Niek J.E. Wijngaards, born in September 1970 in The Netherlands. I'm married with children. I have attended VWO, university and obtained my PhD ("dr.") degree, and have been involved in academic research for a number of years as well as industrial research and working independently for small and medium businesses, resulting in quite a number of publications.
I am a Principal Software Engineer and Technical Lead with over 30 years of experience in user-centered innovation, human-centered design, and digital transformation for SMEs and B2B services. My career began with a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, specializing in multi-agent systems, agent-based modeling, and task modeling at VU Amsterdam, the University of Calgary, and Leeds University Business School. I then worked as a consultant and researcher at Thales, TRINSO, and AIMTech. Today, I am active within the GlobalOps Cooperative and through my own firm, Vineyard Ideas.
I thrive in small, multidisciplinary teams where creativity meets pragmatism. Using design thinking and a user-centered approach, I continuously seek ways to make systems simpler, more robust, and better aligned with user needs.
Not focused on delivery-heavy or stakeholder-persuasion roles; most effective in architectural and conceptual design work where early clarity matters.
Here you can find more information on my:
You can also find this, and more information, on my LinkedIn profile: nl.linkedin.com/in/niekwijngaards and in my ResearchGate profile. For a full overview, see my other web-locations.
Professional Career
My career is sketched below:
| 2019 - present |
Since January 2019 I am parttime a solution architect and software developer at Global Ops.
At GlobalOps, I developed a proof of concept of a network-centric information-sharing system to support the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) during tactical operations. Key features include:
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| 2016 - present |
Since December 2016 I am a Principal Software Engineer and Arcchitect at Vineyard Ideas, NL.
As a Principal Engineer & System Architect, I design and implement a scalable platform for SMEs featuring:
Through close collaboration with team members on additional modules, configuration management, and production infrastructure (server virtualization, network management, VM configuration, and scalable hosting), we ensure seamless integration with existing client environments and legacy systems. |
| 2015 - 2023 |
Since October 2015 I am parttime a Senior Consultant at AIMTech Consulting Limited, UK.
Projects:
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| 2014 - 2024 |
Since November 2014 I am parttime a Solution Architect at True Information Systems, TRINSO.
Projects:
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| 2012 - 2025 |
Member of board of directors of True Information Systems, TRINSO.
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| 2010 - 2016 |
Visiting researcher at Leeds University Business School.
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| 2004 - 2014 |
Since October 2004 I was employed at Thales Netherlands
Research and Technology, as senior researcher & program manager, within the
context of the D-CIS Lab - a consortium of industry and academia focussing on
pragmatic actor-agent solutions for challenges across organisational
boundaries.
My function involved acquiring projects, (technical) coordination of projects,
management of R&T activities, R&T supervision, conducting research, assisting (new) business development and dissemination activities.
Projects:
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| 2000 - 2006 |
I was a member of the editorial board of Distributed Systems Online since its
start in 2000.
DS-online is the first
completely online journal of the IEEE
Computer society. I was also involved in the Distributed Agents topic area
of the DS-online community pages.
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| 2000 - 2004 |
From its start in 2000 to September 2004 I was an assistant professor at the
Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems (IIDS) Group, of the Computer Systems Section of
the Computer Science division of
the Faculty of Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Prof.dr. Frances Brazier is head of the IIDS group (nowadays at TU Delft).
Projects:
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| 1999 | For one year I was an assistant professor at the department of Artificial Intelligence of the Computer Science division of the Faculty of Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I was involved in teaching, research and study counseling. |
| 1998 |
In the year 1998 I was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the
Software Engineering Research Network (SERN)
of the Department of Computer Science at the
University of Calgary, Canada. I was
involved in teaching and research on requirements engineering:
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| 1993 - 1997 | PhD-student at the department of Artificial Intelligence of the Computer Science division of the Faculty of Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I participated in the NWO 'Stichting Informatica Onderzoek Nederland' (SION) project 612-322-316 on evolutionary design in knowledge-based systems, the REVISE project (1993-1997). My work was supervised by prof.dr. Jan Treur, head of AI department, and dr. Frances Brazier (a full professor since 2000), my daily supervisor (nowadays at TU-Delft). I was involved in teaching and research. |
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Memberships
I am a member of:
- The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE.org)
- The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM.org)
- The Benelux Association for Artificial Intelligence (BNVKI-AIABN)
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Research
Since 1994 I have participated in research in the following fields, some of which are briefly described here:
- Actor-agent communities
- Federated & hybrid systems-of-systems
- Information bound security applications
- Robust scenario-based multi-criteria decision-making
- Agent-based crew-rescheduling
- Agent-based distributed middleware
- Design processes, including distributed design and requirements engineering
- Heterogeneous distributed software agent systems
- Formal specification languages for intelligent systems
- Modelling of complex, intelligent, distributed systems
- Automatic configuration of workflows, software agents and web-services
- Legal aspects of software agents
I have presented research results on national and international conferences and workshops.
I have supervised a number of BSc students, MSc students and PhD students.
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Teaching
As a student I already was involved in public relations activities and teaching assistantships. During my academic career I've taught a number of courses, including:
- in 2002 and 2003 the course: intelligent interactive distributed systems,
- in 2000 and 2001: in one commission of the course Design of information systems
- in 1993 - 1996 and 2000 - 2001 the course: multi-agent systems in complex domains,
- in 1999 and 2000 the course: knowledge-based systems,
- in 1999 taught one group of the course: formal aspects of artificial intelligence,
- in 1998 the course: C++ (emphasis on object-orientation),
- in 1993-1996 and 1999 coordinated and supervised practical work of design of knowledge-based systems and agent-systems.
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Education
My major degrees are listed below:
| 1993 - 1997 | PhD-research on "Re-design of Compositional Systems" (see my publications), at the Computer Science Division of the Faculty of Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Degree obtained on September 30th, 1999, under supervision of prof.dr. Jan Treur, head of AI department, and dr. Frances Brazier, my daily supervisor. This research was conducted in the context of the NWO 'Stichting Informatica Onderzoek Nederland' (SION) project 612-322-316 on evolutionary design in knowledge-based systems, the REVISE project (1993-1997). |
| 1988 - 1993 |
MSc in Computer Science at the (then)
Department of Computer Science and Mathematics
at the
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. My specialisation
was Artificial Intelligence, and my MSc-thesis concerned "Modelling Strategic
Interaction in Compositional Frameworks: Dynamic Modification of
Knowledge-Bases". I have taken courses in:
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| 1981 - 1998 | VWO at the Openbare Scholengemeenschap De Rietlanden in Lelystad. |
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