Erik van der Werf

About me
• I'm a senior principal scientist working at GN Advanced Science in Eindhoven. GN is an international market leader in intelligent audio and video communication solutions, producing hearing instruments, headsets, speakerphones, gaming peripherals, accessories and military grade hearing protection, with headquarters in Copenhagen and R&D sites in the US, the Netherlands, Denmark, France and China.
  I have a Ph.D. degree in Artificial Intelligence from Maastricht University, a M.Sc. degree in Applied Physics from TU Delft, and I'm a master level Go player (2d).
  For my M.Sc. research I worked in the Pattern Recognition Group on non-linear feature extraction. For my Ph.D. research I worked on computer Go (Baduk,Weiqi). The research resulted in the thesis 'AI techniques for the game of Go', several publications, and the two Go programs Magog and Migos". The 9x9 Go program Magog participated in several international events, and has won the bronze medal in the 9^th Computer Olympiad. The program Migos was the first program in the world to solve 5x5 Go. In 2008 Migos also found the world's first solutions for 3x7, 4x6, 4x7 and 5x6 (all published human solutions for these boards were wrong). Migos still holds the record for the largest Go boards solved by computer.
  In 2007 I wrote a new Go program called Steenvreter which won the 12^th Computer Olympiad. I also wrote an Android Go app called GridMaster which includes a lite version of Steenvreter.
  
  My main interests and expertise are in artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, machine learning, digital signal processing, neural networks, search techniques, games, data mining, perception, and of course computer Go.

Publications (click here)

Go Programs
• GridMaster.
• Steenvreter.
• Magog.
• Migos.

Go Research
• Migos has solved most rectangular Go boards up to 30 intersections. Here's an overview of first player scores.
• My thesis AI techniques for the game of Go is available online. Contact me if you're interested in a hardcopy.
• A brief overview of my Ph.D. research is available in this presentation (presented at MSRC).
• Magog won the bronze medal in the 9^th Computer Olympiad
• My program Migos solved 5x5 Go for all possible opening moves.
• I supervised Reindert-Jan Ekker for his M.Sc thesis on "Reinforcement Learning and Games"

The Game of Go
• Leer Go in 10 minuten
  Introduction to the game of Go by the BGA
  
• Play Go on The Kiseido Go Server
  
• Go software available for download from BGA software catalogue
  
• Research in Go
  CiteULike Computer Go library (archived)
  Computer Go Bibliography
  
• Other Go-links
  Sensei's Library
  Go.pagina.nl
  GoBase.org by Jan van der Steen
  A Kid's Guide to Playing Go
  Dutch Go Association
  British Go Association
  European Go Federation
  American Go Association
  Eindhovense Go Club
  

Academic links

• The Games and AI Group of Maastricht University
  
• The University of Alberta GAMES Group
  
• Hiroyuki Iida's research Unit for Computers and Games
  
• The International Computer Games Association
  
• Deepmind AlphaGo
  
• Bruno Bouzy, Tristan Cazenave, Keh-Hsun Chen, Rémi Coulom, Bernard Helmstetter, Levente Kocsis, Lukasz Lew, Martin Müller, Nic Schraudolph, John Tromp, Mark Winands