Nava Tintarev is a professor of Explainable Artificial Intelligence at Maastricht University. Since January, she has been the new chair of the Computer Science Table. What drives her and what are her plans as the new chair?
Why did you become chair of the Table?
‘I have been a member of the Computer Science Table for almost 2.5 years and now I am the chair. I wanted to advocate for the interests of my field. Computer science is a relatively young field and it is also a different kind of discipline than the other natural sciences. Scientific conferences are very important for us, for example. There, computer scientists present their latest research results for the first time, and less so in scientific journals. This means our publication culture is very different and that can cause confusion. My predecessor Hajo Reijers did good work in this area, for example through his contribution to the discipline sketch for computer science, in which these kinds of principles are explained to people within NWO and to researchers in other disciplines.’
What are your plans and priorities as chair?
‘When I became chair, I wrote one page for myself with my focus points, a chair’s note. As a researcher, you can sit on many committees and councils and I wanted to be clear about things for myself before being pushed in all directions and bombarded with opinions. In my chair’s note I describe two focus points. I want to emphasize that computer science is truly a scientific core discipline with its own theory and practice. Computers are more than a tool; computer science is more than a tool for other sciences. Unfortunately, our field is sometimes seen that way, but computer science can truly be a leading discipline.
My second focus point is: more interdisciplinary collaboration. For example, I am currently involved in an NWA project proposal about polarization in society. An interdisciplinary proposal requires more than just bringing multiple disciplines together; you have to bridge different cultures and languages. For example, there should be more seed funding: money for supporting meetings, so we can spend more time understanding each other, so we can tackle complex problems – for which there are no quick and easy solutions. There should also be more research projects with dual PhD candidates (who thus earn PhDs in computer science and another discipline) – with computer science as the core.’
Where will the Computer Science Table be in 3 years?
‘I hope that the success rates for computer scientists in the Open Competition will be higher then. Those rates are currently lower than in other natural science disciplines, sometimes much lower. That is worrying, so we need to make it fairer by equalizing it. As a Table, together with NWO, we are investigating the low success rates. The ENW domain board has recognized this as a problem. There is currently a research-on-research study with experiments to collect data. Some Computer Science Table members support the process by analyzing results and formulating hypotheses. That study should be completed in 2027; hopefully then we will have answers.’
What do you want to convey to NWO?
‘To ENW I would like to say: take another good look at domain-wide assessment in the Open Competition. I am critical of that. The ENW domain board is currently investigating whether different clustering is possible and sensible. The Computer Science Table considers that a good thing and we want to help investigate it.’