Science Park Amsterdam is home to the largest concentration of beta sciences in Europe Zaanstad Amsterdam Harbour
City Centre
Zuidas Science Park Amsterdam
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
Amsterdam Zuidoost
53 AMS
ity of bacteria to capture energy from sunlight fastest in the Netherlands, complete with a revolutionary eco-cooling system, and can and convert CO2 into organic compounds, perform more than 1 quadrillion calculations thereby creating negative carbon footprints. per second. That’s 20 times faster than its predecessor or nearest rival. DIGITAL DEVELOPMENTS Another recent addition to Science Park’s One of the most densely cabled locations in thriving IT community is the third AmsterEurope, Science Park Amsterdam is home dam-based data centre of American comto more than 150 network hubs. It houses pany Equinix. Peter Van Camp, executive internet exchanges such as AMS-IX (one of chairman at Equinix, is a fifth-generation the largest data transport hubs in the world, Dutch-American and not only immensely known for its superior quality and low costs) proud of his Dutch roots, but also of the and NL-ix (Netherlands Internet Exchange), and is capable of reaching 80 per cent of cus- Dutch focus on innovation, which is reflected in Equinix’s flagship data centre, one of tomers in Europe within 50 milliseconds. The Science Park’s computing and communi- the most sustainable worldwide. Explaining cations credentials date back many decades. their choice of location, they cited Science Park’s unparalleled combination of quality In the 1960s, the Centre for Mathematics education, research and entrepreneurship. and Computer Science (CWI) developed important programming languages such as EDUCATION Algol60, the first language to implement nested function definitions with lexical scope, Science Park Amsterdam is home to a valuable pool of highly-qualified students. and more recently Python, widely used by The UvA Faculty of Science accommodates companies such as Google and Amazon. 4,000 students studying biology, computer In April 1986, the ‘.nl’ domain was recorded sciences, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, by CWI. The Netherlands became the first physics, chemistry and life sciences. Since active country domain outside the United September 2012, the 900 students of the States and a few short years later, scientists prestigious Amsterdam University College at CWI conducted a short email correspondhave also called the Science Park home. ence via NSFnet, the American academic This unique proximity of leading scientists, computer network and forerunner of today’s internet. The CWI was the first non-American well-trained students and high-quality technical facilities such as the AMS-IX makes body thus connected, and in those early Science Park Amsterdam an extremely atdays, all transatlantic internet traffic passed tractive proposition for businesses. Award through it. Nowadays, Science Park Amwinning architecture, and the rapidly exsterdam is home to the supercomputers of panding cultural facilities – plus initiatives SURFSara, the national computer centre that provides computing resources to all universi- such as last year’s inaugural Science Park Amsterdam Film Festival (SPAFF)– mean ties and research centres in the Netherlands. their staff are more than happy here, too. SURFSara’s newest supercomputer is the