Aad van der Vaart


Adrianus Willem "Aad" van der Vaart is a Dutch professor of Stochastics at the Mathematical Institute of Leiden University.

Career

Van der Vaart was born in Vlaardingen. He earned his PhD at Leiden University in 1987. Before starting at Leiden van der Vaart was a professor at the VU University Amsterdam. He has been member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2009.

Honors

In 2010 he was an Invited Speaker at the ICM in Hyderabad. In 2015 he was one of four winners of the Dutch Spinoza Prize and received a 2.5 million euro grant. He was awarded the prize for his research on mathematical models that help track genes for cancer research. On being awarded the prize Van der Vaart stated that 2.5 million euro was too much, claiming he could have 35 postdoctoral and Ph.D. students work with the grant.
He was also the recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant in 2012.
In June 2019, Aad van der Vaart was made a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.