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We are very grateful for the positive energy and the contributions to our daughter Emma’s collection box at  https://epilepsie.digicollect.nl/maarten-de-rijke resulting from the Zumba Charity Event for Emma that was organized by Dansstudio Rick Schmitz in Geleen on April 13. A big, big thank you to instructors Anke, Carla, Madeva, Manon, Rick, Ricky, Tofti for organizing,…

The web site for MANILA25, the second workshop on Information Retrieval for Climate Impact at SIGIR 2025, is live now at https://sites.google.com/view/ir-for-climate-impact/home. MANILA25 will be held as a half-day workshop on July 17, 2025 in Padova, Italy. A Call for Contributions is available at the web site for MANILA25. We are looking for technical contributions…

Today, we reached the heartwarming milestone of 400 donors! Yes, 400 people from around the planet have contributed to my daughter Emma’s collection box at https://epilepsie.digicollect.nl/maarten-de-rijke. Together, they have donated 24448 euro to help advance research into epilepsy and to help provide support to epilepsy patients and their loved ones. Thank you so much! Please…

Today, February 10, is International Epilepsy Day. This is an annual awareness-raising initiative organized around the planet. Let me take this opportunity to thank the 375 people and organizations who have generously donated to my daughter Emma’s collection box at EpilepsieNL to support research into epilepsy, to create awareness, and to support patients and their…

SIGIR 2025 will host a workshop to explore challenges in information retrieval development to help understand climate impact. This is the second edition of the workshop. The focus of this year’s edition of the workshop will be on climate adaptation tracking. Last year’s edition of this workshop focused on identifying the challenges of developing and…

EpilepsieNL, the organization for which we have set up Emma’s collection box, is preparing for new campaigns and fund raising initiatives. They have reset some of the counters as of today, February 5, 2025. Up to today, 368 people and organizations have generously contributed 21.515,17 Euro to Emma’s collection box to support research into epilepsy,…

Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad has published an article with some of my views on the AI innovation landscape in the Netherlands. It also mentions Emma’s passing, my research hopes and ambitions regarding AI and epilepsy, and Emma’s collection box for EpilepsieNL, to which over 350 people and organizations have now donated well over 21000…

Today would have been Emma’s 28th birthday. It’s been 59 days since she passed away. We continue to go through slow, slow goodbye rituals, for instance by marking every single one of her many books with her name before giving it away. We hold on to some of her belongings: I’m wearing her scarf, my…

This week, on January 18, there will be a remembrance party (“herdenkingsborrel”) organized by Emma’s friends to come together, connect, exchange memories and raise a glass to Emma’s memory and to help raise funds for the Epilepsy Foundation (“EpilepsieNL“) through Emma’s collection box. Sign up here: https://forms.office.com/r/cqvBzAzTK1. Please contribute at https://epilepsie.digicollect.nl/maarten-de-rijke and share the link. Thank you!…

It has been one month today since Emma passed away. It doesn’t feel like things are getting better. Every new day is worse than the previous. There’s a deepening sense of loss as the reality continues to sink in. We’ve adopted a lot of slow goodbye rituals. They help somewhat. But what really keeps us…