Dr B.E. van Gastel (Bernard)

Bernard van Gastel is an assistant professor Sustainable Digitalization working at the computing science institute of the Radboud University. Besides his research in analysis methods to predict the energy consumption of software and make that info available to software developers, he researches sustainability in a broader sense. This includes the effects of software on society, such as social effects, inclusion, equal opportunities, and privacy. He often works together with academics from other disciplines.

Presently, he is quartermaker for sustainability at the Institute for computing and information sciences (iCIS), for both research as education. There he is setting up the Software Energy Lab to measure the energy consumption of software. On the education side, he is integrating sustainability in the curriculum of computing science.

Regularly his work results in societal impact. For example, he found errors in solid state drives of vendors making two thirds of the world wide storage devices. This resulted in adjustments in the Windows operating system and storage devices itself. He designed a large system for privacy friendly storage of medical research data, so that the impact of data breaches is minimized.

He obtained his PhD from the Open University on assessing the sustainability of software. He developed new methods to analyze the energy consumption of software, memory, and correctness.

• Sustainable digitalization