ICT Open 2026, the annual Dutch Research Council (NWO) ICT conference in the Netherlands, took place on 15 & 16 April 2026 at de Doelen, Rotterdam. ICT.OPEN unites ICT researchers and professionals from various ICT disciplines to collaborate, exchange ideas, and build connections.
HCI for Social Impact
For the third year in a row, the CHI NL community had a great impact at ICT.OPEN by hosting the Human-Computer Interaction and Societal Impact in the Netherlands track, in line with the conference theme ‘The Art of ICT‘.
The track was made possible by CHI NL, together with the broader HCI community, which enthusiastically contributed to its organization. Track chairs were Nava Tintarev (UM) and Judith Masthoff (UT), while Max Birk, Armağan Karahanoğlu, Gulia Perugia, Julian Frommel, Koen van Turnhout, Katja Rogers, Michal Klincewicz, Gido Hakvoort and Himanshu Verma served as track committee members.
We received just over 20 submissions, from which we selected 5 oral presentations, 13 posters, and 1 demo. This shows that HCI is not just a frontier research field but also has a significant societal impact.
Illustrating the importance and potential impact of HCI research, the first place ICT.OPEN Poster Award was won by Kyana van Eijndhovenfor et al for their poster on “Show me your game-face; Evaluating social human-centered consequences of nonverbal mimicry in virtual humans”.
Supporting Ethical Research
The supporters of ICT.Open are IPN, PRIO, Digital Holland, and NWO. CHI.NL connects to these national organizations through the special interest group (SIG) HCI. Another IPN interest group present at ICT.Open was the working group Ethics with a poster that highlights their work standardising and streamlining the process for ethics proposals in computer science research, as well as their manifesto on ethical research in our field.
We are looking forward to continuing CHI NL’s presence at ICT.OPEN 2027!