The University of Amsterdam is the first university in the Netherlands to have established an Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). It was founded in the summer of 2016 to become a leading international institute, where existing paradigms and traditional boundaries between academic disciplines are transcended, in order to create new knowledge for complex scientific and societal challenges. The current director of IAS is Prof. Huub Dijstelbloem. IAS's first director was Prof. Peter Sloot.