Stefan Szeider

Professor
Head of the Algorithms and Complexity Group
Faculty of Informatics
Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien)

Favoritenstraße 9–11, E192-01
1040 Vienna, Austria

Room HC0401
Phone: +43(1)58801–192100
sz@ac.tuwien.ac.at
Twitter

Biography

 

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Academic Affiliations. I am a full professor and chair at TU Wien, Vienna, Austria, and head of the Algorithms and Complexity Group. I am a co-chair of the Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms (VCLA)  and chair of the MSCA doctoral program LogiCS@TUWien. Previously I held academic positions at the University of Durham (UK), the University of Toronto (Can), and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (AT).

Research. In my research, I combine algorithmic and logic-based methods to solve hard computational problems that arise in Artificial Intelligence, Automated Reasoning, and Combinatorial Optimiziation. The design of efficient algorithms is complemented by complexity-theoretic methods for establishing theoretical limits and lower bounds. I have been the principal investigator of several research projects, including projects from the ERC (EU), the EPSRC (UK), the Nuffield Foundation (UK), the FWF (Austria), and the WWTF (Austria). My Erdős Number is 2, and I have published over 180 articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings.

Publications. A list of my publications can be found here.

Editorial. I am an Associate Editor of  the Journal of Computer and System Sciences (JCSS) and the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR). Previously, I have served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Discrete Algorithms (2014—2018),  Fundamenta Informaticae (2012—2018), and I was a guest editor of Algorithmica (2015) and Discrete Applied Mathematics (2022). I have co-edited the Proceedings of MFCS 2022, IPEC 2013, COMMA 2012, and SAT 2010.

Academic Activities.   I'm an invited speaker at PCCR 2022, the Third Workshop on the Parameterized Complexity of Computational Reasoning, Haifa, part of FloC 2022. I am the chair of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND  doctoral programme logicCS@TUWien, the coordinator of the research focus Logic and Computation (one of the four research foci at the Faculty of Informatics), Board member of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (CAIML), the scientific co-organizer of the Vienna Gödel Lectures, the deputy speaker of the Doctoral Program Logical Methods in Computer Science (LogiCS), and the chair of the jury for the Heinz Zemanek Dissertation Price of the Austrian Computer Society

Public Outreach. I'm engaged in dissemination activities of Computer Science to children and interested people;  I am a founding member of the initiative ADA (Algorithms Think Differently), curator of the world record human sorting network,  and the initiator of the video competition Algorithms in 60 Seconds. In 2021, I gave a lecture on Algorithms to the Austrian Parlament. I have created a contemporary version of the Garey-Johnson Cartoon and an OBDD representation of the US presidential election. Here is some recent media coverage.

Teaching. I am responsible for the Algorithms and Data Structures course (Bachelor's) and Algorithmics (Master's).  The former course was nominated for the Best Teaching Award 2022 and the Best Distance Learning Award 2020. I'm also part of the course Ways of Thinking in Informatics which won a Special Award for Digital Teaching in 2022.

Awards and Prizes. I received a Best Paper Award at CP 2020 (with Tomas Peitl), and a first prize in the PACE 2019 competition (with Andre Schidler). I was the first Austrian Computer Scientist to receive an award from the European Research Council (ERC Start 2009).

Graduate Students and Postdocs. My current students and postdocs are Andre Schidler (PhD), Vaidyanathan P. R. (PhD), Tianwei Zhang (PhD), Hai Xia (PhD), Alexis de Colnet (Postdoc), Leroy Chew (postdoc),  Friedrich Slivovsky (Postdoc), and Jan Dreier (Postdoc). Former Postdocs were Robert Ganian (now Prof. at TU Wien), Sebastian Ordyniak (now Prof. at U Leeds), Simone Bova, Ramanujan Sridharan (now Prof. at U Warwick), Serge Gaspers (now UNSW), Neeldhara Misra (now Prof. at IIT Gandhinaga), and Marko Samer. My former graduate students were Tomas Peitl (PhD 2019, after postdoc at U Jena back at TU Wien), Neha Lodha (PhD 2019, Best Student paper at SAT 2016, now Mondi Group), Eduard Eiben (PhD 2018, received Austria's Award of Excellence, now Prof. at RHUL, U London),  Ronald de Haan (PhD 2016, received the Beth Dissertation Prize, now Prof. at U Amsterdam), Johannes Fichte (PhD 2015, now U Dresden), Friedrich Slivovsky (PhD 2015, now TU Wien), Luke Mathieson (PhD 2010, now UT Sydney).

Organization of Scientific Events. I'm the general chair and co-organzier of MFCS 2022, the 47th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science, August 22-26, 2022, Vienna, Austria; am co-organzing LMML 2022, the Workshop on Logic-based Methods in Machine Learning, part of FLoC 2022; and I am co-organizing the Dagstuhl Seminar SAT Encodings and Beyond, June 25-30, 2023. Previously, I've co-organized the 9th Workshop on Graph Classes, Optimization, and Width Parameters (GROW 2019), the Congress on Algorithms (ALGO 2017), the Symposium on New Frontiers in Knowledge Compilation (2015), the First Symposium on Structure in Hard Combinatorial Problems (2013), the Third Workshop on Kernelization (2011), and the first Workshop on the Parameterized Complexity of Computational Reasoning (2010).  I was the workshop chair at FLoC 2014, overseeing 74 workshops.