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
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). 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 Optimziation. 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. See here for an updated list of publications.
Editorial. I am a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Computer and System Sciences (JCSS) and the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR). Previously, I have served as an editor 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 (2020). I have co-edited the Proceedings of IPEC 2013, COMMA 2012, and SAT 2000,
Academic Activities. I am the coordinator of the research focus Logic and Computation (one of the four research foci at the Faculty of Informatics), 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 young people; I am a founding member of the initiative ADA (Algorithms Think Differently) and the initiator of the video competition Algorithms in 60 Seconds. 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 Distance Learning Award 2020.
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), Friedrich Slivovsky (Postdoc), and Jan Dreier (Postdoc). Former Postdocs were Robert Ganian (now Prof. at TU Wien), Sebastian Ordyniak (now U Leeds), Simone Bova, Ramanujan Sridharan (now U Warwick), Serge Gaspers (now UNSW), Neeldhara Misra (now IIT Gandhinaga), Marko Samer. My former graduate students were Tomas Peitl (PhD 2019, now U Jena), Neha Lodha (PhD 2019, Best Student paper at SAT 2016, now Mondi Group), Eduard Eiben (PhD 2018 received Austria's Award of Excellence, now RHUL, U London), Ronald de Haan (PhD 2016 received the Beth Dissertation Prize, now U Amsterdam), Johannes Fichte (PhD 2015, now U Dresden), Friedrich Slivovsky (PhD 2015, now TU Wien), Luke Mathieson (PhD 2010, now UT Sydney).
