Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms The Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms announces the 2015 edition of the

VCLA International Student Awards

and calls for the nomination of authors of outstanding scientific works in the field of Logic in Computer Science, in the following two categories:

  • Outstanding Master Thesis Award, to be given to the author of an outstanding thesis for obtaining a Masters degree or equivalent (2nd cycle Bologna process), and
  • Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award, to be given to the author of an outstanding thesis or final project for obtaining a Bachelors degree or equivalent (1st cycle Bologna process).

In both categories, the work must make an original contribution to a research field that can be classified as part of Logic in Computer Science, understood broadly as the use of logic as a tool that enables computer programs to reason about the world. The main areas of interest are:

  • Databases and Artificial Intelligence, including subjects like answer-set programming and Datalog, query languages based on logical concepts (such as SQL, current XML-based languages), optimization of queries, novel database-theoretical methods (like schema mappings, information integration, querying ontologies), logic programming, description logics, knowledge representation and reasoning (belief change, abductive reasoning, multi-context systems, inconsistency handling, incomplete knowledge, diagnosis), and AI formalisms (argumentation, planning, preferential reasoning, decision support systems).
  • Verification, concerned with logical methods and automated tools for reasoning about the behavior and correctness of complex state-based systems such as software and hardware designs as well as hybrid systems. It ranges from model checking, program analysis and abstraction to new interdisciplinary areas such as fault localization, program repair, program synthesis, and the analysis of biological systems.
  • Computational Logic, covering theoretical and mathematical foundations such as proof theory (cut elimination, proof mining, interpolants), automated deduction (resolution, refutation, theorem proving), computability and computable structure theory, non-classical and modal logics (multi-valued logics, juridical reasoning, deontic logics, modal and temporal logics), models of computation (automata, grammars, Turing machines, lambda calculus), computational complexity (complexity analysis, parametrized complexity, decomposition methods) and constraint satisfaction (SAT, QSAT, CSP).

The degree must have been awarded no earlier than November 1st, 2013, and the thesis should have been officially approved by the university no later than November 14, 2015. Students who obtained the degree at the Vienna University of Technology are excluded from nomination.

The committee will select a winner for each category. The winners will be invited to Vienna to present their project and participate in a festive award ceremony. Additionally, the Outstanding Master Thesis Award is accompanied by a prize of 1,200 Eur, and the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award by a prize of 800 Eur. The decisions of the committee are not appealable.

Important dates:

Nomination deadline extended to November 22, 2015 (AoE) 
Notification of the committee’s decision: early February 2016
Award ceremony: Spring 2016

Nomination requirements:

Nominations must include:

  • A cover page that contains the name and contact details of the nominated person, the title of the work for which the person is being nominated, category,  date on which the degree was awarded (or if not applicable, the date on which the work was approved), and name of the university.
  • An English summary of the thesis or project of maximum 3 pages, excluding references (A4 or letter page size, 11pt font min.). The summary must clearly state the main contribution of the work, its novelty, and its relevance to some of the aforementioned areas of interest.
  • CV of the nominated person, including publication list (if applicable)
  • An endorsement letter from a supervisor or another endorsing person, preferably affiliated to the university to which the work was submitted. The letter must clearly state what was the independent and novel contribution done by the student and why the endorser believes the student deserves the award.
  • The full thesis/project

All documents should be in English, with the exception of the thesis or project. In case the thesis or project is in a different language, it must be accompanied by a research report in English with a maximum length of 12 pages excluding references (A4 or letter page size, 11pt font min.). This report should be sufficient for the committee to evaluate the merit and quality of the submitted work. In case such a report is provided, the 3-page summary is optional.

Instructions for submitting nominations:

Nominations should be submitted electronically via Easychair using the following link:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vcla2015

All documents except the full thesis should be combined (in the order they are listed) into a single pdf file, to be submitted as “paper” in Easychair. The full thesis should be submitted as attachment.

The endorsement letter may optionally be sent per email by the endorser and omitted from the Easychair submission. In this case, please email the letter as a pdf file to  award@www.forsyte.at/lgcs, including the name of the nominated person in the subject. 

The submission must be accompanied by a plain text electronic abstract of the thesis or project of at most 400 words, and three keywords.

The nominated student must always be listed as first and corresponding author in the Easychair form. The supervisor or endorser may optionally be included as second author (for example, in case (s)he does the electronic submission).

Award Committee

Bahareh Afshari
Ezio Bartocci
Simone Bova
Minh Dao Tran
Ekaterina Fokina
Robert Ganian
Igor Konnov
Tomer Kotek
Roman Kuznets
Björn Lellmann
Florian Lonsing
Nysret Musliu
Sebastian Ordyniak
Magdalena Ortiz (chair)
Andreas Pieris
Revantha Ramanayake
Mantas Simkus
Ramanujan Sridharan
Josef Widder
Florian Zuleger

Contact

Please send all inquiries to award@www.forsyte.at/lgcs