VCLA International Student Awards 2018
in Memory of Helmut Veith
The Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms of TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology), calls for the nomination of authors of outstanding theses and scientific works in the field of Logic and Computer Science, in the following two categories:
- Outstanding Master Thesis Award
- Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award (Bachelor thesis or equivalent, 1st cycle of the Bologna process)
The main area of interest are:
- Computational Logic, covering theoretical and mathematical foundations such as proof theory, model theory, computability theory, algorithmic lower and upper bounds, Boolean satisfiability (SAT), QBF, constraint satisfaction, satisfiability modulo theories, automated deduction (resolution, refutation, theorem proving), non-classical logics (substructural logics, multi-valued logics, deontic logics, modal and temporal logics), computational complexity and algorithms (complexity analysis, parameterized and exact algorithms, decomposition methods).
- Databases and Artificial Intelligence, concerned with logical methods for modeling, storing, and drawing inferences from data and knowledge. This includes subjects like query languages based on logical concepts (Datalog, variants of SQL, XML, and SPARQL), novel database-theoretical methods (schema mappings, information extraction and integration), logic programming, knowledge representation and reasoning (ontologies, answer-set programming, belief change, inconsistency handling, argumentation, planning).
- 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. This 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.
The award is dedicated to the memory of Helmut Veith, the brilliant computer scientist who tragically passed away in March 2016, and aims to carry on his commitment to promoting young talent and promising researchers in these areas.
Awards
The committee will select a winner for each category. The decisions of the committee are final.
The Outstanding Master Thesis Award is accompanied by a prize of € 1200, and the Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award by a prize of € 800.
Additionally, the winners will be invited to present their work at an award ceremony during the Federated Logic Conference (FLoC) 2018 in Oxford.
Eligibility
- The degree must have been awarded between November 15th 2015 and December 31st 2017 (inclusive).
- Students who obtained the degree at TU Wien are excluded from the nomination.
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, award category, date on which the degree was awarded, and name of the university.
- An English summary of the thesis 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. The letter must clearly state the independent and novel contribution of the student, and why the endorser believes the student deserves the award.
- The full thesis
All documents should be in English, with the exception of the thesis. In case the thesis is in a different language, it must be accompanied by a research report in English of at least 10 pages, which should be sufficient for the committee to evaluate the merit and quality of the submitted work.
Instructions for submitting nominations
Nominations should be submitted electronically using the following link here.
Submissions consist of two pdf files. The first is a single pdf file containing all documents for the nomination except the full thesis; the documents should appear in the order they are listed above. The second pdf file is the full thesis.
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, including the name of the nominated person in the subject, to: award @ logic-cs. at
The submission must be accompanied by a plain text electronic abstract of the thesis of at most 400 words, and three keywords.
The nominated student must always be listed as the first and corresponding author in the submission form.
Important dates
| Extended submission deadline: | March 25, 2018 (anywhere on Earth) |
| Notification of decision: | End of May 2018 |
| Award ceremony: | July 2018 (during FLoC 2018, details to be announced) |
Contact
Please send all inquiries to Email
VCLA Award Committee 2018
Paolo Baldi
Ezio Bartocci
Johannes Fichte
Ekaterina Fokina
Robert Ganian (committee co-chair)
Yazmin A. Ibanez-Garcia
Roman Kuznets
Bjoern Lellmann
Nysret Musliu
Michael Morak
Martin Nöllenburg
Sebastian Ordyniak
Magdalena Ortiz (general chair)
Revantha Ramanayake (committee co-chair)
Martin Suda
Friedrich Slivovsky
Second edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2016
Stefan Szeider, Bahareh Afshari, Maximilian Schleich, Valeria Vignudelli, Felix Dörre, Magdalena Ortiz, Igor Konnov, Simone Bova
The highly successful second edition of the VCLA International Student Awards was concluded on April 16, 2016 with the celebration of two winners. The winners of the 2015 edition of the VCLA International Student Awards are:
- Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award
Felix Dörre (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) for his thesis “Verification of Random Number Generators”
- Outstanding Master Thesis Award
Valeria Vignudelli (University of Bologna), for her thesis “The Discriminating Power of Higher-Order Languages: A Process Algebraic Approach” (Bologna)
- Honourable Mention
Maximilian Schleich (Oxford University) for the work “Learning Regression Models over Factorised Joins”
Details and photo gallery here
First edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2015
Kuldeep S. Meel, Pablo Munoz, Luke Schaeffer, Sophie Spirkl
The Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms announced the first edition of the VCLA International Student Awards in the course of the largest event in the history of logic taking place in Vienna, in the Summer of 2014. The Vienna Summer of Logic (VSL) consisted of twelve large conferences and numerous workshops, attracting over 2000 researchers from all over the world.
The highly successful first edition of the VCLA International Student Awards was concluded on Friday, May 15, 2015 with the celebration of four winners in two award categories. The winners of the 2014 edition of the VCLA International Student Awards are:
- Outstanding Master Thesis Award
Kuldeep S. Meel, Rice University, Sampling Techniques for Boolean Satisfiability
Luke Schaeffer, University of Waterloo, Deciding Properties of Automatic Sequences
Sophie Spirkl, University of Bonn, Boolean Circuit Optimization
- Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award
Pablo Muñoz, University of Chile, New Complexity Bounds for Evaluating CRPQs with Path Comparisons
Details and the photo gallery here