VCLA InternationalVienna Center for Logic and Algorithms

Student Awards 2023

The deadline for the Call for Nominations for the seventh edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2023 has been extended to April 11!

 

The Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms of TU Wien 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 degree must have been awarded between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022 (inclusive).

The main areas of interest are:

  • Computational Logic, covering theoretical and mathematical foundations such as proof theory, model theory, computability theory, 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).
  • Algorithms and Computational Complexity, including design and analysis of discrete algorithms, complexity analysis, algorithmic lower bounds, parameterized and exact algorithms, decomposition methods, approximation algorithms, randomized algorithms, algorithm engineering, as well as algorithmic game theory, computational social choice, parallel algorithms, graph drawing algorithms, and distributed algorithms.
  • 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.

In Memory of Helmut Veith

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 Outstanding Master Thesis Award:  1200 EUR.
  • The Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award: 800 EUR.
  • The winners will be invited to present their work at an award ceremony in Vienna, if the situation allows.

Eligibility

  • The degree must have been awarded between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022 (inclusive).
  • Students who obtained their degree at TU Wien are not eligible.

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, the date on which the degree was awarded, and the 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.
  • The CV of the nominated person, including publication list (if applicable).
  • An endorsement letter from a supervisor or another proposing person. The letter must clearly state the independent and novel contribution of the student, and why the proposer believes the student deserves the award. The endorsement letter may be provided after the submission deadline, and emailed directly to award (AT) logic-cs.at.
  • 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 that should be sufficient for the committee to evaluate the merit and quality of the submitted work.

Instructions for submitting self-nominations

  • Nominations should be submitted electronically by the applicants using the following link to EasyChair 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 by 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 (AT) logic-cs DOT 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 be listed as the only author in the submission form.

Important dates

Submission deadline (updated): April 11, 2023 (anywhere on Earth)
Notification of decision: after June 30, 2023
Award ceremony: to be announced

Contact

Please send all inquiries to: award (AT) logic-cs.at.

VCLA Award Committee 2023

 

The sixth edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2021

The winners Jasper Slusallek and Tuukka Korhonen with the chairs Magdalena Ortiz and Robert Ganian.

The highly successful sixth edition of the VCLA International Student Awards was concluded in July 2021 with the announcement of two winners in two award categories. The winners of the 2021 edition of the VCLA International Student Awards are:

Outstanding Master Thesis Award

Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award

  • Jasper Slusallek ( Saarland University) for the undergraduate thesis “Algorithms and Lower Bounds for Finding (Exact-Weight) Subgraphs of Bounded Treewidth” under the supervision of Karl Bringmann.

The fifth edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2020

The highly successful fifth edition of the VCLA International Student Awards was concluded in July 2020 with the announcement of two winners in two award categories here.

Outstanding Master Thesis Award
  • Karolina Okrasa (Warsaw University of Technology) for the or the master thesis “Complexity of variants of graph homomorphism problem in selected graph classes” under the supervision of Paweł Rzążewski.
Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award
  • Antonin Callard (ENS Paris-Saclay) for the undergraduate thesis “Topological analysis of represented spaces and computable maps, cb0 spaces and non-countably-based spaces” under the supervision of Mathieu Hoyrup.

The fourth edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2019

The dean elect of Faculty of Informatics and the vice-rector for Academic Affairs of TU Wien share the stage with the VCLA Award Committee and the winners of 2019 call.

The highly successful fourth edition of the VCLA International Student Awards was concluded on Friday, June 28, 2019 with the announcement of two winners in two award categories here.

Outstanding Master Thesis Award
Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award

The third edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2018

Tomáš Lamser, Jeremy Liang An Kong, Anna Prianichnikova, Dana Scott.

The highly successful third edition of the VCLA International Student Awards was concluded on Monday, June 11, 2018, with the announcement of two winners in two award categories at FLoC 2018. The winners of the 2018 edition of the VCLA International Student Awards are:

Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award
  • Tomáš Lamser (Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic) for his thesis “Algorithmic Analysis of Patrolling Games” under the supervision of Professor Antonín Kučera (Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic).
Outstanding Master Thesis Award
  • Jeremy Liang An Kong (Imperial College London, United Kingdom) for his thesis “MCMAS-Dynamic: Symbolic Model Checking Linear Dynamic Logic” under the supervision of Professor Alessio Lomuscio (Imperial College London, United Kingdom).

Details and the photo gallery here.

The 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)
Honorable Mention
  • Maximilian Schleich (Oxford University) for the work “Learning Regression Models over Factorised Joins”

Details and photo gallery here.

The 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.