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News and Events
Kevin Schewior visits NYU. 20/3 2024
Kevin Schewior visited Lisa Hellerstein at the Tandon School of Engineering of New York University for about two months as part of his sabbatical. The visit started right after ITCS 2024, at which a paper co-authored by Lisa and Kevin was presented. In New York, they started several new projects on stochastic Boolean function evaluation, on which they are planning to continue in the next months. Kevin also gave a talk on recent advances in prophet inequalities in the NYU Theory Seminar, held jointly by the Courant Theoretical Computer Science Group and the Tandon Algorithms and Foundations Group.
Joan Boyar explains the online algorithms with prediction model at D3A. 1/2 2024
Together with Kim Skak Larsen, Joan Boyar attended D3A - Danish Digitalization, Data Science and AI 1.0 at Nyborg Strand Hotel & Conference, where she gave the talk Paging with Succinct Predictions. The talk represented joint work with Kim as well as Lene M. Favrholdt, also from SDU, together with other researchers from different locations in Europe. The results had previously been presented at the 2023 ICML. Joan's gave her talk in the Trends in Algorithms Research in Denmark workshop on the first afternoon.
Simon Erfurth gives a CIDA presentation with Johanna Eggers. 17/1 2024
Simon Erfurth presented recent work on image authentication at the Half-day Conference on AI: Innovation, Transformation, and Deterioration, organized by the SDU Cluster on Creativity and Innovation in the Digital Age (CIDA), together with Johanna Eggers, both of whom are affiliated with DDC - the Digital Democracy Centre. Johanna gave the first motivational half of the presentation Securing News Authenticity: A Novel Approach for Combating Misinformation in the Age of Generative AI through Digital Signatures for Images, while Simon followed up in the second half with the more technical part of the contribution. There were many interested people in the audience asking questions, following the very clear but fairly brief presentation. Joan Boyar, one of Simon's advisors, also attended the conference.
ARCO at SDU. 24/11 2023
The online algorithms group organized this fall's ARCO workshop. A record high number of participants (55 in all) signed up for the event. ARCO (Algorithmic Research: Cooperation around Øresund) is a network for exchanging research within algorithms and for promoting general interest in this research area within the Øresund Region (interpreted rather broadly).

It was a full day, starting at 9:30 with croissants and ending with pizzas at 17:30, with excellent talks and great interaction during coffee, lunch, and dinner breaks. All meals and refreshments were generously sponsored by DIREC.

Martin Böhm from the University of Wrocław visited for a week. 17/11
Martin Böhm from the University of Wrocław visited Kevin Schewior for a week and worked with him in particular, but also with Joan Boyar, Lene Favrholdt, and Kim Skak Larsen from the online algorithms group. Martin gave a very well attended research seminar in the middle of the week, where he discussed interesting follow-up work to load balancing challenges from his dissertation.
The three first TACsy Ph.D. students have arrived. 1/11 2023
This semester, we were excited to receive the first three TACsy Ph.D. students:
  • Erika M. Herrera arrived from Spain with a bachelor degree in Mathematics from the University of La Laguna and a master's degree in Computational Engineering and Mathematics from the Open University of Catalonia.
  • Lena Gladbach arrived from Germany with a master's degree in Computer Science from Leipzig University and a bachelor degree in Media Informatics from Leipzig University of Applied Sciences.
  • Adittya Pal arrived from India with a master's degree in Integrated Management Information Systems with Chemistry from the National Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India.
The students are advised by Jakob Lykke Andersen, Rolf Fagerberg, and Daniel Merkle, in different combinations of who is the main advisor. They are all enrolled as cotutelle students with Peter Dittrich as the advisor at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.

They will work on projects in Algorithmic Cheminformatics, as outlined in the TACsy goals. TACsy is an acronym for Training Alliance for Computational Systems Chemistry, which obtained funding as a Marie-Skłodowska-Curie Joint Doctoral Network.

Both Sissel Banke and Casper Eriksen present results at ISBRA. 12/10 2023
Ph.D. students Sissel Banke and Casper Asbjørn Eriksen from the Cheminformatics group each presented a paper at ISBRA - the International Symposium on Bioinformatics Research and Applications, held in Wrocław, Poland. Sissel presented the paper On the Realisability of Chemical Pathways, representing joint work with her advisors and others, based on Petri Nets. Casper presented recent work on the tool StructRecon, described in the paper Reconciling Inconsistent Molecular Structures from Biochemical Databases, representing joint work with his advisors. They enjoyed an interested audience in an intimate session of the conferences.
The group participated in the DDC meeting near Vejle. 11/10 2023
Simon Erfurth, Joan Boyar, and Kim Skak Larsen joined the 24-hour DDC meeting at the picturesque Hotel Vejlefjord. Among other activities, Simon updated the center members on the progress in his Ph.D. project.
Faith Ellen from University of Toronto visited for a week. 8/10 2023
Faith Ellen (an honorary professor at our department) from the University of Toronto visited Joan and Kim for a week, working on connections between their respective areas, now with a focus on distributed computing. This is a continuation of work initiated in Toronto during Joan's and Kim's visit there in May. During the weekend, the group found time to hike to Enebærodde.
Simon Erfurth presented his work on quotable signatures on Latincrypt. 6/10
Simon Erfurth presented his work on Quotable Signatures for Authenticating Shared Quotes on Latincrypt, October 4-6, 2023, at Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE in Equador. His paper that represents joint work with his advisors Joan Boyar, Kim Skak Larsen, and Ruben Niederhagen has as focus to combat misinformation by bolstering authentic content on social media. This is facilitated by defining quotable signature schemes, which are digital signature schemes with the additional property that from the signature for a message, any party can extract signatures for (allowable) quotes from the message, without knowing the secret key or interacting with the signer of the original message.
Anders Yeo recognized as top researcher. 30/9 2023
On a recently published list of top researchers world wide, SDU has one mathematician listed: Anders Yeo from our Algorithms Section; see the listing from Research.com. Anders also appears on the computer science list.

The Algorithms Section is proud to have such a prolific and frequently cited researcher as a member of our group!

Three papers at ESA 2023. 5/9 2023
The algorithms section had three papers at the European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA), the European top conference on algorithms, which took place in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The papers were A Parameterized Algorithm for Vertex Connectivity Survivable Network Design Problem with Uniform Demands (Jørgen Bang-Jensen, Kristine Vitting Klinkby, Pranabendu Misra, Saket Saurabh), Improved Approximation Algorithms for the Expanding Search Problem (Svenja Griesbach, Felix Hommelsheim, Max Klimm, Kevin Schewior), and Threshold Testing and Semi-Online Prophet Inequalities (Martin Hoefer, Kevin Schewior). Kevin Schewior attended the conference and gave the talk on prophet inequalities.
Kim Skak Larsen takes over as Head of Section. 1/9 2023
As of today, Kim Skak Larsen takes over as Head of the Algorithms Section from Daniel Merkle. As part of that, Kim enters the department's management group. Kim has expressed his gratitude towards Daniel for taking care of the group during the last three years. Daniel is moving to a new position at Bielefeld University, but fortunately stays associated with IMADA, and will still take full part in the exciting research projects the cheminformatics group are running. Kim is not new to managerial tasks, having been head of section before as well as head of department some years back. He is looking forward to working with and for this wonderful group of excellent researchers!
Joan Boyar gave her address as invited speaker at MFCS. 31/8 2023
Joan Boyar was an invited speaker at this year's MFCS - the 48th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science, held at the INP in Bordeaux, France. Joan introduced the audience to Online Algorithms with Predictions, a topic she has recently and naturally progressed into after her succesful endeavors in advice complexity.
Anders Yeo visited China. 20/8 2023
Between the August 13 and August 20, Anders Yeo visited Nankai University in Tianjin, China, and Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, China. Anders gave the talk Transversals in hypergraphs and total domination in graphs at the Northwestern Polytechnical University.

Professor Gregory Gutin, from Royal Holloway, University of London, also visited these university at the same time, and Anders and Gregory initiated some new, interesting collaborations with Chinese colleagues at the above universities.

They also got to see the Terracotta Army in Xi'an!

Magnus Berg gave his first conference talk at WADS. 31/7 2023
Magnus Berg gave his first conference talk at the 18th Algorithms and Data Structures Symposium (WADS), which was held at Concordia University in Montreal. There were several interested researchers asking questions following the talk and many positive remarks later during the conference. The talk was based on the accepted paper, Online Minimum Spanning Trees with Weight Predictions, presenting joint work with Joan Boyar, Lene M. Favrholdt, and Kim S. Larsen.
Anders Yeo gave an invited talk the 29th Nordic Congress of Mathematicians. 7/7 2023
Anders Yeo gave an invited talk, Directed Max-Cut and Some Generalizations, at the Graph Theory session of the 29th Nordic Congress of Mathematicians, July 3-7.

The Graph Theory session was organized by Bjarne Toft, emeritus in the Algorithms Section, and Michael Stiebitz, a frequent visitor to our department.

Anders Yeo gave a plenary talk at the Bled Conference. 24/6 2023
Anders Yeo gave one of the 11 plenary talks at the 10th Slovenian Conference on Graph Theory (also known as "the Bled Conference"). The conference was held in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, June 18-24, and the title of the plenary talk was Directed Max-Cut and Some Generalizations. The conference is one of the largest graph theory conferences in the world with over 300 participants.

Akbar Davoodi also attended the conference and gave the talk Rule Inference and Maximal Common Subgraph in Chemical Reaction Networks.

The conference also included an 8 km bike ride up a mountain, an excursion to the ski-jumping venue Nordic Center Planica and a bike ride to Italy!

Simon Erfurth gave his first conference talk at DataJ. 23/6 2023
Simon Erfurth gave his first conference talk at the Joint Computation+Journalism Symposium and European Data & Computational Journalism Conference at ETH in Zürich. The title of the contribution was Adding Quotable Signatures to the Transparency Repertoire in Data Journalism, representing joint work between Simon and Marília Gehrke, now at the University of Groningen. As someone educated in pure math, attending and interacting with people in such an inter-disciplinary environment is an interesting experience, Simon says.
Two invited speakers at the Fifth ANR Digraph Meeting. 2/6 2023
Anders Yeo and Jørgen Bang-Jensen were invited speakers at the Fifth ANR Digraph Meeting in Sete, France, between May 30 and June 2.

Jørgen gave the talk Open problems on directed graphs and Anders gave the talk Directed max-cut and some generalizations.

Not only was the workshop very stimulating academically, but it also included doing math on the beach!

Joan Boyar and Kim Skak Larsen visited the University of Toronto. 30/5 2023
During the month of May, Joan Boyar and Kim Skak Larsen visited the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. While there, they both gave talks on some of their recent work on online algorithms with predictions, dealing with scheduling and paging, to be presented at WADS and ICML this summer. At the University of Toronto, they worked with Faith Ellen and Allan Borodin. In addition, Shahin Kamali came in from York University and Denis Pankratov came in from Concordia University to collaborate on new projects. It will be a challenge to find the time to make progress on the many new research projects when teaching starts!
The Online Algorithms Group attended ARCO at KU. 21/4 2023
ARCO, an acronym for Algorithmic Research Cooperation around Øresund, is a network for promoting collaboration in research within algorithms around the Øresund Region. This time, the ARCO meeting was held at KU and attended by Magnus Berg, Joan Boyar, Lene Favrholdt, and Kim Skak Larsen. Magnus gave his first talk as a Ph.D. student on Online Minimum Spanning Trees with Weight Predictions, a result which is also to be presented at the 18th International Algorithms and Data Structures Symposium (WADS). His presentation generated a lot of interest, the most follow-up questions of any of the presentations, and many of our colleagues complimented Magnus afterwards for his nice talk.
Kevin Schewior attended Dagstuhl Seminar on Scheduling. 10/2 2023
Kevin Schewior attended the Dagstuhl Seminar on Scheduling, organized by Nicole Megow (Bremen), Benjamin Moseley (CMU), David Shmoys (Cornell), Ola Svensson (EPFL), and Sergei Vassilvitskii (Google). About 50 researchers participated, among them a lot of big names from the scheduling community. This edition of the seminar series had a special focus on beyond-the-worst-case algorithm design and approaches that incorporate learning. Kevin gave a short talk on Evaluating Stochastic Score functions.
The Algorithms Group attended ARCO at ITU. 11/11 2022
ARCO, an acronym for Algorithmic Research Cooperation around Øresund, is a network for promoting collaboration in research within algorithms around the Øresund Region. This time, the ARCO meeting was held at ITU and attended by Kim Skak Larsen, Joan Boyar, Kevin Schewior, Simon Skjernaa Erfurth, Magnus Berg, and Rolf Fagerberg. Kevin gave a talk on The Itinerant List Update Problem.
The group participated in the DDC meeting in Nyborg. 8/11 2022
Joan Boyar and Kim Skak Larsen joined the 24-hour DDC meeting at Storebælt Sinatur Hotel & Konference, together with their Ph.D. student, Simon Skjernaa Erfurth. We enjoyed an informative meeting, updating us on the status of the various projects, while time was also reserved for discussions on how the Digital Democracy Center could develop.
Lene Favrholdt receives the university's teaching prize. 28/10 2022
The Teaching Prize at SDU is awarded once a year to one person. Given that SDU has a few thousand employees, getting the award is quite an achievement! Lene receives the prize for her special ability to make very complex material understandable. The prize is in recognition of her didactic approach, described by the students as elegant, intuitive, attentive, accommodating, and entertaining. Lene is in the middle with the Dean of the Faculty of Science on the left and the Vice-Chancellor on the right.
Members of the algorithms group attending DIREC. 26/9 2022
Computer scientists from all over Denmark met for the second DIREC meeting at Helnan Hotel Marselis in Aarhus. As last time, the meeting included an excellent algorithms session, and this time Kevin Schewior gave a talk on Recent Advances in I.I.D. Prophet Inequalities. From our algorithms group, Kim Skak Larsen, Joan Boyar, Jakob Lykke Andersen, and Rolf Fagerberg also attended the meeting.
Kevin Schewior speaks at the Workshop on Approximation and Online Algorithms. 8/9 2022
Kevin Schewior attended the Workshop on Approximation and Online Algorithms (WAOA) 2022. The workshop was part of ALGO 2022 in Potsdam, Germany, which had about 400 participants and several keynote speakers. Kevin gave a talk on Knapsack Secretary Through Boosting, a paper with his former Master's student Moritz Stinzendörfer (now TU Kaiserslautern), Andreas Abels (RWTH Aachen), and Leon Ladewig (formerly TU Munich), and chaired one of the sessions.
Casper Asbjørn Eriksen and Sissel Banke start as Ph.D. students. 1/9 2022
We are excited to welcome Casper Asbjørn Eriksen and Sissel Banke into our group as Ph.D. students. Both Casper and Sissel are CS MS graduates from our department and they will be working on Algorithmic Cheminformatics with their advisors, Jakob L. Andersen, Rolf Fagerberg, and Daniel Merkle.
Magnus Berg starts as Ph.D. student. 1/9 2022
We are excited to welcome Magnus Berg into our group as a Ph.D. student. He comes with an MS in mathematics and a side topic in computer science. Magnus will work on the project Online Algorithms with Predictions, as part of the national undertaking of Digital Research Centre Denmark (DIREC), under the Innovation Fund Denmark. The project is carried out in collaboration with ITU. As the main advisor, Kim Skak Larsen is joint by Lene Favrholdt and Melih Kandemir. Joan Boyar will also function as an advisor for the online part on equal terms with Kim and Lene, while Nutan Limaye from ITU and Melih will advise on connections to machine learning from different points of view.
Florian Hoersch visits Jørgen Bang-Jensen. 29/8 2022
Florian Hoersch is visiting the department this week from the Technische Universität Ilmenau, where also a former member of the group, Matthias Kriesell, is located. Hoersch's received his Ph.D. from the University of Grenoble in September 2021. His thesis contains a number of impressive results on graph connectivity and orientations of graphs. He will give a talk in the Computer Science colloquium series.
Yubao Guo visits the graph theory group. 22/8 2022
Yubao Guo from RWTH Aachen is visiting the department this week. Guo's Ph.D. thesis from 1995 focuses on locally semicomplete digraphs, a class of digraphs dicovered by Bang-Jensen in 1990 and since the topic of more than 100 research papers. Guo has made substantial contributions to the theory of locally semicomplete digraphs as well as semicomplete multipartite digraphs. Guo and Bang-Jensen have a number of joint papers together. Guo will give a talk in the Tuesday colloquium slot.
Lene Favrholdt receives the faculty's teaching prize. 19/8 2022
The Faculty of Science Teaching Prize is awarded each year to one employee who has excelled at motivational and committed teaching of the highest quality. In accordance with tradition, Lene Monrad Favrholdt was nominated by her students. Students say Lene is one of the best educators they have met, with an ability to make complex mathematical concepts easy to understand. Teaching math on the first year to students who don't know yet where and why they need it is a special challenge, and Lene is recognized for her enormous effort and focus on the students. During corona times, she made an extra effort of giving on-site lectures while arranging that students forced to stay home could also both follow and ask questions on-line. Lene is second from the left and the dean is speaking.
Rob van Stee visits the Online Algorithms group. 15/8 2022
Rob van Stee from the University of Siegen visits the online algorithms group for a week. Rob is a friend of the department who has visited several times over the years, starting as a Ph.D. student. He has also served on thesis assessment committees for the department etc. Rob will give a talk in the Tuesday colloquium slot.
Jørgen Bang-Jensen attends ICGT 2022 in Montpellier. 4/7 2022
Bang-Jensen gave the talk Making a tournament k-strong by adding new arcs. This is based on joint work with Anders Yeo and former student Kasper Skov Johansen, now a research assistant at DTU Compute, starting his PhD studies there in the fall. At ICGT, Bang-Jensen also chaired the opening plenary talk by Reinhard Diestel.

While in Montpellier, Bang-Jensen visited his research collaborator, Stephane Bessy, at LIRMM Université Montpellier. They continued their long-term collaboration on the structure of directed graphs.

The Online Algorithms group represented at SWAT. 27/6 2022
Lene Favrholdt, Joan Boyar, and Kim Skak Larsen attended SWAT 2022 - 18th Scandinavian Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory, for the first time held physically in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands. Lene presented our joint paper, Joan chaired one of the sessions, and Kim leaned back and enjoyed the performances. ツ
Lene Favrholdt and Kevin Schewior at MAPSP in Italy. 16/6 2022
Lene Favrholdt gave a keynote address on Paging and Packing with Possibly Precise Predictions at the 15th Workshop on Models and Algorithms for Planning and Scheduling (MAPSP) at the Oropa Sanctuary in Italy. At the same workshop, Kevin Schewior gave a contributed talk on The High-Dimensional Cow-Path Problem.

The chair of the program committee was Leah Epstein (U Haifa). The other keynote speakers were Alessandro Agnetis (U Siena), Thomas Erlebach (U Durham), and Alberto Marchetti-Spaccamela (La Sapienza). In total, there were more than 100 participants. MAPSP is known for a large number of high-quality talks but also its openness and the allotted time for discussions, e.g., during the social event, which in this case was a hike through meadows with cows to a mountain lake. Kirk Pruhs (U Pittsburgh) maintains a website on the history of the workshop.

Two postdocs join the Algorithms Group. 17/6 2022
We welcome Akbar Davoodi and Mehmet Aziz Yirik who join the Cheminformatics Group to work on the MATOMIC project. Akbar comes from a postdoc position at the Czech Academy of Sciences and Aziz finished his Ph.D. recently from the Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena.
MATOMIC Kick-Off. 23/5 2022
The MATOMIC project - Mathematical Modelling for Microbial Community Induced Metabolic Diseases - is launched through kick-off meetings at the National Institute of Public Health in Copenhagen today, and at SDU tomorrow. This internationally-based center is funded by the Challenge Programme of the Novo Nordisk Foundation and is headed by our Cheminformatics group: Daniel Merkle, flanked by Jakob Lykke Andersen and Rolf Fagerberg.
Kevin Schewior speaks at the Workshop on New Challenges in Scheduling Theory. 18/5 2022
Kevin Schewior was invited to and attended the Workshop on New Challenges in Scheduling Theory in Aussois, France. The program committee consisted of Jacek Blazewicz (TU Poznan), Michael Bender (Stony Brook), Erwin Pesch (U Siegen), Kirk Pruhs (U Pittsburgh), Denis Trystam (Grenoble INP), and Guochan Zhang (Zhejiang U). The workshop had about 80 participants. A few of them attended online, but the vast majority attended on site. There were about 50 talks on the theory and practice of scheduling, many of which triggered refreshing in-person discussions during the ample time left free aside of the talks and during the cheese fondue. Kevin gave a talk about his recent work on Stochastic Probing with Increasing Precision.
The Online Algorithms Group invited to the Workshop on Algorithms with Predictions. 4/5 2022
Joan Boyar Lene Favrholdt, and Kim Skak Larsen were invited to the Workshop on Algorithms with Predictions, held at the Bernoulli Center for Fundamental Studies at EPFL in picturesque Lausanne, Switzerland. Joan and Lene gave a well-received invited talk together surveying Online Algorithms with Advice, and Kim was on the panel, together with Sid Banerjee (Cornell), Daniel Dadush (CWI), Anupam Gupta (Carnegie Mellon), and Seffi Naor (Technion), to discuss the current issues and priorities in this developing area. The workshop was very enjoyable with good talks and lots of time for networking and initiating research collaboration.
Kevin Schewior starts as Assistant Professor in the Algorithms Group. 1/5 2022
We are excited to welcome Kevin Schewior as assistant professor in the algorithms group. Kevin is interested in uncertainty, approximation algorithms, and algorithmic problems more generally. Kevin got his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Mathematics of Technische Universität Berlin in 2016. He has held postdoc positions in Germany but also in Santiago and Paris. We look forward to working with Kevin!
The group sends representatives to the DDC meeting. 5/4 2022
From our online algorithms group, Joan Boyar and Kim Skak Larsen joined the DDC meeting at Nyborg Strand Hotel, together with their Ph.D. student, Simon Skjernaa Erfurth. We enjoyed a well-planned and fruitful meeting, discussing the challenges that the Digital Democracy Center should undertake and the progress that has been made so far. The format of this 24 hour meeting, going from lunch to lunch, gave us the possibility of also interacting on a more social level in the evening, getting to know each other better.
Simon Erfurth starts as Ph.D. student. 1/1 2022
We are excited to welcome Simon Erfurth into our group as a Ph.D. student. Simon comes with an MS in mathematics with a master's project in cryptology. He will work on the inter-disciplinary project, Trust and News Authenticity, as part of the Digital Democracy Center (DDC). Due to the inter-disciplinary nature of the project, Simon has several advisors, Claes de Vreese, who is the head of DDC, and Joan Boyar, Kim Skak Larsen, and Ruben Niederhagen from IMADA.