The highly successful fifth edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2020 was concluded in July 2020. Based on the international call for nominations, the award committee of eighteen internationally recognized researchers and chaired by Magdalena Ortiz, announced one Outstanding Master Thesis Award and one Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award.

The VCLA International Student Awards

The annually awarded VCLA International Student Awards for Outstanding Undergraduate and Master Theses recognize and support students worldwide at the beginning of their scientific career in the field of Logic in Computer Science. The awards entail an invitation to the award ceremony and a monetary prize from the fund of € 2000. The VCLA Awards are dedicated to the memory of Helmut Veith, a brilliant computer scientist who tragically passed away in March 2016 and aim to carry on his commitment to promoting young talents and promising researchers in these areas.

The Outstanding Master Thesis Award

The Outstanding Master Thesis Award is awarded to Karolina Okrasa of Warsaw University of Technology (Poland) for her master thesis, “Complexity of variants of graph homomorphism problem in selected graph classes” prepared under the supervision of Paweł Rzążewski.

Her decision for the topic of her master thesis was pretty straightforward: “I found the open problem interesting, mostly because the tools of algebraic graph theory usually solve the problems in the field related to this topic. I have always had a fondness to the non-trivial and elegant algebraic methods, so together with my interest in graph theory and computational complexity, it was a perfect choice.”

Since obtaining her Master’s Degree, Karolina Okrasa is currently pursuing her PhD in Mathematics at the Warsaw University of Technology (Poland). Concurrently she is a research assistant at the Institute of Informatics at the University of Warsaw (Poland). Besides continuing to work on graph homomorphism problems, she is pursuing more extensive research in parameterized algorithms and fine-grained complexity. A copy of the awarded thesis is available here.

The Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award

The Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award is awarded to Antonin Callard of ENS Paris-Saclay (France) for the undergraduate thesis “Topological analysis of represented spaces and computable maps, cb0 spaces and non-countably-based spaces” prepared under the supervision of Mathieu Hoyrup.

His idea for the undergraduate thesis grew after attending illustrative lectures by Hubert Comon, where he got fascinated by Turing machines, undecidable problems, and more generally computability theory. “Since I had a keen interest in topology pretty much since I discovered maths, I naturally tried to find a topic bringing computability and topology together. Fortunately, I met Mathieu Hoyrup, who enthusiastically introduced me to descriptive set theory and type 2 theory of effectivity.”

Antonin Callard is currently preparing a master’s degree in theoretical Computer Science at the ENS Paris-Saclay. He is keen to continue his research career with a PhD in Computer Science. His fields of interest include (not exhaustively) computability theory, topology, symbolic dynamics, and geometry. A copy of the awarded thesis is available here.

Curious about our other news? Subscribe to our news feed, calendar, or newsletter, or follow us on social media.