On December 18, recipients of the Helmut Veith Stipend for Female Master’s Students in Computer Science were officially awarded their stipends. The Helmut Veith Stipend is given annually by the Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms (VCLA) to exceptionally talented and motivated female students coming to Vienna from abroad to take up a master’s program in informatics at TU Wien.

VCLA co-chairs Stefan Szeider, who founded the VCLA with his late colleague Helmut Veith, and Agata Ciabattoni, opened the award ceremony with an introduction of the VCLA and its activities. Norbert Mauser, Director of the Wolfgang Pauli Institute, which co-funds the stipends, also offered some opening words and refelcted on Helmut Veith’s legacy and the importance of the stipends for students. The welcome address was followed by a keynote from emeritus Professor Georg Gottlob, in which he outlined important milestones and possible futures for computer science. Jasmin Gründling-Riener, Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs, officially presented the stipends to the winners Tatiana Beliaeva, Esther Mugdan, Ivana Bocevska, and Raquel Panadero Palenzuela.

About the Helmut Veith Stipend Holders

Tatiana Beliaeva has just completed her Bachelor studies of Information Security at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics in Moscow (Bachelor thesis: “Developments for improving the company’s information security based on predictive analytics methods”). Through volunteering and participating at science conferences, she has developed a profound interest in Cybersecurity and Data Science and is now pursuing a Master’s in Data Science at TU Wien Informatics. To finance her studies, Tatiana worked as a junior analyst and specialist in cybersecurity at major companies, and she has been awarded scholarships due to her excellent academic records and her engagement in volunteering and student activities.

Esther Mugdan completed her Bachelor studies in Computer Science at the University of Basel in 2022 (Bachelor thesis: “Optimality Certificates for Classical Planning”). During her studies, she developed a strong interest in theoretical computer science. As she could not specialize in this field in Basel, she decided to move to Austria to pursue a Master’s degree in Logic and Computation at TU Wien Informatics. Esther has been employed as a student teaching assistant in Basel and is currently working on a research project at the Research Unit Databases and Artificial Intelligence. The Helmut Veith Stipend will allow her to focus on her Master’s thesis in the field of scheduling and planning.

Ivana Bocevska graduated from high school in North Macedonia and then commenced her Bachelor studies of Software and Information Engineering at TU Wien Informatics (Bachelor thesis: “Gentzen-type Refutation Systems for Connexive Logics”). Her profound interest in logic and verification has led her to pursue a Master’s degree in Logic and Computation at TU Wien Informatics. Ivana works as Solutions Engineer and as a student research assistant at TU Wien Informatics. She has volunteered as a mentor for the Diary of the Female Computer Scientist and has won a number of awards, most notably the Siemens Award for Excellence in 2020 and 2023.

Raquel Panadero Palenzuela received her Bachelor’s degree in Telecommunication Technologies and Services Engineering with a major in Audiovisual Systems from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Spain. As part of the Erasmus+ program, Raquel moved to Austria, where she developed a machine learning-based approach for predicting cyclist trajectories in urban environments as part of her Bachelor thesis at the Computer Vision Lab at TU Wien Informatics. Subsequently, she was admitted to the Master’s program Data Science at TU Wien, where she looks forward to pursuing AI-driven projects with social impact. At UPC, Raquel was an undergraduate research fellow at the Database Technologies and Information Management Group, and she also interned as a software engineer in the management of large volumes of data in the music industry.