The 9th edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2025 was concluded in September. Based on the international call for (self-)nominations, the award committee, consisting of sixteen internationally recognized researchers, announced one Outstanding Master Thesis Award and one Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award. As the decision on the Master Thesis Award was a close call yet again, we also want to mention the runner-up in this category. The nominated degrees had to be awarded between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024 (inclusive).

The Outstanding Master Thesis Award goes to Wietze Koops (Radboud University) for his master thesis “A* Algorithms for Dec-POMDPs” under the supervision of Sebastian Junges and Nils Jansen. Wietze is currently a PhD student in the Mathematical Insights into Algorithms for Optimization (MIAO) group under the supervision of Jakob Nordström at Lund University and the University of Copenhagen. His current research interests include combinatorial optimization, in particular pseudo-Boolean optimization, and proof logging. His goal is to develop solvers that are not only fast but also give results that can be proven correct using a formally verified checker.

The Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award goes to Hannah Louise Wilk (WTH Aachen University) for her bachelor’s thesis “Translation-Based Theorem Proving for First-Order Modal Logic” under the supervision of Gerhard Lakemeyer and Shakil M. Khan. Hannah Louise is currently in her second year of the Master of Logic program at the University of Amsterdam, with a focus on logic in computer science. Her main interests include automated theorem proving, type theory, modal logic, and knowledge representation and reasoning. Recently, she has been studying how modal variants of the situation calculus can enhance its expressive power.

If you’re curious about the winners, you can read more about them on the website of the VCLA.

About

The annually awarded Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms (VCLA) International Student Awards for Outstanding Undergraduate and Master Theses in Logic and Computer Science recognize and support students all over the world at the beginning of their scientific career in the field of logic in computer science. The awards are endowed with a monetary prize of €2000. The VCLA Awards are dedicated to computer scientist Helmut Veith and aim to carry on his commitment to promoting young talent and promising researchers in these areas.

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