VCLA Student Awards
The VCLA International Student Awards aim to recognize and support students all over the world for their outstanding scientific works in the field of Logic and Computer Science in two categories:
- Outstanding Master Thesis Award
- Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award
Contents
- 1 Awards
- 2 Important Dates
- 3 Award Committee 2020
- 4 In Memoriam
- 5
- 6 The fifth edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2020
- 7 The fourth edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2019
- 8 The third edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2018
- 9 The second edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2016
- 10 The first edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2015
Awards
- Outstanding Master Thesis Award: 1200 EUR
- Outstanding Undergraduate Research (Bachelor) Award: 800 EUR
- The winners will be invited to present their work at an award ceremony (previously FLoC 2018, Vienna 2016, Vienna 2015)
Important Dates
The call for nominations for the VCLA International Student Awards 2020 – for the degrees awarded between November 15th, 2018 and December 31st, 2019 (inclusive) – was April 9, 2020. The call is announced here.
Call for Nominations 2021
The Call for Nominations for the VCLA International Awards 2021, for degrees awarded between November 15th, 2019, and December 31st, 2020, will be announced in January 2021, with the preliminary deadline set for March 2021.
Award Committee 2020
- Shqiponja Ahmetaj
- Ezio Bartocci
- Ekaterina Fokina
- Robert Ganian, co-chair
- Benjamin Kiesl
- Martin Lackner
- Bjoern Lellmann
- Anna Lukina
- Laura Nenzi
- Johannes Oetsch
- Magdalena Ortiz, chair
- Revantha Ramanayake, co-chair
- Zeynep G. Saribatur
- Mantas Simkus
- Sebastian Skritek
- Friedrich Slivovsky
- Max Tschaikowski
- Johannes P. Wallner
In Memoriam
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. Another piece of Veith´s legacy, besides Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms, is the Helmut Veith Stipend for Female Master´s Students at TU Wien, Austria. Its mission is to honour the legacy of Helmut Veith in serving the field of Computer science at TU Wien and the society at large by identifying and supporting the female talents who possess the curiosity in the research fields of the late scholar.
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. The winners of the 2020 edition of the VCLA International Student Awards are:
Outstanding Master Thesis Award
- Karolina Okrasa (Warsaw University of Technology) for the master thesis “Complexity of variants of graph homomorphism problem in selected graph classes” under the supervision of Paweł Rzążewski.
Outstanding Undergraduate Research 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 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. The winners of the 2019 edition of the VCLA International Student Awards are:
Outstanding Master Thesis Award
- Martín Muñoz (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) for the master thesis Descriptive Complexity for Counting Complexity Classes under the supervision of Marcelo Arenas and Cristian Riveros.
Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award
- Alexej Rotar (TU München) for the undergraduate thesis The Satisfiability Problem for Fragments of PCTL under the supervision of Jan Kretinsky.
Details and the photo gallery here

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 third edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2018
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. 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).
Read and/or listen to the presentation of his thesis here.
Details and the photo gallery here
The second edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2016
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

Stefan Szeider, Bahareh Afshari, Maximilian Schleich, Valeria Vignudelli, Felix Dörre, Magdalena Ortiz, Igor Konnov, Simone Bova
The first edition of the VCLA International Student Awards 2015
The VCLA 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 Undergraduate Research Award
- Pablo Muñoz, University of Chile, New Complexity Bounds for Evaluating CRPQs with Path Comparisons
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
Details and the photo gallery here

Kuldeep S. Meel, Pablo Munoz, Luke Schaeffer, Sophie Spirkl