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. The nominated degrees had to be awarded between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024 (inclusive).

The Outstanding Master Thesis Award

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.

“I first learned about Markov decision processes (MDPs) in an operations research context, where they are used to model machine maintenance. However, they are also used in AI to model robot behavior. I was introduced to Dec-POMDPs (decentralized partially observable MDPs), which generalize MDPs by allowing for multiple cooperating agents and partial observability, through an ELLIS Excellence Fellowship. During this project, I realized that existing exact algorithms for solving Dec-POMDPs could be improved in several directions. This resulted in my first publication and also the first results for my thesis. While these results improved significantly on the state-of-the-art, exact solving for Dec-POMDPs remains limited by the fact that it is a NEXP-hard problem. Therefore, I went further and also developed algorithms yielding good solutions and bounds certifying the quality of these solutions compared to the optimal solution. What I really liked about my thesis project is the wide range of mathematical and algorithmic ideas that could be used to further improve the running time of the solver and the quality of the solutions found.”

Currently, Wietze is a PhD student in the Mathematical Insights into Algorithms for Optimization (MIAO) group under the supervision of Jakob Nordström at Lund University, Sweden and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. 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.

A copy of his thesis is available here.

The Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award

The Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award goes to Hannah Louise Wilk (RWTH Aachen University) for her bachelor thesis “Translation-Based Theorem Proving for First-Order Modal Logic” under the supervision of Gerhard Lakemeyer and Shakil M. Khan.

“I first encountered knowledge bases and specifically the logic in a class called “The Logic of Knowledge Bases,” taught by Prof. Gerhard Lakemeyer. After the semester ended, I had a few questions about a proof from his book with the same title, so I attended his office hours. We ended up discussing not just the lecture topics but also other applications of logic in computer science, which I was really excited about. Then, my thesis advisor, Qihui Feng — a PhD candidate in Prof. Lakemeyer’s Knowledge-Based Systems Group — introduced me to translation-based theorem proving when I was looking for a thesis topic. I was unfamiliar with using translation functions to aid automated theorem proving before, but it integrated several fields of interest to me:  (epistemic) modal logic, SAT solving, multi-agent systems, and some complexity theory as well. The process of writing this thesis was incredibly rewarding, I learned a lot and was able to greatly expand my knowledge in these areas.”

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.

A copy of her thesis is available here.

The VCLA International Student Awards

The annually awarded 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 entail an invitation to the award ceremony (depending on the current COVID-19 situation) 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 in promoting young talent and promising researchers in these areas.

The VCLA Award Committee 2025

• Shqiponja Ahmetaj (chair)
• Alexis de Colnet
• Katalin Fazekas
• Simon Dominik Fink
• Phuc Hung Hoang
• Daniela Kaufmann
• Matthias Lanzinger
• Xinghan Liu
• Anela Lolic (chair)
• Sanja Lukumbuzya
• Xavier Parent
• Adrian Rebola Pardo
• Martin Riener
• Zeynep Saribatur
• Sebastian Skritek
• Martin Tappler

The Former Awardees

• Tikhon Pshenitsyn (Lomonosov Moscow State University): Hypergraph Lambek Calculus
• Nathaniel Collins (University of Colorado Boulder): Count-Free Weisfeiler–Leman and Group Isomorphism
• Lydia Blümel (University of Leipzig): Defining Defense in Abstract Argumentation from Scratch – A Generalizing Approach
• Barbora Šmahlíková (Brno University of Technology): Next Generation of Rank-Based Algorithms for Omega Automata
• Tuukka Korhonen (University of Helsinki): Finding Optimal Tree Decompositions
• Jasper Slusallek (Saarland University): Algorithms and Lower Bounds for Finding (Exact-Weight) Subgraphs of Bounded Treewidth
• Karolina Okrasa (Warsaw University of Technology): Complexity of variants of graph homomorphism problem in selected graph classes
• Antonin Callard (ENS Paris-Saclay): Topological analysis of represented spaces and computable maps, cb0 spaces and non-countably-based spaces
• Martín Muñoz (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile): Descriptive Complexity for Counting Complexity Classes
• Alexej Rotar (TU München): The Satisfiability Problem for Fragments of PCTL
• Tomáš Lamser (Masaryk University): Algorithmic Analysis of Patrolling Games
• Jeremy Liang An Kong (Imperial College London): MCMAS-Dynamic: Symbolic Model Checking Linear Dynamic Logic
• Felix Dörre (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology): Verification of Random Number Generators
• Valeria Vignudelli (University of Bologna): The Discriminating Power of Higher-Order Languages: A Process Algebraic Approach
• Maximilian Schleich (Oxford University): Learning Regression Models over Factorised Joins
• Pablo Muñoz (University of Chile): New Complexity Bounds for Evaluating CRPQs with Path Comparisons
• 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

See the full list here.