The faculty welcomes Prof. Laszlo Kozma

Prof. László Kozma will take up the Chair of Algorithmics at the Institute of Theoretical Computer Science at TU Dresden on 1 October, representing this subject area in research and teaching. He sees his core research areas primarily in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures. Algorithms with approximation guarantees, dealing with uncertainty in inputs and data structures with adaptive properties are of particular importance.

He graduated from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania in 2006 with a degree in computer science and from the Helsinki University of Technology in Finland (now Aalto University) in 2009 with an M.Sc. in computer science specializing in machine learning and data mining. In 2016, László Kozma completed his doctorate at Saarland University with summa cum laude on the topic of "Binary Search Trees, Rectangles and Patterns". He then spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at Tel Aviv University and Eindhoven University of Technology. Since 2018, he has been teaching and researching current research areas in algorithmics as a Junior Professor in Theoretical Computer Science at Freie Universität Berlin.

Prof. Kozma is very much looking forward to his work at the Chair of Algorithmics: "I have been fascinated by algorithms ever since I learned to program as a child. They are like recipes: they are step-by-step instructions that tell computers how to get from a certain input to a desired output. Algorithms have been around for thousands of years, even before computers existed. For example, algorithms for multiplication or algorithms for finding the greatest common divisor of integers have been studied since ancient times. I find it fascinating that such questions are still relevant today and that algorithms also underlie modern technologies such as searching the internet or finding the shortest route to our destination. It is remarkable how we can use mathematical methods to compare different algorithms and discuss their efficiency, what can be calculated efficiently and what cannot. However, creativity still plays a major role in the development of algorithms and it seems likely that only a small part of the space of efficient algorithms has been explored so far. Exciting times lie ahead!"

We are delighted to welcome Prof. Kozma and wish him every success in all his endeavors!