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Benjamin Doerr

Senior Researcher, Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Saarbrücken
Professor for Computer Science, Universität des Saarlandes

Department 1: Algorithms and Complexity
Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik
Campus E 14, Room 304
66123 Saarbrücken
Germany

Email: lastname at mpi-inf.mpg.de (please substitute)
Phone: +49 681 9325-1004
Fax: +49 681 9325-1099

Mai--June 2012: Visiting professor at DTU Copenhagen. Use the above email address to contact me.

News

Our Dagstuhl-Seminar "Epidemic Algorithms and Processes: From Theory to Applications" was accepted and will take place January 21-25, 2013.
Our results on rumor spreading in social networks (cf. our STOC paper) have been accepted for publication in the Communications of the ACM.
Session organizer at the 3rd Brazilian-German Frontiers of Science and Technology Symposium [link to the 2011 event]
Theory of Randomized Search Heuristics published! (direct link to table of contents and first chapter)

Research Interests

Probabilistic methods in discrete mathematics and computer science
Dissemination in networks, epidemic algorithms
Guessing games and their connection with computer science
Algorithm Engineering
Quasirandomness
Evolutionary algorithms, randomized search heuristics

Current Activities

Member of the advisory board of the national student competition in computer science (Bundeswettbewerb Informatik)
Coordinator of the research area Foundations and Discrete Mathematics at MPI
Ombudsman of MPI
Member of the DFG priority programme 1307 "Algorithm Engineering", project "Algorithm Engineering for Randomized Rounding Procedures" (2007-2013)
Organizer of the Dagstuhl-Seminar Epidemic Algorithms (21.-25.1.2013, with Robert Elsässer, Pierre Fraigniaud and Rachid Guerraoui) and Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms (1.-5.7.2013, with Nikolaus Hansen, Jonathan Shapiro and Darrel Whitley)
Editorial boards: Information Processing Letters, Journal of Evolutionary Computation
Current Program Committees: FOGA 2013, GECCO 2012, ICALP 2012, SPAA 2012, ICARIS 2012, PPSN 2012
previous activities

PhD Students

Mahmoud Fouz (jointly supervised with Markus Bläser)
Claudio Magni (funded by Siemens AG)
Adrian Neumann

Former PhD Students

Tobias Friedrich (2007)
Edda Happ (2009)
Ariel Levavi (moved to UCSD)
Daniel Johannsen (2010)
Anna Huber (2010)
Markus Wagner (jointly supervised with Frank Neumann, moved to University of Adelaide)
Carola Winzen (2011, supported by a Google Europe Fellowship in Randomized Algorithms)

Teaching

Summer 2012: Guest professor at DTU Copenhagen
Winter 2011/2012: Grundzüge Algorithmen und Datenstrukturen
Previous teaching
I have some nice topics for bachelor, master, diploma and PhD theses.

Offers

We are constantly looking for good people at all levels. See AG1 offers for more details.
You may contact me directly if (i) you plan to work in the field of discrete mathematics and foundations of computer science and (ii) you have convincing arguments for your excellence. To avoid spamming, please make clear why you think that you fulfill these points. To avoid duplicate work, please state to which other members of AG1 you also sent an application. Failure to do so results in your application being considered as spam. To indicate that you read these rules and not just googled my email address, please use as subject of your mail "[your intended subject] after looking at your fantastic homepage". Sorry for the harsh rules, but I get an enormous number of applications, many of which turn out to be sent to the wrong address.
Sorry, our department (AG1) does not offer summer internships, 3 month projects, etc. for external students.