Rektor Peter Skalicky: "ERC grants are statements of outstanding academic performance. TU Wien is proud of these award winners who have proven themselves in the face of strong international competition, and we shall make every effort to support them!" TU Wien already has one Advanced Researcher Grant award winner – physicist Professor Silke Bühler-Paschen (Quantum Criticality – The Puzzle of Multiple Energy Scales (QuantumPuzzle), opens an external URL in a new window).

Gerald Steinhardt, Dean of the Faculty of Informatics, is delighted about both successes: "The awarding of these ERC grants demonstrates that the Faculty of Informatics has an excellent position on the international stage."

Georg Gottlob has been a professor at the Institute of Information Systems at TU Wien since 1988. In 2006, he left Vienna for the University of Oxford, where he is now a professor in computing science. However, he continues in his capacity as part-time professor within the faculty and his institute and will therefore also make use of the ERC grant to develop and intensify scientific cooperation between TU Wien's Faculty of Informatics and the University of Oxford.

With regard to the recent call for applications, Stefan Szeider has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant, a form of grant equivalent to the Austrian Science Fund's START programme at a European level. The Faculty of Informatics succeeded in appointing Szeider to TU Wien, where has been undertaking his academic work since the start of November. His research involves the development of efficient algorithms for solving computational problems. His particular focus is on problems with artificial intelligence and problems in graphs and networks.

Short biography of Georg Gottlob

Professor Georg Gottlob is an ACM Fellow, Wittgenstein Award winner and a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences "Leopoldina" and the Academia Europaea (London). Gottlob was head of the first CD laboratory (expert systems) of the Christian Doppler Research Association in Austria, and is the co-founder of Lixto Software GmbH.

Gottlob's research is chiefly concerned with database theory, particularly with what are known as query languages, as well as information processing on the web and complexity theory. As an ACM Fellow, he was recognised for his achievements in the field of the "theory of artificial intelligence and database systems".

After completing his doctorate at TU Wien, Gottlob worked for the Italian National Research Council in Genoa and at the Politecnico di Milano, as well as being a McKay visiting professor at UC Berkeley. He has been invited to speak at many international conferences, is the editor responsible for the academic journal "Artificial Intelligence Communications" and is an associate editor of international academic journals.

Short biography of Stefan Szeider

After completing his degree in logistics at the University of Vienna, Stefan Szeider worked at the Institute for Discrete Mathematics at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and was awarded his doctorate in mathematics by the University of Vienna in 2001. He subsequently obtained an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship and moved to Canada for two years, where he worked at the University of Toronto in the research group led by Professor Stephen A. Cook (the founder of the theory of NP completeness).

Since 2004, he has been teaching and continuing his research at the University of Durham in Great Britain as a member of one of Europe's leading research groups on algorithms and complexity. He has led various research projects there and became a reader in computer science in 2009.

Szeider's research is principally concerned with computational problems and their solution using efficient algorithms. One area of focus is the application of methods of discrete mathematics to various problems posed by artificial intelligence and logic.

More specifically, his main research topics include satisfiability, parameterised algorithms, problems in graphs and networks and evidence complexity. Szeider has published widely and has been invited to speak at various international conferences and research institutes.

ERC Grants

The ERC , opens an external URL in a new windowhas been calling for applications for the renowned Advanced Investigator Grants and Starting Independent Researcher Grants at a European level since 2008. Both schemes broadly correspond to the Wittgenstein Award and the Austrian Science Fund's START programme.

Contact

Dipl.-Ing. Karin Hraby
Zentrum für Koordination & Kommunikation of the Faculty of Informatics
Phone: +43 1 58801 19569
Mobile: +43 664 605 88 19 50
Email: karin.hraby@tuwien.ac.at
Web: https://www.informatik.tuwien.ac.at, opens an external URL in a new window

Univ. Prof. Dr. Georg Gottlob
TU Wien, Institute für Information Systems Engineering
Email: gottlob@dbai.tuwien.ac.at
Phone: +44 1865 28 35 04

Dr. Stefan Szeider
TU Wien, Institute für Information Systems Engineering
Email: stefan@szeider.net
Phone: +43 699 11 15 35 58