Hasso-Plattner-Institut
Prof. Dr. Tobias Friedrich
 

Media Collection

The primary output of the Algorithm Engineering group are peer-reviewed research papers in conference proceedings and scientific journals. Unfortunately, most of this work is not very visual. This motivates us to collect some visual appearances of the research group on this page. Most headings and pictures link to their respective source. Recordings of research talks are in English. Most other videos are in German.

Recorded Talks

Due to the SARS-Covid-2 outbreak, many conferences switched to online solutions in order to be held regardless of the situation. As a result, many talks were prerecorded and then presented. Feel free to enjoy the prerecoded talks of our group members one more time!

August 2023: Dr Timo Kötzing gives Interview on Mathematics in Computer Science

Dr. Timo Kötzing gave an interview where he answered question about the relevancy of mathematics for a computer science education. The interview answers questions that prospective bachelor students might have, such as the necessity of prior math knowledge or the style of education they might expect and is available here (in German).

July 2023: Annual group picture

With changing weather conditions, we took group pictures in two different environments this year.

Photo Credit: HPI/ S. Rost
Photo Credit: HPI/ S. Rost

July 2023: PhD awarded to Louise Molitor

Louise Molitor successfully defended his PhD Thesis titled Strategic Residential Segregation and, thus, obtained her PhD title in Computer Science. She was supervised by Tobias Friedrich.

April 2023: PhD awarded to Vanja Doskoč

Vanja Doskoč successfully defended his PhD Thesis titled Mapping Restrictions in Behaviourally Correct Learning and, thus, obtained his PhD title in Computer Science. He was supervised by Tobias Friedrich.

February 2023: PhD awarded to Francesco Quinzan

Francesco Quinzan successfully defended his PhD Thesis titled Combinatorial Problems and Scalability in Artificial Intelligence and, thus, obtained his PhD title in Computer Science. He was supervised by Tobias Friedrich.

January 2023: PhD awarded to Maximilian Katzmann

Maximilian Katzmann successfully defended his PhD Thesis titled About the Analysis of Algorithms on Networks with Underlying Hyperbolic Geometry and, thus, obtained his PhD title in Computer Science. He was supervised by Tobias Friedrich.

September 2022: ALGO '22 hosted by the Algorithm Engineering Group

Hosted by the Algorithm Engineering group, researchers gathered in-person at the Hasso Plattner Institute to participate in the ALGO 2022. This conference consists of a collection of smaller subconferences such as the European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA). Recordings of some of the keynotes of the event can be found on Tele-Task.

Photo Credit: Charles Yunck

July 2022: PhD awarded to Martin Schirneck

Martin Schirneck successfully defended his PhD Thesis on Enumeration Algorithms in Data Profiling, supervised by Tobias Friedrich and advised by Thomas Bläsius. He obtained a PhD title in Computer Science for this achievement.

Photo Credit: T. Friedrich

June 2022: Bachelor project pictures

This year, the Bachelor projects competed for the most creative BP-group-picture. Which is your favourite?

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann
Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

June 2022: Annual group picture

Finally being able to take an on-site picture again, the Algorithm Engineering group chose their future home as background.

Photo Credit: HPI/ K. Herschelmann
Photo Credit: HPI/ K. Herschelmann

April 2022: PhD awarded to Ralf Rothenberger

Ralf Rothenberger successfully defended his PhD Thesis titled Satisfiability Thresholds for Non-Uniform Random k-SAT and, thus, obtained his PhD title in Computer Science. He was supervised by Tobias Friedrich.

Photo Credit: T. Friedrich

March 2022: PhD awarded to Anna Melnichenko

Anna Melnichenko successfully defended her PhD Thesis on Selfish Creation of Realistic Networks, supervised by Tobias Friedrich and advised by Pascal Lenzner. She obtained a PhD title in Computer Science for this achievement.

Photo Credit: HPI/ K. Herschelmann

December 2021: WINE '21 hosted by the Algorithm Engineering Group

Hosted by the Algorithm Engineering group, researchers gathered in the virtual Hasso Plattner Institute to participate in the Conference on Web and Internet Economics '21 (WINE). This conference serves as interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of ideas and results on incentives and computation arising from theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, operations research and economics. Recordings of the event can be found on Tele-Task.

November 2021: PhD awarded to Karen Seidel

Karen Seidel successfully defended her PhD Thesis on Modelling Binary Classification with Computability Theory, thus, obtaining a PhD title in Computer Science. She was supervised by Tobias Friedrich and advised by Timo Kötzing.

Photo Credit: Tobias Friedrich

October 2021: IREBS Symposium on Real Estate

The IREBS Immobilien-Symposium (engl. IREBS Real Estate Symposium) brings together real estate experts from various directions. In its 17th edition, the Algorithm Engineering group contributes a video showing ways compliant with German law to automate every day real estate valuations, intensifying the use of artificial intelligence on the way. This paves the way for an automated and data driven real estate valuation process in the future. This is joint work with the DSV Sparkassenverlag, the Real Estate Management group led by Prof. Wolfgang Schäfers at the International Real Estate Business School (IREBS) of the University of Regensburg, Germany, and the Information System group of the Hasso Plattner Institute led by Prof. Felix Naumann.

Video credit: HPI/IREBS/Timo Lauber (one4two)

July 2021: Bachelor project picture

Traditionally, the Bachlor project group picture is taken around the same time as the other group picture.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

July 2021: Annual group picture

Roughly one year into the pandemic and home office, the annual group picture offers a glimpse of the private life of the Algorithm Engineering group members.

May 2020: HPI podcast on online teaching

The May episode of the HPI Neuland podcast again features a member of the Algorithm Engineering group. Timo Kötzing together with Ralf Teusner (EPIC group) shares insights on how the current restrictions challenge us to develop new and innovative teaching methods.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

May 2020: Bachelor project picture

With enough distance, the Bachlor project group picture could be taken on-site.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

May 2020: Annual group picture

No pandemic is going to keep us from our traditions: This years group picture has a unique character being the first one taken fully online. Of course we made sure to meet all required safety measures in the process...

waving Covid-19 goodbye

February 2020: HPI podcast on mathematical structures on the Web

The February episode of the HPI podcast Neuland - Der HPI-Wissenspodcast  (in German) features an interview with Thomas Bläsius and Tobias Friedrich about mathematical structures on the World Wide Web and how to identify them.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

October 2019: Dagstuhl Seminar on Randomized Search Heuristics

Tobias Friedrich together with Carola Doerr, Carlos M. Fonseca, and Xin Yao organized a Dagstuhl seminar about the Theory of Randomized Optimization Heuristics. The meeting aimed at developing new techniques to tackle the mathematical challenges arising in the analysis of such heuristics and their application to real-world optimization problems.

Photo credit: Schloss Dagstuhl

August 2019: PhD awarded to Martin Krejca

Martin Krejca successfully defended his dissertation on Theoretical Analyses of Univariate Estimation-of-Distribution Algorithms, supervised by Tobias Friedrich and advised by Timo Kötzing, awarding him a PhD in Computer Science.

Photo credit: HPI/C. Yunck

August 2019: FOGA & COSEAL

The HPI hosted the 15th ACM/SIGEVO Workshop on Foundations of Genetic Algorithms (FOGA) from August 26 to 29, co-located with the meeting on Configuration and Selection of Algorithms (COSEAL).

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

August 2019: Talk at HPI New York

Tobias Friedrich gave a talk on The Intrinsic Geometry of Large Networks at the HPI New York. A Tele-Task recoding of his talk can be found here. In his lecture he presented the features that many real-world networks have in common and how these features enable new algorithms.

Photo credits: HPI/N. Schueller

July 2019: Students win the Bi-objective Traveling Thief Competition

The participants of this-semester's Heuristic Optimization seminar wonthe international Bi-objective Traveling Thief Competition at GECCO 2019, scoring almost double the points of the next-closest competitor.

Photo credit: P. Pošík

Prof. Friedrich accepting the 1st prize of the Bi-objective Traveling Thief Competition.

July 2019: German Collegiate Programming Contest

Christopher Weyand and the HPI Competitive Programming student club co-hosted the 2019 German Collegiate Programming Contest. Two of the HPI's teams reached the Top 10.

HPI students competing in the German Collegiate Programming Contest.

June 2019: Graduation ceremony of the U Potsdam

Students associated with the Algorithm Engineering group received academic honors at this-years graduation ceremony of the University of Potsdam. Philipp Fischbeck, Stefan Neubert, and Christopher Weyand (Master) as well as Freya Behrens, Hans Gawendowicz, and Julius Lischeid (Bachelor) were commended for graduating with perfect marks on top of the Class of 2019.

Photo credit: J. Stamm

Photo credit: U Potsdam/E. Kaczynski

June 2019: Closing ceremony of the HPI-Schülerkolleg

Tobias Friedrich handed out the certificates at the closing ceremony of this-years HPI-Schülerkolleg. The Kolleg is a yearly program of the HPI to teach school kids, aged 12-18, from Berlin and Brandenburg basics in computer science.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

April 2019: Bachelor project picture

New year, new... bachelor project picture! Their Bachelor Podium presentation is avaiable at Tele-Task.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

April 2019: Annual group picture

New year, new group picture. In 2019, we continued our tradition of taking a picture with the researchers and students of the chair.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

A picture of the Algorithm Engineering group in 2019.
A picture of the Algorithm Engineering group in 2019.

April 2019: HPI podcast on algorithms

Episode 4 of the HPI podcast Neuland - Der HPI-Wissenspodcast(in German) features an interview with Tobias Friedrich and Timo Kötzing about algorithms and their influence on our everyday life.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

Prof. T. Friedrich in front of the HPI main building.

Feb 2019: Talk by Oliver Brock

Oliver Brock (TU Berlin) is a leading researcher at the interface of robotics and biology. The Algorithm Engineering group invited him to give a talk about Artificial Intelligence: Does It Require A Body? at the HPI Colloquium on February 21, 2019. A recording is available on Tele-TASK.

Feb 2019: Day on Computational Game Theory

The HPI hosted the 6th Day on Computational Game Theory (DCGT) on February 14/15, 2019. The meeting, organized by Tobias Friedrich and Pascal Lenzner, brought together researchers from computer science, operations research and economics, who are working on game theory and social choice.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

Jan 2019: FAU Wintercontest

Christopher Weyand and the HPI Competitive Programming student club hosted a contest site for the FAU Wintercontest 2019 enabling six HPI teams to participate. Two of them, Hexaflexagons and mosHPIt, reached the top 10.

HPI teams competing in the FAU Wintercontest 2019.

Oct 2018: President's prize for best thesis

Maximilian Katzmann was awarded this-years President's prize for best thesis (Examenspreis des Präsidenten) of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena for his master's thesis on Hyperbolic Embeddings for Near-Optimal Greedy Routing.

Photo credit: D. Dallendörfer

Sep 2018: New PhD students receive perfect score

The former HPI Master students Philipp Fischbeck, Stefan Neubert, and Christopher Weyand joined the AE group as PhD students. All three graduated at the top of their class with a perfect grade average of 1.0.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

Jul 2018: AE-Team runner-up in HPI volleyball tourney

The AE-Team, Thomas Bläsius, Tobias Friedrich, Philipp Fischbeck, Andreas Göbel, and Maximilian Katzmann, become the runner-up of the traditional volleyball tournament of the 2018 HPI Summer Party.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

Jul 2018: Best paper award at SAT

Tobias Friedrich and Ralf Rothenberger receive the 2018 best paper award of the International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing (SAT) for their work on the Sharpness of the Satisfiability Threshold for Non-Uniform Random k-SAT.

Photo credit: SAT 2018

May 2018: Bachelor project picture

Also in May, our current bachelor project gets their picture taken.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

May 2018: Annual group picture

Every spring, we take a new group picture including the researchers and students of the chair.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

Oct 2017: Image film

The current research and teaching activities of the chair are depicted in a short video. The image films are available in German and English.

Oct 2017: TV interview on randomness

The regional German television network MDR produced a TV programme on randomness. It aired September 28, 2017 as part of their LexiTV science magazine. The whole programme can be found here (in German). Tobias Friedrich gave a short interview on randomness in computer science.

Sep 2017: Massive open online course

The Algorithm Engineering group participates in the HPI's effort to provide key knowledge in computer science to the general public. Thomas Bläsius, Timo Kötzing, Pascal Lenzner, and Karen Seidel gave a massive open online course on the openHPI platform. The course titled Einführung in die Mathematik der Algorithmik (Introduction to the Mathematics of Algorithms) teaches the basic mathematical concepts of modern-day algorithmics.

Aug 2017: Competitive programming

As a coaching for international programming contests, we conducted a course on (Advanced) Competitive Programming in the summer term 2017. On August 1 the final programming contest of the class took place. In keeping with the tradition of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, the students received colored balloons for every exercise solved.

Jul 2017: HPI summer party

The traditional beach volleyball tournament at the 2017 HPI Summer Party was won by a team made up of members and students of the Algorithm Engineering group. Thomas Bläsius, Fabian Dumke, Philipp Fischbeck, Jennifer Stamm, and Björn Zyska became this-years volleyball champions.

Jul 2017: Toby Walsh visits the HPI

Toby Walsh is a leading researcher in Artificial Intelligence. He visited HPI and gave a talk on "Will AI end jobs, wars, or humanity?" on July 6, 2017. A recording is available on Tele-Task.

Toby Wals talking at the HPI.

May 2017: Bachelor project picture

As another photo-related tradition in May, our bachelor project students get their picture taken.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

May 2017: Annual group picture

Every year in May, we take a new group picture including the researchers and students of the chair.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

Nov 2016: Talk by Timo Kötzing

Timo Kötzing gave a talk general-audience talk on Optimization - From Classic Approaches to Black-Box Heuristics at the HPI Colloquium on November 24, 2016. A recording is available on Tele-TASK.

Timo Kötzing talking at the HPI.

Nov 2016: ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest

The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC) is a team programming competition for university students. The HPI participated for the first time with the team "HexaFlexagons" in the Northwestern Europe Regional Contest (NWERC) in Bath, UK. Our team was recruited and trained in our course Competitive Programming.

Nov 2016: Talk by Rolf Niedermeier

Rolf Niedermeier from TU Berlin is one of the world-wide leading experts in parameterized and multivariate algorithm design and analysis. He gave a talk on Parameterized Algorithmics - On Interactions with Heuristics in the HPI Colloquium on November 10, 2016. A recording is available on Tele-Task.

Rolf Niedermeier talking at the HPI.

Sep 2016: Probabilistic Routing for On-Street Parking Search

Our bachelor project 2015/16 worked on an efficient algorithm to predict good parking spots based on estimated success probabilities of parking attempts from the past. Several local newspapers, radio and TV stations reported on their work.

May 2016: Bachelor project picture

In May, we also take pictures of our bachelor project, which is working on Probabilistic Routing for On-Street Parking Search.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

May 2016: Annual group picture

Every year in May, we take a new group picture including the researchers and students of the chair.

Photo credit: HPI/K. Herschelmann

Dez 2015: Deep Tech Award

The Deep Tech Award honors innovative hardware and systems-related software from Berlin. Tobias Friedrich was part of the jury to award prize money totalling 50.000 Euro.

Nov 2015: Digital Science Match

The Digital Science Match is a platform for connecting research and high-tech economy, organized by The Tagesspiegel. The topics were big data and artificial intelligence, digital sovereignty, digital technologies, predictive simulation and high performance computing. Tobias Friedrich presented the research group.

Aug 2015: Opening Speech Schülerkolleg

The HPI-Schülerkolleg teaches high-school students from Berlin and Brandenburg the basics of programming and robotics. Tobias Friedrich gave the opening speech of the Schülerkolleg 2015/16.

Jun 2014: CEOI in Jena

The Central European Olympiad in Informatics (CEOI) was co-organized by Tobias Friedrich at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and the Carl-Zeiss-Gymnasium Jena. The regional TV station MDR broadcasted a short report on the programming contest.

Spring 2011: FSOC Cooperation with Adelaide

Some group members already cooperated with the HPI Future SOC Lab before the Algorithm Engineering group was found at HPI. The following short video describes a joint project with the University of Adelaide.