Algorithms, Theory & Logic

The algorithms, theory, and logic theme encompasses our research into the mathematical underpinnings of computer science and the application of foundational ideas to concrete applications in many different areas of computer science. Our research spans both algorithms, decidability, and complexity as well as logic, semantics, and proof theory.

News

MPI researcher receives Outstanding Paper Award at ICLR 2026

April 2026

MPI-SWS Max Planck Fellow Anthony W. Lin has received one of only two Outstanding Paper Awards at ICLR 2026, for his paper "Transformers are Inherently Succinct."

Max Planck researchers publish 20 papers at LICS/ICALP 2026

April 2026

Max Planck researchers have co-authored 20 papers at LICS 2026 and ICALP 2026, two of the top conferences in theoretical computer science.

MPI-SWS researchers receive 2026 EATCS Best Paper award

April 2026

MPI-SWS researchers have received the 2026 EATCS best paper award for their paper "The value problem for weighted timed games with two clocks is undecidable."

Joël Ouaknine appointed EATCS Fellow

March 2026

Joël Ouaknine was appointed as a Fellow by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science, for his fundamental contributions to the algorithmic analysis of dynamical systems and related formalisms.

Toghrul Karimov receives 2025 Ackermann Award

November 2025

Toghrul Karimov has won the 2025 Ackermann Award, presented annually to the author of an exceptional doctoral dissertation in the area of computer science logic.

All News

Recent software

POROUS

An invariant builder and reachability checker for affine programs.

Skolem

Solves the Skolem Problem for simple integer linear recurrence sequences.

Papers

Incremental Data-Driven Policy Synthesis via Game Abstractions.

Irmak Saglam, Mahdi Nazeri, Alessandro Abate, Sadegh Soudjani, Anne-Kathrin Schmuck.
AAAI 2026.

Universal Safety Controllers with Learned Prophecies.

Bernd Finkbeiner, Niklas Metzger, Satya Prakash Nayak, Anne-Kathrin Schmuck.
AAAI 2026.

Bounded Treewidth, Multiple Context-Free Grammars, and Downward Closures.

C. Aiswarya, Pascal Baumann, Prakash Saivasan, Lia Schütze, Georg Zetzsche.
POPL 2026.

General Decidability Results for Systems with Continuous Counters.

A. R. Balasubramanian, Matthew Hague, Rupak Majumdar, Ramanathan S. Thinniyam, Georg Zetzsche.
POPL 2026.

Concurrent Permissive Strategy Templates.

Ashwani Anand, Christel Baier, Calvin Chau, Sascha Klüppelholz, Ali Mirzaei, Satya Prakash Nayak, Anne-Kathrin Schmuck.
TACAS 2026.

All papers

People

Faculty

Derek Dreyer

Deepak Garg

Rupak Majumdar

Joel Ouaknine

Anne-Kathrin Schmuck

Viktor Vafeiadis

Georg Zetzsche

Research Group Leaders

Aditya Potukuchi

Sadegh Soudjani

Mikhail Starchak

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