Michael Benedikt: Home Page

		Michael Benedikt Professor of Computer Science Department of Computer Science, Oxford University Governing Body Fellow of University College Director of the MSC in Advanced Computer Science . Supplementary program information can be found here .
		Office: 355 Wolfson Building Address: Dept. of Computer Science, Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QD, UK Tel: +44 (0)1865 273 818 Email: michael.benedikt@cs.ox.ac.uk

Short Bio

RECENT PREPRINTS

Logical perspectives on learning statistical classes (with Aaron Anderson)
Model Equivalence (with Ehud Hrushovski),
Enforcing constraints on Neural Networks (with Zsolt Zombori, Agapi Rissaki, Kristof Szabo, and Wolfgang Gattenbauer), conditionally accepted in JMLR ,
Graph Neural Networks and Asympotic Analysis of Queries on Random Graphs (with Sam Adam-Day, Ismail Ceylan, and Ben Finkelshtein)
Expressiveness of Graph Query Languages (with Anthony Lin and Di-De Yen)

Almost Surely Asymptotically Constant Graph Neural Networks @ NeurIPS 2024 ,
Monotone Rewritability and the Analysis of Queries, Views, and Rules @ KR 2024 .
Decidability of Graph Neural Networks via Logical Characterizations @ ICALP 2024 .
Two variable logic with ultimately periodic counting To appear in SIAM Journal Of Computation arxiv version here .
The complexity of Presburger arithmetic with power or powers @ ICALP 2023 .
Embedded finite models Beyond Restricted Quantifier Collapse @ LICS 2023 .
Synthesizing nested relational queries from implicit specifications @PODS 2023 .
Datalog Rewriting for Guarded TGDs . @Datalog 2.0, 2022 .
Rewriting the infinite chase @VLDB 22 .
PDQ 2.0: Flexible Infrastructure for Integrating Reasoning and Query Planning. @ SIGMOD Record .
TraNCE: Transforming Nested Collections Efficiently @ VLDB 21.
Generating collection transformations from proofs @ POPL 21 .
Scalable querying of nested data @ VLDB 20.
Balancing Expressiveness and Inexpressiveness in View Design @ KR 20.
On Monotonic Determinacy and Rewritability for Recursive Queries and Views. @ PODS 20
Two variable logic with ultimately periodic counting. @ ICALP 20
Reasoning about Disclosure in Data Integration in the Presence of Source Constraints @ IJCAI 19 .
Goal-Driven Query Answering for Existential Rules with Equality @ AAAI 18 .
How Can Reasonser Simplify Database Querying (And Why Haven't They Done It Yet)? @ Invited Paper: PODS 18 .
When Can We Answer Queries Using Result-bounded Data Interfaces? @ PODS 18 .
Query Reformulation: Theory and Pratice @ IJCAI 17 .
Characterizing Definability in Decidable Fixpoint Logics @ ICALP 17 (Best Paper Award for Track B).
Polynomial Automata: Zeroness and applications @ LICS 17 .
Benchmarking the Chase @ PODS 17 . Online version of Paper. Github
Source Information Disclosure in Ontology based Data Integration @ AAAI 17 . Technical report version (draft)
Our book on the interpolation-based approarch to query reformulation is now available at Morgan Claypool! See Morgan Claypool's site for more info .
SPARQLByE: Querying RDF data by example @ VLDB 16 .
Query answering with transitive and linearly-ordered data @ IJCAI 16 .
Query Visible and Invisible Information @ LICS 16 . There is an arxiv version and we have some additional recent results .
A step up in expressiveness of decidable fixpoint logics @ LICS 16 .
EPSRC Established Careeer Fellowship 2015-2020
Combining Existential Rules and Description Logics @ IJCAI 15 .
The Complexity of Boundedness for Guarded Logics @ LICS 15 .
Interpolation with Decidable Fixpoint Logics @ LICS 15 .
Finite Open World Querying with Number Restrictions @ LICS 15 .
Querying with Access Patterns and Integrity Constraints @ VLDB 15 .

Research: Artificial Intelligence, Data management (e.g. managing and querying Web data, querying social networks, integrity constraint development and management); computational logic and its connections to databases and verification; model theory; theoretical computer science
Publications (see DBLP)
Software
Funding

Teaching
In the coming year, I will be teaching Automata, Logic, and Games.
Information on the MSC in Advanced Computer Science at Oxford

I am currently serving as the Director of the MSC in Advanced Computer Science. For general enquiries, students should write to graduate.admissions@cs.ox.ac.uk
Some basic information on the program can be found here:

The university's description of our MSC in Advanced CS is available on this webpage .

For current students, pointers to various handbooks and regulations can be found here .

Prospective MSC students may want to review information from our virtual open day .

Both current and prospective students may also want to look at example MSC theses. You can find pointers to both recent and older MSC theses here .

Professional Activities
Recent Professional Committees: ICALP 2026 (Program chair of Track B) Simons Institute Workshop on Graph Learning Meets Theoretical Computer Science (Co-organizer)
Dagstuhl Seminar 202401033 ``Logic and Neural Networks'' (Co-organizer)
EDBT 2025 (Program committee member) ICALP 2025 (Program committee member) IJCAI 2024 (Senior Program Committee Member) UAI 2024 (Program Committee Member) EDBT 2024 (Program committee member) Alberto Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award (Chair of Panel), UAI 2023 (Progam Committee Member) EDBT 23 (Program committee member) EACSL Ackermann Award (Panel Member), LICS 22 (Program Committee Member and Awards Subcommittee Member), UAI 2022 (Progam Committee Member) IJCAI 19 (Senior Program Committee Member), LICS 18 (Program Commitee Member), Journal of Symbolic Logic (Editorial Board), Journal of Computer and System Sciences (Associate Editor), Association For Symbolic Logic (Chair of Committee on Logic in Europe), European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (Steering committee member), European Association for Computer Science Logic (Executive committee member)
Recent/Upcoming Keynote Talks: Alberto Mendelzon Workshop (AMW 2024) , Craig Interpolation and Beth Definability (CIBD 2024) , The Decision Problem in First-Order Logic (DPFO2023) , Reachability Problems (RP 2022) , GF@25, 2022 , TABLEAUX/FROCOS 2021 , Highlights of Logic, Games, and Automata 2020 , Principles of Database Systems (PODS 2018) ,

Research Group
PhD Students: Chia-Hsuan Lu
Postdocs: Sam Adam-Day
Former Members