Standa Živný Professor of Computer Science Tutorial Fellow at Jesus College University of Oxford Email: standa • zivny @ cs • ox • ac • uk Phone: +44 (0)1865 610724

RESEARCH

My research is in the broad area of Theoretical Computer Science. I am particularly interested in efficient algorithms, computational complexity, combinatorial optimisation, homomorphism problems, and submodularity. Most of my work lies at the intersection of the above, namely it is on (the mathematics of) constraint satisfaction problems (CSP) in its many forms (approximation, counting, decision, optimisation, promise).

Get in touch if you are interested in doing an undergraduate project, a master dissertation, or a PhD with me. I cannot take on interns (except for, occasionally, Oxford undergraduates) and thus generally do not respond to such requests. I'm happy to supervise highly motivated students with a strong background in theoretical computer science and/or (any branch of) mathematics in any area of in algorithms, discrete mathematics, or computational complexity.

I currently serve, among many other roles, as the Director of Teaching.

All my publications are available online. My short CV is available here.

GRANTS

• ERC Consolidator Grant New Approaches to Approximability of Satisfiable Problems (NAASP), 2022-2027, €2.0M
• ERC Starting Grant Power of Algorithms in Discrete Optimisation (PowAlgDO), 2017-2022, €1.4M
• Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF), 2013-2021, £880K

SERVICE

Conferences Programme Committees

• TCS: STOC'24, ITCS'22, MFCS'20, STACS'20, ISAAC'19, ESA'19, MFCS'18, ICALP'18
• AI:   CP'21 (SPC), IJCAI'21 (SPC), AAA'21, IJCAI-PRICAI'20, AAAI'20, IJCAI'19, IJCAI-ECAI'18, AAAI'18, AAAI'17, CP'17, CP'16, IJCAI'15, CP'14, CP'13, DPCP'13, IJCAI'13, AAAI'12, CP'12, DPCP'12 (co-chair), SOFSEM'12, AAAI'11, CP'11, DPCP'11, IJCAI'11, AAAI'10, CP'10, DPCP'10 (co-chair), DPCP'09

Journal Editorial

• SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics (SIDMA), Editor-in-Chief, since 2022
• Constraints, Editorial Board Member, since 2019
• Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (PTA), Editorial Board Member, since 2019
• SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics (SIDMA), Associate Editor, 2017-2022

Organiser

• Dagstuhl Seminar 22201 The Constraint Satisfaction Problem: Complexity and Approximability, 2022 (with M. Grohe, V. Guruswami, and D. Marx)
• Early Career Researchers Workshop, European Computer Science Summit, 2021 (with E. Di Nitto)
• Dagstuhl Seminar 18231 The Constraint Satisfaction Problem: Complexity and Approximability, 2018 (with M. Grohe, V. Guruswami, and D. Marx)
• Doctoral Programme of CP 2012, 2012 (with M. Lombardi)
• Doctoral Programme of CP 2010, 2010 (with P. Nightingale)
• Oxford University Computer Science Student Conference, 2008 (with S. Faily)

Other

• Informatics Europe, Board Member, 2021-2022
• London Mathematical Society (LMS) Computer Science Committee, since 2019
• EurAI PhD Dissertation Award, Panel Member, 2019
• EPSRC Peer Review College, Member, since 2018
• ACP Doctoral Research Award, Panel Member, 2018
• Royal Society International Exchanges Committee, Panel Member, 2015-2020

SUPERVISION AND MENTORING

PhD Students

• Tamio-Vesa Nakajima, since 2021
• Thomas Orton, since 2019 (with V. Kanade and R. Santhanam)
• Alex Brandts, PhD 2022 (→ finance)
• Jacob Focke, PhD 2020 (with L. Goldberg) (→ postdoc at CISPA/MPI, Germany)
• Peter Fulla, PhD 2018 (→ faculty at Chuo University, Japan)
• Andrius Vaicenavičius, 2014-2017 (with P. Jeavons and C. McDiarmid) (→ transferred to pursue a PhD in applied AI)

Postdocs

• Silvia Butti, since 2023
• Lorenzo Ciardo, since 2020
• Caterina Viola, 2020-2022 (→ University of Catania, Italy)
• Jakub Opršal, 2021-2022 (→ IST Austria)
• Shuai Shao, 2020-2021 (→ faculty at USTC, China)
• Michael Kompatscher, 2020-2021 (→ faculty at Charles University, Czechia)
• Balázs Mezei, 2020-2021 (→ finance)
• Marcin Wrochna, 2018-2020 (→ faculty at University of Warsaw, Poland)
• Miguel Romero, 2017-2019 (→ faculty at Adolfo Ibañez University, Chile)
• Clément Carbonnel, 2017-2018 (→ CNRS, France)

BSc and MSc Students

• Leon Balan-Tribus
• Ruxandra-Laura Nanu
• Hong Zhang
• Serban-Ion Cercelescu
• Yichen Huang
• Jannik Kudla, MSc 2022 (distinction)
• Costin Oncescu, MCompSci 2022 (distinction) (with J.F. Henriques)
• Jáchym Solecký, MMathCompSci 2021 (distinction)
• Costin Oncescu, BA 2021 (distinction)
• Eden Pelleg, MSc 2020 (distinction)
• Yunus Ayidin, BA (distinction), 2020
• David Klambauer, MSc 2019 (distinction)
• Silvia Butti, MSc 2018 (distinction)
• Gregor Matl, MSc 2018 (distinction)
• Ragnar Groot Koerkamp, MSc 2017 (distinction)
• Andrius Vaicenavičius, MMath 2014 (Gibbs dissertation prize) (with P. Jeavons)

Research Internships

• Piotr Mitosek, internship funded by the RS, 2020 (with M. Wrochna)
• Joanna Ochremiak, internship funded by the EU, 2015
• Andrius Vaicenavičius, internship funded by the EPSRC, 2013 (with P. Jeavons)

College Lecturers

• Atılım Güneş Baydin, since 2021
• Matthias Lanzinger, since 2021
• Cristina Matache, 2020–2021
• Swaraj Dash, 2019-2021
• Matthew Katzman, 2019-2021
• Reino Niskanen, 2019-2020

TEACHING

Lectures

• Combinatorial Optimisation
• Probability and Computing
• Mathematics for Computer Scientists
• Algorithms for Constraint Satisfaction Problems
• Complexity of and Algorithms for Valued Constraint Satisfaction Problems

Classes

• Probability and Computing
• Computational Complexity
• Automata and Formal Languages
• Advanced Data Structures and Algorithms
• Theory of Data and Knowledge Bases
• Randomised Algorithms
• Data Structures and Algorithms
• Functional Programming
• Introduction to Programming

Tutorials

• Models of Computation
• Design and Analysis of Algorithms
• Algorithms and Data Structures
• Advanced Data Structures and Algorithms
• Linear Algebra
• Logic and Proof
• Discrete Mathematics
• Continuous Mathematics
• Functional programming
• Imperative Programming 1
• Imperative Programming 2
• Introduction to Formal Proof
• Object Oriented Programming
• Digital Systems
• Concurrency

Trivia

My official first name is Stanislav but I go by Standa /'stʌn.da/, which is a commonly used Czech variant/diminutive of Stanislav.

My last name Živný /'ʒiv.ni:/ has two diacritics called the caron and acute accent respectively; this can be achieved in LaTeX by \v{Z}ivn\'{y}.

For various reasons I try to minimise travel but you can always visit me (virtually) in Oxford.