Kevin Schewior visited Lisa Hellerstein at the Tandon School of Engineering of New York University for about two months as part of his sabbatical. The visit started right after ITCS 2024, at which a paper co-authored by Lisa and Kevin was presented. In New York, they started several new projects on stochastic Boolean function evaluation, on which they are planning to continue in the next months. Kevin also gave a talk on recent advances in prophet inequalities in the NYU Theory Seminar, held jointly by the Courant Theoretical Computer Science Group and the Tandon Algorithms and Foundations Group.

Together with Kim Skak Larsen, Joan Boyar attended D³A - Danish Digitalization, Data Science and AI 1.0 at Nyborg Strand Hotel & Conference, where she gave the talk Paging with Succinct Predictions. The talk represented joint work with Kim as well as Lene M. Favrholdt, also from SDU, together with other researchers from different locations in Europe. The results had previously been presented at the 2023 ICML. Joan's gave her talk in the Trends in Algorithms Research in Denmark workshop on the first afternoon.

The online algorithms group organized this fall's ARCO workshop. A record high number of participants (55 in all) signed up for the event. ARCO (Algorithmic Research: Cooperation around Øresund) is a network for exchanging research within algorithms and for promoting general interest in this research area within the Øresund Region (interpreted rather broadly).

It was a full day, starting at 9:30 with croissants and ending with pizzas at 17:30, with excellent talks and great interaction during coffee, lunch, and dinner breaks. All meals and refreshments were generously sponsored by DIREC.

Martin Böhm from the University of Wrocław visited Kevin Schewior for a week and worked with him in particular, but also with Joan Boyar, Lene Favrholdt, and Kim Skak Larsen from the online algorithms group. Martin gave a very well attended research seminar in the middle of the week, where he discussed interesting follow-up work to load balancing challenges from his dissertation.

The algorithms section had three papers at the European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA), the European top conference on algorithms, which took place in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The papers were A Parameterized Algorithm for Vertex Connectivity Survivable Network Design Problem with Uniform Demands (Jørgen Bang-Jensen, Kristine Vitting Klinkby, Pranabendu Misra, Saket Saurabh), Improved Approximation Algorithms for the Expanding Search Problem (Svenja Griesbach, Felix Hommelsheim, Max Klimm, Kevin Schewior), and Threshold Testing and Semi-Online Prophet Inequalities (Martin Hoefer, Kevin Schewior). Kevin Schewior attended the conference and gave the talk on prophet inequalities.

Joan Boyar was an invited speaker at this year's MFCS - the 48th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science, held at the INP in Bordeaux, France. Joan introduced the audience to Online Algorithms with Predictions, a topic she has recently and naturally progressed into after her succesful endeavors in advice complexity.

Magnus Berg gave his first conference talk at the 18th Algorithms and Data Structures Symposium (WADS), which was held at Concordia University in Montreal. There were several interested researchers asking questions following the talk and many positive remarks later during the conference. The talk was based on the accepted paper, Online Minimum Spanning Trees with Weight Predictions, presenting joint work with Joan Boyar, Lene M. Favrholdt, and Kim S. Larsen.

During the month of May, Joan Boyar and Kim Skak Larsen visited the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. While there, they both gave talks on some of their recent work on online algorithms with predictions, dealing with scheduling and paging, to be presented at WADS and ICML this summer. At the University of Toronto, they worked with Faith Ellen and Allan Borodin. In addition, Shahin Kamali came in from York University and Denis Pankratov came in from Concordia University to collaborate on new projects. It will be a challenge to find the time to make progress on the many new research projects when teaching starts!

ARCO, an acronym for Algorithmic Research Cooperation around Øresund, is a network for promoting collaboration in research within algorithms around the Øresund Region. This time, the ARCO meeting was held at KU and attended by Magnus Berg, Joan Boyar, Lene Favrholdt, and Kim Skak Larsen. Magnus gave his first talk as a Ph.D. student on Online Minimum Spanning Trees with Weight Predictions, a result which is also to be presented at the 18th International Algorithms and Data Structures Symposium (WADS). His presentation generated a lot of interest, the most follow-up questions of any of the presentations, and many of our colleagues complimented Magnus afterwards for his nice talk.

Kevin Schewior attended the Dagstuhl Seminar on Scheduling, organized by Nicole Megow (Bremen), Benjamin Moseley (CMU), David Shmoys (Cornell), Ola Svensson (EPFL), and Sergei Vassilvitskii (Google). About 50 researchers participated, among them a lot of big names from the scheduling community. This edition of the seminar series had a special focus on beyond-the-worst-case algorithm design and approaches that incorporate learning. Kevin gave a short talk on Evaluating Stochastic Score functions.

ARCO, an acronym for Algorithmic Research Cooperation around Øresund, is a network for promoting collaboration in research within algorithms around the Øresund Region. This time, the ARCO meeting was held at ITU and attended by Kim Skak Larsen, Joan Boyar, Kevin Schewior, Simon Skjernaa Erfurth, Magnus Berg, and Rolf Fagerberg. Kevin gave a talk on The Itinerant List Update Problem.

Joan Boyar and Kim Skak Larsen joined the 24-hour DDC meeting at Storebælt Sinatur Hotel & Konference, together with their Ph.D. student, Simon Skjernaa Erfurth. We enjoyed an informative meeting, updating us on the status of the various projects, while time was also reserved for discussions on how the Digital Democracy Center could develop.

The Teaching Prize at SDU is awarded once a year to one person. Given that SDU has a few thousand employees, getting the award is quite an achievement! Lene receives the prize for her special ability to make very complex material understandable. The prize is in recognition of her didactic approach, described by the students as elegant, intuitive, attentive, accommodating, and entertaining. Lene is in the middle with the Dean of the Faculty of Science on the left and the Vice-Chancellor on the right.

Computer scientists from all over Denmark met for the second DIREC meeting at Helnan Hotel Marselis in Aarhus. As last time, the meeting included an excellent algorithms session, and this time Kevin Schewior gave a talk on Recent Advances in I.I.D. Prophet Inequalities. From our algorithms group, Kim Skak Larsen, Joan Boyar, Jakob Lykke Andersen, and Rolf Fagerberg also attended the meeting.

Kevin Schewior attended the Workshop on Approximation and Online Algorithms (WAOA) 2022. The workshop was part of ALGO 2022 in Potsdam, Germany, which had about 400 participants and several keynote speakers. Kevin gave a talk on Knapsack Secretary Through Boosting, a paper with his former Master's student Moritz Stinzendörfer (now TU Kaiserslautern), Andreas Abels (RWTH Aachen), and Leon Ladewig (formerly TU Munich), and chaired one of the sessions.

We are excited to welcome Magnus Berg into our group as a Ph.D. student. He comes with an MS in mathematics and a side topic in computer science. Magnus will work on the project Online Algorithms with Predictions, as part of the national undertaking of Digital Research Centre Denmark (DIREC), under the Innovation Fund Denmark. The project is carried out in collaboration with ITU. As the main advisor, Kim Skak Larsen is joint by Lene Favrholdt and Melih Kandemir. Joan Boyar will also function as an advisor for the online part on equal terms with Kim and Lene, while Nutan Limaye from ITU and Melih will advise on connections to machine learning from different points of view.

The Faculty of Science Teaching Prize is awarded each year to one employee who has excelled at motivational and committed teaching of the highest quality. In accordance with tradition, Lene Monrad Favrholdt was nominated by her students. Students say Lene is one of the best educators they have met, with an ability to make complex mathematical concepts easy to understand. Teaching math on the first year to students who don't know yet where and why they need it is a special challenge, and Lene is recognized for her enormous effort and focus on the students. During corona times, she made an extra effort of giving on-site lectures while arranging that students forced to stay home could also both follow and ask questions on-line. Lene is second from the left and the dean is speaking.

Rob van Stee from the University of Siegen visits the online algorithms group for a week. Rob is a friend of the department who has visited several times over the years, starting as a Ph.D. student. He has also served on thesis assessment committees for the department etc. Rob will give a talk in the Tuesday colloquium slot.

Lene Favrholdt, Joan Boyar, and Kim Skak Larsen attended SWAT 2022 - 18th Scandinavian Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory, for the first time held physically in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands. Lene presented our joint paper, Joan chaired one of the sessions, and Kim leaned back and enjoyed the performances. ツ

Lene Favrholdt gave a keynote address on Paging and Packing with Possibly Precise Predictions at the 15th Workshop on Models and Algorithms for Planning and Scheduling (MAPSP) at the Oropa Sanctuary in Italy. At the same workshop, Kevin Schewior gave a contributed talk on The High-Dimensional Cow-Path Problem.

The chair of the program committee was Leah Epstein (U Haifa). The other keynote speakers were Alessandro Agnetis (U Siena), Thomas Erlebach (U Durham), and Alberto Marchetti-Spaccamela (La Sapienza). In total, there were more than 100 participants. MAPSP is known for a large number of high-quality talks but also its openness and the allotted time for discussions, e.g., during the social event, which in this case was a hike through meadows with cows to a mountain lake. Kirk Pruhs (U Pittsburgh) maintains a website on the history of the workshop.

Kevin Schewior was invited to and attended the Workshop on New Challenges in Scheduling Theory in Aussois, France. The program committee consisted of Jacek Blazewicz (TU Poznan), Michael Bender (Stony Brook), Erwin Pesch (U Siegen), Kirk Pruhs (U Pittsburgh), Denis Trystam (Grenoble INP), and Guochan Zhang (Zhejiang U). The workshop had about 80 participants. A few of them attended online, but the vast majority attended on site. There were about 50 talks on the theory and practice of scheduling, many of which triggered refreshing in-person discussions during the ample time left free aside of the talks and during the cheese fondue. Kevin gave a talk about his recent work on Stochastic Probing with Increasing Precision.

Joan Boyar Lene Favrholdt, and Kim Skak Larsen were invited to the Workshop on Algorithms with Predictions, held at the Bernoulli Center for Fundamental Studies at EPFL in picturesque Lausanne, Switzerland. Joan and Lene gave a well-received invited talk together surveying Online Algorithms with Advice, and Kim was on the panel, together with Sid Banerjee (Cornell), Daniel Dadush (CWI), Anupam Gupta (Carnegie Mellon), and Seffi Naor (Technion), to discuss the current issues and priorities in this developing area. The workshop was very enjoyable with good talks and lots of time for networking and initiating research collaboration.

From our online algorithms group, Joan Boyar and Kim Skak Larsen joined the DDC meeting at Nyborg Strand Hotel, together with their Ph.D. student, Simon Skjernaa Erfurth. We enjoyed a well-planned and fruitful meeting, discussing the challenges that the Digital Democracy Center should undertake and the progress that has been made so far. The format of this 24 hour meeting, going from lunch to lunch, gave us the possibility of also interacting on a more social level in the evening, getting to know each other better.

We are excited to welcome Kevin Schewior as assistant professor in the algorithms group. Kevin is interested in uncertainty, approximation algorithms, and algorithmic problems more generally. Kevin got his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Mathematics of Technische Universität Berlin in 2016. He has held postdoc positions in Germany but also in Santiago and Paris. We look forward to working with Kevin!

After such a long time with corona lockdowns and online meetings, it was great to meet in person with the many Danish computer scientists and the excellent algorithms people in particular. From our online algorithms group, Kim Skak Larsen, Joan Boyar, and Lene Favrholdt, joined the DIREC meeting at picturesque Nyborg Strand Hotel. The first day, the primary focus was on research, while the second day contained discussions related to student recruitment and retainment, diversity, societal needs, start-up companies, funding, etc.

Results on priority algorithms with advice, coauthored by Joan Boyar and Kim Skak Larsen got very good coverage at OLAWA - Online Algorithms with Advice and Related Models, a virtual satelite workshop of MFCS - the 45th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science. Joan gave the talk on the second part of the paper.

The online algorithms group receives a grant from FNU for the project Online Algorithms and with Machine Learning Predictors. We are excited to get started on this new direction of research.