I have been nominated for the EATCS Council elections. I am honored by the nomination, and I would be happy to do my share to help the association improving the situation for TCS in Europe.

This is a challenging yet promising time for theoretical computer science (TCS). Worldwide, sustained funding for foundational research is increasingly difficult to secure. At the same time, the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning makes the essential role of rigorous theoretical methods and provable guarantees clearer than ever. Europe has a unique opportunity to strengthen its position as a leading center for TCS precisely because these skills and approaches are now more necessary than ever. Over the past years, I have tried to support our community by strengthening our European conferences. For example, through my work with DISC, one of the flagship events in distributed computing where I fostered the creation of three new workshops co-located with DISC. I think co-located workshops make our conferences much more attractive, especially for young reasearchers. As such, I am also strongly in support of initiatives like Highlights of algorithms (HALG) or the IGAFIT workshop AlgPie (for PostDocs in Europe), where I was one of the founding organizers.

If elected to the Council, I would be glad to work with colleagues in the EATCS to follow this path and to contribute to the following aims:

• Strengthening Europe’s role in TCS: supporting initiatives that help Europe remain a vibrant hub for theoretical advances with global reach.
• Visibility within and beyond computer science: helping to highlight the contributions of TCS to other areas of computing and to society.
• Supporting early-career researchers: encouraging mentoring, networking, and collaboration to make Europe an attractive place for young scientists.
• Conference fees: Conference fees have been increasing drastically in Post Covid times. While this is not a hurdle for many senior researchers, it often limits the possibilities for students. I plan to promote student discounts and the organization of accompanying workshops to make it more compelling for advisors to send students to a venue.
• Supporting climate-conscious research practices (Updated 2025-10-09): I aim to encourage local and co-located events that can be reached by train (from Europe) and to promote sustainable travel planning, such as combining conference trips with research visits. My host institution subsidizes train travel, often making it the cheapest option, and such models can inspire broader efforts. I also support initiatives such as HALG (Highlights of Algorithms), which give students in Europe the opportunity to engage with the best recent results from STOC, FOCS, and SODA without the need for overseas travel. These ideas are in line with the findings of the recent EATCS report on conference locations and climate impact by Tijn de Vos and Laurent Feuilloley (SIGACT News, 2024), which concluded that conference sites in the center of Europe tend to minimize the overall carbon footprint of participants. Co-locating more events on a broader scale (e.g., SPAA, ICALP, PODC in 2026) can strengthen the community while reducing travel needs; I plan to support these measures. I am also in favor of making in-person attendance optional in justified climate-related cases, as long as this does not come at the cost of opportunities for young researchers.

I see this nomination as an opportunity to continue serving the community that has shaped my own research career.

Bio:

I am a Professor of Computer Science at TU Graz and head of the newly founded Institute of Algorithms and Theory. My research focuses on all kinds of sublinear algorithms with a focus on distributed graph algorithms. I have received the ACM PODC/ DISC Doctoral Dissertation Award, the GI Dissertation Award, and best paper awards at DISC 2016 and 2017, and SIROCCO. I am very active in shaping the community towards a better place for young talents and was member of the OPODIS steering committee and I have been member of the DISC steering committee.

Website: https://academia.yannicmaus.de/