Manuel Lankes receives teampool award for his bachelor's thesis

October 20, 2025

Manuel Lankes, born in 2003, graduated from Rottmayr Gymnasium Laufen in Germany. He is currently working as a project assistant at the University of Salzburg while pursuing a master’s degree in computer science.

In his research, he is continuing to develop the topic from his bachelor’s thesis on accelerating Jaro-Winkler similarity joins and plans to publish the results at a conference in the near future. He has now received the prestigious teampool award for his bachelor’s thesis.

Your bachelor’s thesis examines Jaro-Winkler similarity joins. Can you explain what exactly that means and why it is important?

Nowadays, vast amounts of data are generated every day. If you want to merge this data, for example to identify duplicate entries or link information from different sources, you have to find out which entries refer to the same person, place, or object. The problem is that the data is rarely available in the same form. A name may appear as Müller or Mueller, for example. While it is immediately clear to us humans that these are the same name, to a computer they are two completely different words. This is where the Jaro-Winkler similarity join comes into play. The aim is to find all pairs of words within a given set that are similar. However, with millions of words in a data set, it is far too time-consuming to compare every possible pair individually. The aim of the work was therefore to develop a method that requires fewer comparisons but still delivers the same results.

What motivated you to specialize in the topic of similarity joins?

I wanted to choose a topic that was both theoretically interesting and practically relevant. Data quality plays a major role in almost every company today, and I wanted to understand how computers recognize similarities between data. This is something that is intuitive for us humans, but difficult for machines.

What challenges did you overcome in carrying out your work, and how did you deal with them?

One of the biggest challenges was developing solutions on my own. While you usually get clearly formulated tasks with known solutions in your studies, the solution was unknown in my bachelor’s thesis. Through gradual trial and error and continuous testing, I gradually got closer and closer to a better solution. This iterative process was challenging, but also very instructive because you learn how systematic, scientific work functions.

What new insights did you gain from your research that you hadn’t expected before?

During my research, I learned that it’s not just the idea of an algorithm that matters, but also how the computer actually executes it. Even small adjustments, for example in the use of memory, can greatly reduce the computing time. So, to solve a problem really well, you need both the theoretical idea and the necessary technical knowledge of how to efficiently implement the solution on hardware.

Is there a specific area of computer science that you would like to explore further in the future?

In the future, I would like to continue working in the field of similarity search. This involves not only recognizing similar words, but also comparing more complex objects such as graphs or vectors. Efficient methods for this could be applied in social networks, bioinformatics, or machine learning, among other areas.

Where do you see yourself in five years and what projects would you like to realize by then?

In five years, I would like to be working in an environment where I can further develop my ability to solve complex problems. I find projects that involve analyzing data efficiently, recognizing patterns, and using them to make informed decisions particularly exciting. However, it is important to me that my solutions are not only theoretically elegant, but also quick and useful in practice.

About teampool

teampool personal service gmbh is one of Austria’s leading personnel service providers, specializing in temporary employment, personnel consulting, and engineering. At twelve locations, the team players take care of the needs of their customers, temporary workers, technicians, and applicants. The company stands for enthusiasm and is actively committed to promoting young talent in the field of computer science to meet the demand for skilled workers and drive innovative developments. By awarding scholarships to students at Paris Lodron University Salzburg, teampool not only aims to promote careers, but also to contribute to strengthening Austria as a location for innovation.

This week, teampool personal service gmbh will award scholarships and bonuses to four computer science students at the University of Salzburg. This series showcases our award winners.

Tamara Stangl, MA MA

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