Tijn de Vos was awarded the “Heinz Zemanek Prize 2026”

He impressed the jury with his outstanding dissertation: “Graph Sparsification in Distributed and Dynamic Settings".

The Heinz Zemanek Prize is a prestigious award from the Austrian Computer Society (OCG), named after the Austrian computer science pioneer (developer of the “Mailüfterl”). It honors exceptional scientific work and is typically awarded every two years in two categories:

•    Category A (Dissertations): Honors outstanding doctoral theses. The prize is endowed with 5,000 euros and may be shared between two nominees.

•    Category B (Other Research Work): Recognizes other major academic achievements such as postdoctoral theses. This category is honored with 2,000 euros.

This year, Tijn de Vos prevailed over four other finalists with his dissertation. His work was completed as part of his studies at the University of Salzburg at the Department of Computer Science under the supervision of Prof. Sebastian Forster.

The dissertation addresses central questions in theoretical computer science and focuses on so-called graph sparsification—methods for simplifying complex networks while preserving important characteristics. In doing so, Tijn de Vos developed new algorithmic approaches for dynamic, distributed, and quantum-inspired models.

Among the most significant results are improvements to approximation algorithms for shortest paths, tree packings, and cut-sparsifiers.

(see https://www.ocg.at/blog/heinz-zemanek-preis-2026-fuer-tijn-de-vos
https://www.ocg.at/hzp ) 

Congratulations!