Prof. Dr. Susanne Albers

Professor for Algorithms and Complexity in the Department of Computer Science at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

Susanne Albers studied mathematics, computer science and business administration at the university of Osnabrück. In 1993 she received her PhD degree from the University of Saarland as member of the first Research Training Group in Computer Science funded by the German Research Foundation. Thereafter she worked as research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrücken. In 1998/1999, she was a visiting professor at Freie Universität Berlin and at the University of Paderborn.

After several research stays in Japan, the United States and various European countries, she obtained the venia legendi at the age of 33 and became an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Dortmund. From 2001 to 2009 she was a Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Freiburg. Since June 2009 she has been holding the Chair for Algorithms and Complexity in the Department of Computer Science at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

In 2008 Susanne Albers was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, the highest honor in German research. The award includes a funding of 2.5 million Euros to be invested into research. Already in 1993 she received the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society, recognizing outstanding scientific achievements in her PhD thesis.

Her research focus

Susanne Albers' area of research in computer science is the design and analysis of efficient algorithms, i.e. effective methods for solving problems using a computer. She is internationally renowned for her work on online and approximation algorithms. While classical algorithm theory assumes that all relevant data is available initially, before any calculation starts, many computational problems arising in practice are inherently online. In an online setting, relevant data arrives incrementally over time. Online algorithms are able to deal with the handicap of not knowing the future and generate solutions having a provably good performance.

Another - application oriented - research focus of Susanne Albers is the investigation of algorithmic problems arising in large networks such as the Internet. Moreover, she explores energy efficient algorithms that are able to reduce energy consumption in computer systems. Her recent research also addresses the new field of algorithmic game theory with emphasis on network design and analysis.

Contact: Prof. Dr. Susanne Albers, e-mail, tel. : +49 (0)30 2093-3192, www2.informatik.hu-berlin.de/alkox/