Curriculum Vitae of Ola Nils Anders Svensson Contact Information Date of Birth Gender Citizenship Languages Research Interests Current Position Positions and Visits EPFL Phone: +41 21 693 1204 1015 Lausanne E-mail: ola.svensson@epfl.ch Switzerland Homepage: http://algo.epfl.ch/ osven/ 15 November 1981 Male Swedish Swedish (native), English (fluently), French (some) and Italian (some). Approximation and exact algorithms, combinatorial optimization, complexity theory, hardness of approximation, operations research, scheduling École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland Postdoctoral position hosted by Prof. Amin Shokrollahi. July 2011-2012 Royal Institute of Technology - KTH, Stockholm, Sweden Postdoctoral position hosted by Prof. Johan Håstad. September 2009- June 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT, Cambridge, USA Research visit hosted by Prof. Andreas S. Schulz. April-October, 6 months, 2008 Education IDSIA affiliated to Universitá della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland PhD., Computer Science, June, 2009 PhD Thesis Topic: Approximability of some classical graph and scheduling problems Supervisor: Dr. Monaldo Mastrolilli Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden M.S., Computer Science, May, 2005 Master Thesis Topic: Linear programming and linear complementarity methods for infinite games Supervisor: Dr. Sergei Vorobyov Distinctions Best paper award at the symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 2011 Best poster paper award at the European Summer School on Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI), 2005 Two Uppsala Mathematical Society awards for meritorious exams, 2002-2003 Scholarship for excellent results in mathematics and physics at Forsmarksskola, 2000 Research Grants I wrote and acquired the following scientific project: Scheduling with Precedence Constraints, 2008. A Swiss National Foundation project funding a six month visit to MIT, where I studied the approximability of scheduling problems together with my host Professor Andreas S. Schulz. I contributed to write and acquire the following scientific project: Approximation Algorithms for Machine Scheduling Through Theory and Experiments III, 2008. A Swiss National Foundation project of three years concerning the study of approximation algorithms and inapproximability results applied to scheduling problems. Emphasis is given to the notorious ten open problems in algorithmic scheduling theory. Total grant 425.000 SFr.
Scientific Commissions Invited Talks Supervision of Students Teaching Experience Program Committees. conferences: This academic year, I serve on the program committees of the following - Design and Analysis Track of the 20th European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2012). - The 18th Computing: the Australasian Theory Symposium (CATS 2012). Refereeing. I have been a referee for several prestigious journals and conferences including the journals Algorithmica, Discrete Mathematics, Discrete Optimization, Mathematics of Operations Research, Transactions on Algorithms, Siam Journal on Computing, and the conferences ICALP, IPCO, ESA, SODA, STOC. Recently, I had an invited 100 minute tutorial at Dagstuhl Seminar 11091 Packing and Scheduling Algorithms for Information and Communication Services and previously I have had several invited research talks including at ARC Colloquim at Georgia Tech, Algorithms and Complexity Seminar at MIT, Optimization and Applications Seminar at ETH, Algorithms & Optimization Seminar at École Polytechnique (Paris), Informatik Kolloquium at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, and at IBM Watson Research Center. Currently at EPFL, I assist Prof. Amin Shokrollahi in supervising a bachelor project about the symmetric traveling salesman problem by Aleksandar Markovic. At KTH, I assisted Prof. Johan Håstad in supervising the Master thesis The Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem by Per Mattsson in 2010 and the Master thesis Unique Games on Hypercubes by Michael Belfrage in 2011. École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland Guest Lecturer September - December, 2011 Guest lecturer in Amin Shokrollahi s Bachelor course Algorithmique. I prepared and taught three lectures and several homeworks. Royal Institute of Technology - KTH, Stockholm, Sweden Course Responsible September - December, 2010 Course responsible of the 6 credit graduate course Approximation Algorithms. Duties included planning, lectures, preparation and grading of assignments. The course evaluation was overwhelmingly positive (see http://http://www.nada.kth.se/kurser/utvardering/approx10/res/res.html) with all students giving the course either the highest or the second highest score both from a pedagogic point of view and with respect to how interesting it was. Guest Lecturer September - December, 2009 Guest lecturer in Johan Håstad s graduate course Theoreticians Toolkit. Prepared and taught three lectures with an accompanying homework. Universitá della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland Teaching Assistant 2007,2008 Teaching assistant at the courses Algorithms and Complexity and Algoritmi e ottimizzazione. Duties included labs, problem sessions and correcting assignments. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden Teaching Assistant and Instructor 2003,2005 Teaching assistant at the courses Functional Programming and Algorithms and Data structures 2. Duties included labs, problem sessions, and correcting assignments. Instructor of the course Matematisk Introduktionskurs, aimed at helping new students to recall their math knowledge.
Industrial Experience References Publications TietoEnator Healthcare, Lund, Sweden System developer June - August, 2003 I investigated and implemented a prototype security solution for the hospitals in the Scanian region of Sweden. During this work I used techniques such as Kerberos, XML, Java and C#. System developer June - October, 2000 Worked with several projects including a system for Amager hospital in Copenhagen. Techniques we used were COM, java beans, java servlets and the programming languages C++, Java, Asp and Visual Basic. Prof. Friedrich Eisenbrand (friedrich.eisenbrand@epfl.ch), EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. Association: Mentor during my postdoctoral stay at EPFL. Prof. Johan Håstad (johanh@kth.se), KTH, Stockholm, Sweden. Association: Co-author and mentor during my postdoctoral stay at KTH. Dr. Monaldo Mastrolilli (monaldo@idsia.ch), IDSIA, Lugano, Switzerland. Association: Co-author and my PhD supervisor at IDSIA. Prof. Andreas S. Schulz (schulz@mit.edu), MIT, Cambridge, USA. Association: Co-author, dissertation committee member, and my host at MIT. Prof. Amin Shokrollahi (amin.shokrollahi@epfl.ch), EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. Association: Mentor during my postdoctoral stay at EPFL. Journal Publications Jansen, K., Prädel, L., Schwarz, U. M., Svensson, O., Faster Approximation Algorithms for Scheduling with Fixed Jobs. To appear in Transactions on Algorithms, 2012. Cheraghchi, M., Håstad, J., Isaksson, M., Svensson, O., Approximating Linear Threshold Predicates. To appear in Transactions on Computation Theory, 2012. Mastrolilli, M., Svensson, O., Hardness of Approximating Flow and Job Shop Scheduling Problems. Journal of the ACM 58(5): 20:1-20:32, 2011. Svensson, O., Hardness of Precedence Constrained Scheduling on Identical Machines. SIAM Journal on Computing 40(5): 1258-1274, 2011. Ambühl, C., Mastrolilli, M., Svensson, O., Inapproximability Results for Maximum Edge Biclique, Minimum Linear Arrangement, and Sparsest Cut. SIAM Journal on Computing 40(2): 567-596, 2011. Ambühl, C., Mastrolilli, M., Mutsanas, N., Svensson, O., On the Approximability of Single Machine Scheduling with Precedence Constraints. Mathematics of Operations Research 36(4): 653-669, 2011. Mastrolilli, M., Queyranne, M., Schulz, S. A., Svensson, O., Uhan, N. A, Minimizing the sum of weighted completion times in a concurrent open shop. Operation Research Letters 38(5): 390-395, 2010. Refereed Conference Publications Mömke, T., Svensson, O., Approximating Graphic TSP by Matchings. In proceedings of the 52nd Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), pages 560-569, 2011. Received best paper award.
Svensson, O., Santa Claus Schedules Jobs on Unrelated Machines. In proceedings of the 43th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), pages 617-626, 2011. Invited to special issue of Siam Journal on Computing. Jansen, K., Prädel, L., Schwarz, U. M., Svensson, O., Faster Approximation Algorithms for Scheduling with Fixed Jobs. In proceedings of the 17th Computing: the Australasian Theory Symposium (CATS), pages 3-10, 2011. Svensson, O., Conditional Hardness of Precedence Constrained Scheduling on Identical Machines. In proceedings of the 42th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), pages 745-754, 2010. Cheraghchi, M., Håstad, J., Isaksson, M., Svensson, O., Approximating Linear Threshold Predicates. In proceedings of 13th Intl. Workshop on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (APPROX), volume LNCS 6302, pages 110-123, 2010. Mastrolilli, M., and Svensson, O., Improved Bounds for Flow Shop Scheduling. In proceedings of International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), volume LNCS 5555, pages 677-688, 2009. Mastrolilli, M., and Svensson, O., (Acyclic) Job Shops are Hard to Approximate. In proceedings of 49th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), pages 583-592, 2008. Mastrolilli, M., Mutsanas, N., and Svensson, O., Approximating Single Machine Scheduling with Scenarios. In proceedings of 11th Intl. Workshop on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (APPROX), volume LNCS 5171, pages 153-164, 2008. Ambühl, C., Mastrolilli, M., and Svensson, O., Inapproximability Results for Sparsest Cut, Optimal Linear Arrangement, and Precedence Constraint Scheduling. In proceedings of 48th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), pages 329-337, 2007. Ambühl, C., Mastrolilli, M., Mutsanas, N., and Svensson, O., Approximating Scheduling with Precedence Constraints of Low Fractional Dimension. In proceedings of 12th Int. Conf. on Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization (IPCO), volume LNCS 4168, pages 28-39, 2007. Ambühl, C., Mastrolilli, M., and Svensson, O., Approximating Precedence-Constrained Single Machine Scheduling by Coloring. In proceedings of 9th Intl. Workshop on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (APPROX), 2006, volume LNCS 4110, pages 15-26, 2006. Svensson, O. and Vorobyov, S. Linear Complementarity and P-matrices for Stochastic Games. In proceedings of 6th International Andrei Ershov Memorial Conference Perspectives of System Informatics, volume LNCS 4378, pages 408-421, 2006. Svensson, O. and Vorobyov, S. Linear Programming Polytope and Algorithm for Mean Payoff Games. In proceedings of Second International Conference on Algorithmic Aspects in Information and Management, volume LNCS 4041, pages 64-78, 2006. Svensson, O., Mean Payoff Games and Linear Complementarity. In Proceedings of the 17th Student Session of the European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information, Edinburgh, Scotland, August 2005. Received best poster award. Miscellaneous Publications Ambühl, C., Mastrolilli, M., Mutsanas, N., and Svensson, O., Precedence Constraint Scheduling and Connections to Dimension Theory of Partial Orders. Bulletin of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS), number 95, pages 45-58, 2008. Invited paper.
Svensson, O., Santa Claus Schedules Jobs on Unrelated Machines. Submitted to Siam Journal on Computing, 2011. Polacek, L., Svensson, O., Quasi-Efficient Local Search for Max-Min Fair Allocation. Manuscript, 2012. Cassuto, Y., Svensson, O., Optimal-Locality Data Placement and Algorithms with Application to Storage Caching. Manuscript, 2011.