Alexander Ek, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
The Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence Section
Department of Computer Science
KU Leuven, Belgium
Summary
Welcome! I am passionate about trustworthy data- and logic-driven decision-making systems. My current position mainly focuses on proof-logging and certifying first-order model expansions in knowledge representation and combinatorial optimisation. I am currently funded via the CertiFOX project and supervised by Bart Bogaerts.
My other projects includes combining data science and optimisation for election integrity (including statistical post-election audits), modeling and solving online optimisation problems, and multi-stakeholder optimisation with fairness considerations.
Research interests include:
- Proof-logging/certifying algorithms, formal verification
- Constraint-based optimisation modelling, knowledge representation and reasoning
- Online/dynamic/real-time optimisation, robust/stochastic optimization
- Statistical guarantees, anytime-valid statistical inference, statistical machine learning, data science
- Election auditing, election security, election integrity, election cryptography
- Constraint programming and other solving technology
- Interdisciplinary research with real-world impact
- Combinatorial/discrete optimisation, automated planning and scheduling
- Operations research/analytics, applied mathematics, and decision science
- Logistics, supply chain management, energy systems, vehicle routing, rostering, and scheduling
- Economics, fair division, fair resource allocation, and social choice theory
- Game theory, and bargaining theory
- Multi-stakeholder combinatorial optimisation
Latest News
I am honoured to receive the Ariel Liebman Memorial Impact Award 2025, together with my co-authors, for our papers and software contributions in optimisation in election auditing. The award is given by the ARC Training Centre OPTIMA to recognise outstanding contributions to the field of optimisation with real-world impact.
Link: https://optima.org.au/ariel-liebman-memorial-impact-award/
I am excited to announce that I have started a new position as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science at KU Leuven, Belgium. I will be hosted by Bart Bogaerts in the Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence section. In this role, I will focus on proof-logging and certified first-order model expansion, contributing to the CertiFOX project.
Link: https://www.bartbogaerts.eu/projects/CertiFOX/
Our papers titled "Doing More With Less: Mismatch-Based Risk-Limiting Audits" and "3+ Seat Risk-Limiting Audits for Single Transferable Vote Elections" were accepted for publication and to be presented at 10th Workshop on Advances in Secure Electronic Voting (Voting'25) of the 29th Int'l Conf. on Financial Cryptography and Data Security. It will take place 14 - 18 April 2025 in Miyakojima, Japan
Link: https://www.ifca.ai/fc25/voting/