Alexander Ek, PhD - Personal Website

Research Fellow
Dept. of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash Business School, Monash University
Building 6, 29 Ancora Imparo Way, Clayton
VIC 3168, Australia
alexander.ek@monash.edu
www.alexanderek.com

Table of Contents

Summary
Education
Positions
Memberships
Recognition
Publications
Teaching
Supervision and Mentoring
Service

Summary

My research focuses on applying techniques from statistics, computer science, and operations research to solve hard problems, often with uncertainty. Currently, I primarily focus on developing methods for election integrity and auditing.

Education

2022 - PhD in Computer Science. Monash University, Australia.
    Topic: “High-Level Modelling and Solving for Online, Real-Time, and Multiagent Combinatorial Optimisation”
    Supervisors: Guido Tack, Peter J. Stuckey, Maria Garcia de la Banda, Andreas Schutt.

2018 - BSc + MSc in Computer Science. Uppsala University, Sweden.

Positions

Mar 2023 and ongoing - Research Fellow at Dept. of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash Busniess School, Monash University, Australia.

Jul 2022 and ongoing - Associate Investigator, OPTIMA, Australia.

Jul 2022 to Mar 2023 - Postdoctoral Research Fellow at School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Australia.

Apr 2021 to Jul 2022 - Research Student at OPTIMA, Australia.

Sep 2018 to Jul 2022 - Research Student in the Analytics and Decision Sciences Programme of CSIRO’s Data61, Melbourne, Australia.

Memberships

The Association for Constraint Programming (A4CP).

The Statistical Society of Australia (SSA).

Recognition

2023 - Best Paper Award, E-Vote-ID, 2023. For “Adaptively Weighted Audits of Instant-Runoff Voting Elections: AWAIRE”.
2022 - Quality Conference Travel Fund Grant, Monash University, 2022.
2022 - Doctoral Program Financial Support. By The Association for Constraint Programming, France.
2022 - Graduate Research Completion Award. By Monash University, Australia.
2022 - Monash Departmental Scholarship. By Department of Data Science & AI, Monash University, Australia.
2018-2022 - Data61 Top-up Scholarship. By CSIRO Data61, Australia.
2018-2022 - Co-Funded Monash Graduate Scholarship. By Monash University, Australia.
2018-2022 - Faculty of IT International Postgraduate Research Scholarship. By Monash University, Australia.
2019 - Doctoral Program Financial Support. By The Association for Constraint Programming, France.
2014, 2015, 2016 - Johan and Hjalmar Kallenbergs Scholarship. By Johan and Hjalmar Kallenbergs Foundation, Sweden.

Publications

Books and Theses

Alexander Ek. “High-Level Modelling and Solving for Online, Real-Time, and Multiagent Combinatorial Optimisation”. PhD Thesis. Faculty of IT, Monash University, 2022. Link

Alexander Ek. “Automatic Predicate Encapsulation of Potentially Profitably Presolvable Submodels in MiniZinc”. MSc Thesis. Dept. of IT, Uppsala University. 2018. Link

Journals and Refereed Conferences

2022

Alexander Ek, Philip B. Stark, Peter J. Stuckey, and Damjan Vukcevic. “Adaptively Weighted Audits of Instant-Runoff Voting Elections: AWAIRE”. In: 8th International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting (E-Vote-ID’23). LNCS 14230. Springer, 2023, pp. 35-51. Link

2022

Alexander Ek, Andreas Schutt, Peter J. Stuckey, and Guido Tack. “Explaining Propagation for Gini and Spread with Variable Mean”. In: The 28th Int’l Conf. on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP’22). LIPIcs 235. Schloss Dagstuhl, 2022, pp. 21:1-21:16. Link

2020

Alexander Ek, Maria Garcia de la Banda, Andreas Schutt, Peter J. Stuckey, and Guido Tack. “Aggregation and Garbage Collection for Online Optimization”. In: The 26th Int’l Conf. on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP’20). LNCS 12333. Springer, 2020, pp. 231–247. Link.

Alexander Ek, Maria Garcia de la Banda, Andreas Schutt, Peter J. Stuckey, and Guido Tack. “Modelling and Solving Online Optimisation Problems”. In: 34th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI’20). AAAI Press, 2020, pp. 1477–1485. Link.

Workshops, Symposia, Consortia, Informal Conferences, and Extended Abstracts

Alexander Ek, Maria Garcia de la Banda, Andreas Schutt, Peter J. Stuckey, and Guido Tack. “Modelling and Solving Online Optimisation Problems”. In: Eighteenth Workshop on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation (ModRef’19), 2019.

Teaching

Monash University (2018-2021)

Head Teaching Associate. Modelling Discrete Optimisation Problems (FIT5216). Monash University, Australia. 2021, 2020.
Head Teaching Associate. Solving Discrete Optimisation Problems (FIT5220). Monash University, Australia. 2021, 2020 (x2).
Teaching Associate. Introduction to Computer Science (FIT1008, FIT1054, FIT2085). Monash University, Australia. 2019.

Uppsala University (2014-2018)

Teaching Associate. Operating Systems and Process-Oriented Programming (1DT096). Uppsala University, Sweden. 2018.
Teaching Associate. Operating Systems (1DT044). Uppsala University, Sweden. 2018.
Teaching Associate. Algorithms and Data Structures II (1DL231). Uppsala University, Sweden. 2017.
Teaching Associate. Software Testing (1DL610). Uppsala University, Sweden. 2017.
Teaching Assistant. Program Design and Data Structures (1DL201). Uppsala University, Sweden. 2015, 2014

Supervision and Mentoring

Co-Supervisor of Research Assistant. School of Mathematics and Statistics. The University of Melbourne. 2023.
Co-Supervisor of Undergraduate Research Project. School of Mathematics and Statistics. The University of Melbourne. 2022.
Co-Supervisor of Summer Student Research Project. At Optimisation Group, Monash University, Australia. 2020-2021.
Student Mentor for the Bachelors’ Programme in Computer Science. At Uppsala University, Sweden. 2013.

Service

To the Community

Reviewer

Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR): 2020 (x2)

To the University

Board Member of the Masters’ Programme in Computer Science. Uppsala Univesity, Sweden. 2016.