At this time of the year, the Italian Chapter of the EATCS announces its awards. See here for the full list for 2024 and previous years.
I am delighted to see that the selection committee for the Best Italian PhD Theses in Theoretical Computer Science 2024 has selected Nicola Cotumaccio (Gran Sasso Science Institute) for that award for his thesis "Data Compression Meets Automata Theory", which was supervised by Nicola Prezza, Travis Gagie and Catia Trubiani. Nicola received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in January 2024, as part of a joint agreement between the Gran Sasso Science Institute (Italy) and Dalhousie University (Canada). From February 2024, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki inFinland. His research can be placed in the interconnection between formal methods and algorithms, where he develops innovative techniques mainly in the fields of data compression and automata theory.
Nicola's thesis work introduces a new paradigm in graph compression and formal language theory, using some of the most important data structures for compressing and indexing strings, such as the suffix array, the Burrows-Wheeler Transform and the FM-index. Not only does the proposed paradigm provide a new approach to studying classic problems on finite automata and regular languages, but it also retrospectively explains the impact of the aforementioned data structures. I find it both refreshing and amazing that Nicola and his collaborators have been able to shed some new light on time-honoured constructions on automata, such as the subset construction, via the paradigm presented in his thesis. See, for instance, their JACM paper.
I am also thrilled to see that Nicola shared the award with Francesca Randone (IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca), who is recognised for her thesis "Efficient and Accurate Analysis of Two Classes of Transparent Generative Models", supervised by Mirco Tribastone and Luca Bortolussi.
I wish Francesca and Nicola good luck for their future careers!
