Benjamin Doerr

Benjamin Doerr is a full Professor of Computer Science at École Polytechnique in France, affiliated with the Laboratoire d'Informatique (LIX). He conducts research in algorithms and artificial intelligence, with a specific focus on randomized algorithms and heuristic search. His work spans theoretical computer science, evolutionary computation, and mathematical analysis of optimization algorithms.

Professor Doerr's research interests center on randomized search heuristics, including evolutionary algorithms, ant colony optimizers, and estimation-of-distribution algorithms. His work extends to foundational areas such as group theory (from his diploma work), discrepancy theory and combinatorial games (from his PhD), and algorithmic mathematics (from his habilitation). He has made significant contributions to understanding the runtime behavior of evolutionary algorithms and establishing theoretical guarantees for their performance across various optimization problems.

His recent publications reveal a strong focus on multi-objective evolutionary algorithms, particularly analyzing and improving the performance of popular frameworks like NSGA-II, NSGA-III, and SMS-EMOA. His research demonstrates a consistent pattern of providing rigorous theoretical foundations for heuristic search methods, moving beyond empirical observations to establish provable performance guarantees. This theoretical approach has become increasingly influential in bridging the gap between theoretical computer science and practical optimization techniques.

Professor Doerr has received several prestigious awards including two Otto-Hahn medals, the Dr. Eduard Martin prize, and the Digiteo-Digicosme prize. His students have also earned significant recognition, with multiple dissertation awards and nominations.

He has supervised numerous PhD students to completion, including Tobias Friedrich (now director of HPI and professor at University of Potsdam), Carola Winzen (now permanent researcher at CNRS), and Marvin Künnemann (now professor in Kaiserslautern). He regularly supervises M1/M2 research projects, with many leading to international conference publications at venues like AAAI, IJCAI, and GECCO. Professor Doerr serves on the editorial boards of several leading journals including Artificial Intelligence, Evolutionary Computation, and IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.

At École Polytechnique, Professor Doerr is a member of the executive board of the doctoral school of IP Paris, where he oversees computer science doctoral students across multiple institutions. He previously served as the habilitation reference person for the IDIA department and has been instrumental in shaping the academic processes for doctoral candidates and HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) candidates.