Anthony Widjaja Lin

Anthony Widjaja Lin is a Full Professor (W3) in Theoretical Computer Science (Automated Reasoning) and Max-Planck Fellow at University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany. Previously, he was an Associate Professor in Programming Languages at Oxford University Department of Computer Science and Governing Body Fellow at Kellogg College (2016-2019), and an Assistant Professor at Yale-NUS, Singapore (2014-2016). He completed his PhD in Informatics at University of Edinburgh in 2010 under Leonid Libkin (supervisor) and Richard Mayr (co-advisor).

Dr. Lin's educational background includes:

• PhD in Informatics, University of Edinburgh (2010)
• MSc, University of Toronto
• BSc (Honours), Melbourne University

Dr. Lin's research focuses on automated reasoning, particularly over strings, formal language theory, learning/synthesis, and foundations of machine learning. His work has significant applications in software verification, program synthesis, querying graph databases, and computer security. He leads the development of the OSTRICH string solver, which won the QF_S (Single Query Track) in SMT-COMP 2023. His research has evolved from foundational work on string constraint solving to applications in verification of string-manipulating programs and more recently to connections with machine learning models like transformers.

Dr. Lin has received numerous prestigious awards including an ERC Consolidator Grant (2023), Amazon Research Award (2021), ERC Starting Grant (2017), Google Faculty Award (2017), and the LICS Kleene Award (2010).

Dr. Lin has advised several PhD students to completion, including Pascal Bergsträßer, Chih-Duo Hong, and Xuan-Bach Le, who have gone on to become Assistant Professors at institutions like National Chingchi University and Nanyang Technical University. He currently supervises multiple PhD students and postdocs working on string solving, automated reasoning, and verification.

Dr. Lin leads the AV-SMP project (Algorithmic Verification of String-Manipulating Programs), which was supported by an ERC Starting Grant (2017-2022) and an Amazon Research Award (2021). His research group develops tools like OSTRICH, SLOTH, and CertiStr for string constraint solving and verification.