Georg Zetzsche

Georg Zetzsche is a tenure-track faculty member at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) in Kaiserslautern, Germany, where he heads the Models of Computation group. He joined MPI-SWS in November 2018 after postdoctoral positions at IRIF, Université Paris-Diderot (2017-2018) and LSV Cachan (2015-2017). He received his PhD in Computer Science from Universität Kaiserslautern under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Roland Meyer in 2015, with a dissertation in the Concurrency Theory Group.

His research focuses on theoretical foundations of verification and synthesis of software systems, with particular emphasis on decidability and complexity issues of infinite-state systems. His work explores synthesis of finite-state abstractions of infinite-state systems (including separability problems, downward closures, and Parikh images), as well as decision problems for infinite groups where he applies methods from verification to gain insights on how to devise infinite-state models with pleasant analysis properties.

Zetzsche's research output demonstrates expertise across formal verification, theoretical computer science, and programming language theory. His publications reveal a consistent focus on vector addition systems, reachability analysis, language theory, and decidability questions. His work often bridges theoretical foundations with practical verification problems, particularly in the context of infinite-state systems where traditional verification techniques face significant challenges.

• 2025 Salomaa Prize
• ERC Starting Grant for project FINABIS
• EATCS Best Paper Award at ETAPS 2023
• EAPLS Best Paper Award at ETAPS 2021
• Distinguished Paper Award at POPL 2021
• EATCS Distinguished Dissertation Award

He actively serves on program committees for major conferences including LICS 2026, MFCS 2025, DLT 2024, ICALP 2024, POPL 2024, LICS 2023, and many others. He has organized events such as Theorietag 2023 on automata and formal languages. His current group at MPI-SWS includes PhD students Pascal Baumann, Pascal Bergsträßer, Irmak Sağlam, Lia Schütze, and Yousef Shakiba, along with postdocs Moses Ganardi and Chris Köcher.