Jan Maly

Jan Maly is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Data, Process and Knowledge Management (DPKM) of the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien) and a postdoctoral researcher in the Database and Artificial Intelligence Group (DBAI) of TU Wien. He is currently on parental leave until September 15, 2024. His educational background includes mathematics and philosophy studies at Würzburg University, specialization in mathematical logic at Vienna University, and a PhD in computer science from TU Wien completed in 2020.

Dr. Maly's research focuses on Computational Social Choice (COMSOC), Logic and Knowledge Representation, with particular emphasis on Participatory Budgeting and Fairness in Online Decision Making. His work aims to develop tools that help people make better decisions, individually or as a group, by investigating non-standard voting frameworks and computational complexity questions. His recent work addresses the critical problem that simple majority voting in online environments marginalizes minority opinions and reinforces filter bubble effects.

Analysis of his publication record reveals a strong focus on developing fair voting mechanisms for participatory budgeting and online decision-making. His work bridges theoretical computational social choice with practical applications, particularly in developing algorithms that ensure proportional representation while maintaining computational feasibility. The publications demonstrate increasing sophistication in handling multi-issue decisions, perpetual voting scenarios, and complex budget allocation problems.

• netidee SCIENCE grant (2024, ~400,000 euros)
• Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship from FWF

Dr. Maly has co-supervised PhD students including Simon Rey and Michael Bernreiter. His collaborative work spans multiple institutions, including the University of Amsterdam where he worked from September 2021 to April 2023 as a member of the COMSOC Group. He is also the co-founder of the European Digital Democracy Network, which organized its first conference in April 2024 bringing together over sixty scientists and practitioners.