Ulrich Meyer

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Meyer is a full Professor of Computer Science at Goethe University Frankfurt, where he joined as a full professor in 2007 at the age of 35. He is also a Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) since 2020 and serves as the spokesperson for the DFG priority program "Algorithms for Big Data" (SPP 1736), which spans over 15 sites across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Professor Meyer received his Ph.D. in computer science from Saarland University in 2002. Following his doctorate, he worked as a postdoc and later as a senior researcher (W2) at the Max-Planck Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrücken before joining Goethe University Frankfurt.

His research focuses on the design and engineering of algorithms and data structures for very large data sets, with particular emphasis on parallelism (Shared-Memory, clusters, GPUs), memory hierarchies (caches, SSDs, hard disks), and energy efficiency. His work spans the spectrum from theoretical worst-case results and average-case analyses to experimental evaluation of heuristics. A significant portion of his research involves graph algorithms, where his group has achieved more than a thousand-fold speed-up over state-of-the-art methods through algorithms with better access patterns. His recent work has focused on memory-efficient graph exploration in dynamically changing data, approximate solutions, and efficient generation of randomized graph test data.

Professor Meyer has received numerous prestigious awards including the 2019 ESA Test of Time Award for the Delta-Stepping Algorithm, Best Paper Awards at ESA 2019 for research on Fragile Computing and Graph Generation, the 2011 Award Germany Land of Ideas for Ecosort, records in the JouleSort Competition in 2009/10, and the 2003 Best Dissertation Award from the University of Saarland.

As spokesperson for the DFG priority program SPP 1736 "Algorithms for Big Data," Professor Meyer coordinates research across multiple institutions. His Algorithm Engineering group is also part of the DFG Research Unit FOR 2971 "Algorithms, Dynamics, and Information Flow in Networks" and the LOEWE Priority Programme CMMS. His research has been supported by various grants that have enabled significant contributions to parallel and external-memory graph algorithms, large-scale network generation, and energy-efficient computing.

Professor Meyer's research group forms part of the Computer Sciences and AI Systems division at FIAS. They collaborate extensively with researchers across Europe through the DFG priority program and other initiatives. The group is particularly known for their work on memory-efficient graph algorithms, large-scale network generation, and contributions to understanding the algorithmic foundations of big data processing.