Welcome

Welcome to the Chair of Algorithms and Data Structures of Prof. Dr. Hannah Bast and her team at the University of Freiburg. We do applied algorithmics.

That means that we are looking at complex and typically ill-defined real-world problems, seek formalizations that are simple but not too simple, analyze the resulting problems theoretically, carefully implement the solutions thus found, run experiments to verify that empiricial and theoretical behavior match, and eventually integrate our findings in fully-functional systems or prototypes that can be used by others.

All these steps do not happen in isolation but rather in "orchestration". For example, the outcome of an experiment or a certain user experience may make us rethink our theoretical analysis or even the way we defined our problems. This makes our work quite complex and challenging, but also very relevant and rewarding.

Three examples for this are: our work on Semantic Full-Text Search (Broccoli), on efficient Search-As-You-Type (CompleteSearch), and on efficient Route Planning in very large transportation networks.