Zsuzsanna Lipták

Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of Verona, Italy

email:
zsuzsanna DOT liptak AT univr DOT it

address:
University of Verona
Department of Computer Science
Strada le Grazie, 15
I-37134 Verona, Italy

office:
Ca' Vignal 2, room 1.79 (1st floor)
tel: +39 045 802-7032


Student hours:
Wednesdays, 10-12 (during term-time).




Theoretical Computer Scientists for Future



Here is my institutional page.


    This page is always under construction...

Brief Vita

I am associate professor at the University of Verona, and have been working here since November 2011. I got my first degree (Diplom Mathematik) from Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany, and my PhD (in Computer Science) from Bielefeld University, Germany. My PhD thesis treated algorithmic problems in Mass Spectrometry, and was supervised by Sebastian Böcker (now in Jena, Germany). I have worked as a research assistant at ETH Zurich, Switzerland; as a research assistant and later postdoc at Bielefeld University, Germany; and as a postdoc at Salerno University, Italy, where I had a Marie Curie IEF fellowship. In addition, I spent time as a visiting researcher at the following scientific institutions: Rényi Institute, Budapest (Hungary); the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (South Africa); and at the South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI), Cape Town (South Africa).

I am member of the Algorithmic Bioinformatics and Natural Computing Group and the Algorithms Group of the Department of Computer Science of Verona University.

There is a (usually somewhat outdated) CV on my institutional page.

Our weekly group seminars, the Monday Meetings, are currently pausing. You can have a look at previous editions here.

Research Interests

I work on text indexes, mostly on different aspects of the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT), but also on suffix trees and suffix arrays. For some recent results on the BWT, see my keynote talk at CPM 2024 in Fukuoka, Japan: "BWT everywhere" (June 2024), my keynote at SeqBIM 2024 in Rennes, France: "How to use the BWT for constructing random de Bruijn sequences" (Nov. 2024), my invited talk at Primavera dell'Informatica Teorica "On the Burrows-Wheeler Transform of string collections" (Jan. 2024), or my keynote at Journées Montoises 2022 in Prague: "Dollar or no dollar, that is the question (New combinatorial results on the Burrows-Wheeler-Transform)" (Sept. 2022).

I am generally interested in string algorithms and other algorithmic and combinatorial problems, mostly as they arise in applications from computational biology. In algorithmic bioinformatics, my current focus is on problems relating to textual data compression and data processing. I was member of the PRIN project 'PINC' (2022-2025), financed by the Ministry for University and Research (MUR): PINC - Pangenome Informatics: From Theory to Practice, led by the University of Milano-Bicocca (PI Paola Bonizzoni). In a related project, I am currently collaborating with Scott Hazelhurst of the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa) on different algorithmic aspects of structural variation problems. In the past, I also worked on mass spectrometry data interpretation (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics) and on string distance measures for expression clustering (transcriptomics).

On the theory side, apart from algorithms and data structures, I am also interested in combinatorics on words, in particular to do with the combinatorics of permutations and the Burrows-Wheeler Transform. Further, Gabriele Fici and I introduced prefix normal words in our paper at DLT 2011; here is a short writeup on open problems on prefix normal words (last updated May 2021).

Recent Talks (last few years)


Recent Publications

You can find most of my publications at my DBLP entry or my Google Scholar page. If you can't access a paper, please write to me and I'll send you a copy.

(Note: authors are listed in alphabetical order)

In International Journals (last few years):

In International Conference Proceedings (last few years):


Teaching (in Verona)

Here is an introductory talk on Bioinformatics for high school students (in Italian):
Una presentazione per studenti di liceo: "Che cos'è la bioinformatica?" (7/3/2018).


I currently teach the following courses:

Previously in Verona:

Theses/Tesi

Progetti nell'ambito di sequenze/stringhe (genomiche e no), bioinformatica algoritmica, algoritmi su stringhe o permutazioni. Ho disponibile diversi argomenti sia per tesi (magistrali o triennali), che per stage/tirocinio/progetto. (E naturalmente parlo anche italiano...)

If you are a student who likes algorithms, strings (sequences), and/or permutations, or in general topics in algorithmic bioinformatics, come and see me. I have topics both for small student projects ("internship"/"stage") or for bachelor or master theses.

Short Term Mobility (STM) projects are available for several destinations, depending on the subject.

You can also opt to do your thesis in Erasmus, in collaboration with one of the groups I collaborate with, e.g. in Bielefeld, Jena, Dortmund, or Budapest.

Students

PhD: Master thesis: Master project/tirocinio: Bachelor:

Scientific events I am or have been involved in:

(PC = Program Committee, OC = Organizing Committee)

Recent scientific guests

Editorial Work


Erasmus

I am no longer ''referente per l'internazionalizzazione'' for the Teaching Board of Computer Science (CdS Laurea in informatica, Laurea in bioinformatica, LM Ingegneria e scienze informatiche, LM Medical bioinformatics). The new Referenti per l'Internazionalizzazione are Prof. Alessandra Di Pierro and Prof. Matteo Cristani.

I am still scientific coordinator for the Erasmus+ exchange with Bielefeld University (Technical Faculty), Germany (only computer science and bioinformatics; for mathematics contact Prof. Di Persio, for biotechnology, Prof. Dall'Osto).

And starting 2024/2025, I am again scientific coordinator for the Erasmus+ exchange with Jena (Friedrich-Schiller University), Germany.

My other partner universities have passed to the following scientific coordinators: Please contact them if you are interested in doing an Erasmus semester in one of these universities (unless you want to write a thesis in collaboration with one of these universities, then you should speak to me).



More info coming soon.

In the meanwhile, you can read this poem by Roald Dahl which expresses wonderfully what I think about television.