Professor Thomas Sauerwald

Thomas has been an Official Fellow at Emmanuel since 2017, and he is the Director of Studies in Computer Science. He is Professor of Algorithms and Probability at the University's Department of Computer Science and Technology.

Biography

Thomas grew up in a small town in central Germany, located in the 'Sauerland' region. He completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Paderborn on efficient protocols for parallel networks. After two postdoctoral fellowships at Berkeley and Vancouver, he worked as a senior researcher and group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics (Saarland University) in Germany. In 2013, Thomas moved to Cambridge as a University Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and Technology. In 2020 he was appointed to a Readership in Algorithms and Probability, becoming Professor in 2024.

Teaching

Thomas is currently lecturing a first–year undergraduate course on probability theory and a third–year undergraduate course on randomised algorithms. As Director of Studies at the College, he greatly enjoys Cambridge's unique teaching environment which combines lectures with one–to–one tutorials, supervising students on the Computer Science course across all papers of the first two years.

Research

Thomas' research interests have always been at the intersection of computer science and mathematics, particularly in Randomised Algorithms; Machine Learning and Data Science; Markov Chains and Random Walks. Thomas is currently a Mercator Fellow of the grant Algorithms, Dynamics, and Information Flow in Networks (ADYN) funded by German Research Council (DFG). From 2016–2021, Thomas was the PI of an ERC Starting Grant on 'Dynamics of Multiple, Interacting and Concurrent Markov Chains (DYNAMIC MARCH)'.