ARCO, an acronym for Algorithmic Research Cooperation around Øresund, is a network for promoting collaboration in research within algorithms around the Øresund Region. This time, the ARCO meeting was held at ITU and attended by Kim Skak Larsen, Joan Boyar, Kevin Schewior, Simon Skjernaa Erfurth, Magnus Berg Pedersen, and Rolf Fagerberg. Kevin gave a talk on The Itinerant List Update Problem.

Joan Boyar and Kim Skak Larsen joined the 24-hour DDC meeting at Storebælt Sinatur Hotel & Konference, together with their Ph.D. student, Simon Skjernaa Erfurth. We enjoyed an informative meeting, updating us on the status of the various projects, while time was also reserved for discussions on how the Digital Democracy Center could develop.

The Teaching Prize at SDU is awarded once a year to one person. Given that SDU has a few thousand employees, getting the award is quite an achievement! Lene receives the prize for her special ability to make very complex material understandable. The prize is in recognition of her didactic approach, described by the students as elegant, intuitive, attentive, accommodating, and entertaining. Lene is in the middle with the Dean of the Faculty of Science on the left and the Vice-Chancellor on the right.

Computer scientists from all over Denmark met for the second DIREC meeting at Helnan Hotel Marselis in Aarhus. As last time, the meeting included an excellent algorithms session, and this time Kevin Schewior gave a talk on Recent Advances in I.I.D. Prophet Inequalities. From our algorithms group, Kim Skak Larsen, Joan Boyar, Jakob Lykke Andersen, and Rolf Fagerberg also attended the meeting.

Kevin Schewior attended the Workshop on Approximation and Online Algorithms (WAOA) 2022. The workshop was part of ALGO 2022 in Potsdam, Germany, which had about 400 participants and several keynote speakers. Kevin gave a talk on Knapsack Secretary Through Boosting, a paper with his former Master's student Moritz Stinzendörfer (now TU Kaiserslautern), Andreas Abels (RWTH Aachen), and Leon Ladewig (formerly TU Munich), and chaired one of the sessions.

We are excited to welcome Magnus Berg Pedersen into our group as a Ph.D. student. He comes with an MS in mathematics and a side topic in computer science. Magnus will work on the project Online Algorithms with Predictions, as part of the national undertaking of Digital Research Centre Denmark (DIREC), under the Innovation Fund Denmark. The project is carried out in collaboration with ITU. As the main advisor, Kim Skak Larsen is joint by Lene Favrholdt and Melih Kandemir. Joan Boyar will also function as an advisor for the online part on equal terms with Kim and Lene, while Nutan Limaye from ITU and Melih will advise on connections to machine learning from different points of view.

The Faculty of Science Teaching Prize is awarded each year to one employee who has excelled at motivational and committed teaching of the highest quality. In accordance with tradition, Lene Monrad Favrholdt was nominated by her students. Students say Lene is one of the best educators they have met, with an ability to make complex mathematical concepts easy to understand. Teaching math on the first year to students who don't know yet where and why they need it is a special challenge, and Lene is recognized for her enormous effort and focus on the students. During corona times, she made an extra effort of giving on-site lectures while arranging that students forced to stay home could also both follow and ask questions on-line. Lene is second from the left and the dean is speaking.

Rob van Stee from the University of Siegen visits the online algorithms group for a week. Rob is a friend of the department who has visited several times over the years, starting as a Ph.D. student. He has also served on thesis assessment committees for the department etc. Rob will give a talk in the Tuesday colloquium slot.

Lene Favrholdt, Joan Boyar, and Kim Skak Larsen attended SWAT 2022 - 18th Scandinavian Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory, for the first time held physically in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands. Lene presented our joint paper, Joan chaired one of the sessions, and Kim leaned back and enjoyed the performances. ツ

Lene Favrholdt gave a keynote address on Paging and Packing with Possibly Precise Predictions at the 15th Workshop on Models and Algorithms for Planning and Scheduling (MAPSP) at the Oropa Sanctuary in Italy. At the same workshop, Kevin Schewior gave a contributed talk on The High-Dimensional Cow-Path Problem.

The chair of the program committee was Leah Epstein (U Haifa). The other keynote speakers were Alessandro Agnetis (U Siena), Thomas Erlebach (U Durham), and Alberto Marchetti-Spaccamela (La Sapienza). In total, there were more than 100 participants. MAPSP is known for a large number of high-quality talks but also its openness and the allotted time for discussions, e.g., during the social event, which in this case was a hike through meadows with cows to a mountain lake. Kirk Pruhs (U Pittsburgh) maintains a website on the history of the workshop.

Kevin Schewior was invited to and attended the Workshop on New Challenges in Scheduling Theory in Aussois, France. The program committee consisted of Jacek Blazewicz (TU Poznan), Michael Bender (Stony Brook), Erwin Pesch (U Siegen), Kirk Pruhs (U Pittsburgh), Denis Trystam (Grenoble INP), and Guochan Zhang (Zhejiang U). The workshop had about 80 participants. A few of them attended online, but the vast majority attended on site. There were about 50 talks on the theory and practice of scheduling, many of which triggered refreshing in-person discussions during the ample time left free aside of the talks and during the cheese fondue. Kevin gave a talk about his recent work on Stochastic Probing with Increasing Precision.

Joan Boyar Lene Favrholdt, and Kim Skak Larsen were invited to the Workshop on Algorithms with Predictions, held at the Bernoulli Center for Fundamental Studies at EPFL in picturesque Lausanne, Switzerland. Joan and Lene gave a well-received invited talk together surveying Online Algorithms with Advice, and Kim was on the panel, together with Sid Banerjee (Cornell), Daniel Dadush (CWI), Anupam Gupta (Carnegie Mellon), and Seffi Naor (Technion), to discuss the current issues and priorities in this developing area. The workshop was very enjoyable with good talks and lots of time for networking and initiating research collaboration.

From our online algorithms group, Joan Boyar and Kim Skak Larsen joined the DDC meeting at Nyborg Strand Hotel, together with their Ph.D. student, Simon Skjernaa Erfurth. We enjoyed a well-planned and fruitful meeting, discussing the challenges that the Digital Democracy Center should undertake and the progress that has been made so far. The format of this 24 hour meeting, going from lunch to lunch, gave us the possibility of also interacting on a more social level in the evening, getting to know each other better.

We are excited to welcome Kevin Schewior as assistant professor in the algorithms group. Kevin is interested in uncertainty, approximation algorithms, and algorithmic problems more generally. Kevin got his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Mathematics of Technische Universität Berlin in 2016. He has held postdoc positions in Germany but also in Santiago and Paris. We look forward to working with Kevin!

After such a long time with corona lockdowns and online meetings, it was great to meet in person with the many Danish computer scientists and the excellent algorithms people in particular. From our online algorithms group, Kim Skak Larsen, Joan Boyar, and Lene Favrholdt, joined the DIREC meeting at picturesque Nyborg Strand Hotel. The first day, the primary focus was on research, while the second day contained discussions related to student recruitment and retainment, diversity, societal needs, start-up companies, funding, etc.

Results on priority algorithms with advice, coauthored by Joan Boyar and Kim Skak Larsen got very good coverage at OLAWA - Online Algorithms with Advice and Related Models, a virtual satelite workshop of MFCS - the 45th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science. Joan gave the talk on the second part of the paper.

The online algorithms group receives a grant from FNU for the project Online Algorithms and with Machine Learning Predictors. We are excited to get started on this new direction of research.