Photo of Antoine Amarilli

Hi! I’m Antoine Amarilli, and go by the alias a3nm.

You can email me at a3nm<REMOVETHIS>@a3nm.net (OpenPGP key) and follow my blog.

Among many pressing issues, I am especially concerned by the climate crisis: see my commitments.

Position

I am an associate professor in the DIG team of the Télécom Paris engineering school in France. I studied at the École normale supérieure and hold a PhD in computer science and a habilitation thesis. See my resume.

I work in office 4C24 at Télécom Paris, 19 place Marguerite Perey, 91120 Palaiseau, France (directions). My phone number is +33 1 75 31 97 94.

From August to December 2023, I am participating to the program Logic and Algorithms in Database Theory and AI at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing in Berkeley.

Research

I work in theoretical computer science, i.e., I prove mathematical results about abstract topics inspired by computers. I study questions like how to efficiently evaluate queries on data; how to tractably perform probabilistic computations on uncertain data; how to concisely represent, explain, or enumerate large collections of query answers; how to efficiently update query results when data is modified; and how to reason with expressive logical languages. More broadly, I am interested in enumeration algorithms, formal languages, circuits, counting problems, dynamic data, computational logic, graph theory, and other topics.

I co-authored works which received the best paper award at the conferences ICDT in 2020 and ICALP in 2021 (track B). I was awarded an E. W. Beth Dissertation Prize and the Télécom Paris PhD prize in 2017 for my PhD work.

You can read more about my research, or see the list of my research publications or the list of my talks. If you prefer unsolved problems, have a look at my list of open questions or my profile on the TCS Stack Exchange. If you are a student in computer science or mathematics, I have some internship and PhD offers.

I am a member of the EQUUS and CQFD research projects. I am also a member of EATCS.

Reviewing and service

I participate in the peer review process for my areas of research. Conferences where I served recently as a program committee member include ICDT 2024, ICALP 2022, STACS 2021, KR 2021, AAAI 2021 (outstanding PC member), IJCAI 2021, ICDT 2019.

I am a managing editor for the open-access theoretical computer science journal TheoretiCS with Nathanaël Fijalkow. In 2022, I co-organized with Daniela Petrisan the conference Highlights of Logic, Games and Automata.

You can email me if you would like me to review a paper or serve on a program committee. I only accept work from open-access conferences or journals.

Students

If you are looking for an internship or PhD in theoretical computer science and would like to work with me, you can have a look at my internship and PhD offers, or simply get in touch! Here are my current and former students:

Research activism

I’m interested in improving academic practices, and maintain a list of problems with academia. I specifically care about making academic research papers available online and have a personal policy about this. I’m a board member of the CAPSH nonprofit which develops the Dissemin website and leads the initiative No free view? No review!.

I care about the climate crisis, in particular in academia: I am one of the maintainers of the TCS4F manifesto.

To encourage transparency, I put some information online about my applications to research positions.

Teaching

I teach classes at Télécom Paris about competitive programming, algorithms and data structures, formal languages, data management, and Web technologies: see my teaching page for details. I represent Télécom Paris at the studies committee of the MPRI theoretical computer science master. In 2016–2021, I served as an examiner for École normale supérieure in theoretical computer science, and published the exercises that we posed. I also have some older material for prépa students.

Competitive programming

I am involved in competitive programming, the mind sport of quickly writing computer programs to solve problems. In 2017–2021, I was the director of the South-Western Europe Programming Contest, a regional selection phase of the worldwide university contest ICPC. I also prepare Télécom students for this competition.

I also compete in programming contests. As a team member, I won first place at Google Hash Code in 2015 and silver medals at SWERC in 2010 and 2011. Individually, I ranked 321st worldwide at Round 3 of Google Code Jam in 2022, and I won the Prologin French national computer science contest in 2008.

Open source

I avoid proprietary software and services hosted by untrustworthy companies, and prefer free and open-source software. I financially support the Software Freedom Conservancy, the OpenStreetMap Foundation, and the French nonprofits La Quadrature du Net, April, and Framasoft.

I contribute to the English and French Wikipedia, to Wikidata, and to OpenStreetMap. I ask questions and post answers on the Stack Exchange websites.

Code

I write some code, mostly for fun, sometimes for research. Most of it is in these repositories, in particular a list of my config files and miscellaneous binaries, or the IRC wrapper irctk. Here are my accounts on Gitlab, Github, and the Debian bug tracker: I don’t code much but I often report bugs. I self-host my email server, this website, and other services.

Language

I am interested in French classical alexandrine verse: I run an open source website to automatically check poems for correctness, and run a dictionary of rhymes. I also like French spelling: I competed in some dictées (spelling competitions), and investigated phenomena such as non homophonous homographs, ambiguous verbal forms, words without a rhyme, words that only exist with prefixes, words with unusual gender according to their suffix, etc.

Humor

I founded the Club Inutile student club at ENS. I designed the password security checker, the axiomatic system Falso, these door safety instructions, and this brain transplant procedure. The club proposed extended conjugation tables for French defective verbs. We also staged the Cyrano de Bergerac play in an IRC chatroom and rewrote it with a variant of the Oulipo S+7 process.

Writing (in French)

I have written a report about competitive exam reports and a spoof tutorial session about bipedalism, as well as some poetry and science-fiction short stories. I also wrote an essay about the beauty of disorder which received an award at the concours général.

Music

I sing in an amateur Parisian vocal ensemble, the Ensemble vide. We focus on Renaissance and baroque music for unaccompanied choir or with a small orchestra. You can see our upcoming concerts. I am the current webmaster of the ensemble.