I have been nominated for the EATCS General Assembly (formerly EATCS Council) elections. I am honored by the nomination, and I would be happy to do my share to help the association.

I already served in the council in 2015–2019, and back then one of my main interests was promoting a transition towards open access. I am very happy to see that our research community has taken major steps in this direction: for example, ICALP switched to the LIPIcs open access series in 2016, ESA in 2016, MFCS in 2016, and DISC in 2017; most of the EATCS-affiliated conferences are now publishing their proceedings fully open access. Of course my own role in this transition was tiny—this has been a huge community effort—but I am nevertheless proud that I was able to do my share in the legwork of making this a reality for the DISC conference.

I then served again in the council in 2021–2025. Among the hardest questions we discussed were issues related to the environmental sustainability of our activities, and in particular the climate impact of conference traveling. This turned out to be a hard question, for a number of reasons. First, we recognized that there are two perspectives that often get confused in discussions, but call for somewhat different solutions: (1) reduction of the average carbon footprint of our activities, and (2) accommodating those members of our research community who choose not to fly. Second, possible solutions are intertwined with other hard questions, such as the question of equal opportunities to participate in our research community. For example, if conference participation is made optional, it may make it harder for some members of our research community to justify a conference trip.

The environmental issues are far from being solved. Progress is slow, but at least the issue is clearly recognized. There are also good role models such as the DISC community, where it is already common to estimate the climate impact of conferences and pay attention to train connections and the total carbon footprint when selecting future conference venues. I would like to continue contributing to these discussions in the EATCS General Assembly.

But in the future, the TCS community is also facing new challenges: the impact of artificial intelligence in the TCS community is definitely something we cannot ignore. This permeates all of our academic activities; some examples include:

• How do large language models change the way we teach and the way our students learn, e.g., in undergraduate TCS courses? If AI can solve all undergraduate-level homework, how does one design a meaningful CS curriculum that still ensures that students get a solid understanding of the theoretical foundations of computing?
• How does AI impact the public perception of TCS, and how does it impact whether talented students see TCS as an attractive career path? We are already seeing some decrease in the number of students interested in computer science in general, while at the same time a solid understanding of TCS is even more critical in a world that aims at using computers to automate ever more challenging tasks.
• How could AI be used to help with TCS research? I wrote a short blog post on some opportunities that we seem to be missing here.
• How does AI impact the dynamics of our research community in the long term? The TCS community is not yet seeing submission volumes similar to those of leading AI conferences, but we seem to be very close to the point where one could use chatbots to mass-produce research papers in TCS. It is not clear how well our community is prepared for that.

These are of course hard questions, but to me the EATCS General Assembly could serve as an important platform for discussing some of these. I want to do my own share to ensure that the European TCS community is at least a bit better prepared for the changes that AI is bringing.

Bio

I am an Associate Professor at Aalto University in Finland, working on the theoretical foundations of distributed and parallel computing. I have published more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific articles and worked with over 120 coauthors. I received the best paper awards in e.g., FOCS 2019, DISC 2017, and DISC 2012, and I have served as the PI in projects that have received in total more than 2 million euros of competitive research funding. I was recently the chair of the DISC steering committee, and I have served in the steering committees of the SIROCCO and SWAT conferences. I have chaired the program committees of DISC 2019 and SIROCCO 2016, and I have served in more than 40 program committees. I have chaired the Presburger Award committee, and I have been a member of the award committees for the SIROCCO Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing, the Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing, and the Principles of Distributed Computing Doctoral Dissertation Award. I am an invited speaker in e.g., OPODIS 2020, SWAT 2020, SIROCCO 2023, SOFSEM 2026, and SIROCCO 2026. I am currently responsible for the CS Bachelor’s major at Aalto University, and my own teaching ranges from the theory of distributed computing to the practice of high-performance computing.

Home page: jukkasuomela.fi

Email: jukka.suomela@aalto.fi