Solon P. Pissis, Ph.D

Background

I read Computer Science at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the University of Athens (2003-2007) before completing my M.Sc in High-Performance Computing at the University of Edinburgh (2007-2008). I obtained my Ph.D in Computer Science from King's College London (2008-2012). I also hold a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice in Higher Education from King's College London (2015-2016).

I was a Research Associate in the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida and a Visiting Scientist in the Scientific Computing group at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (2012-2013). I was appointed Lecturer (2013) and then Senior Lecturer (2018) in Computer Science in the Department of Informatics at King's College London. In 2019 I joined CWI, where I am Senior Researcher in the Networks & Optimization group leading the Algorithms and Data Structures for Sequence Analysis team. In 2020, I also joined the Department of Computer Science at the VU as Visiting Associate Professor.

Research

My research area is algorithms and data structures with an emphasis on processing big data. Research topics I am interested in include algorithms and data structures on strings and graphs for pattern matching, indexing, comparison, and finding regularities. Applications thereof I am interested in include data mining, bioinformatics, data compression, and information retrieval. In particular, I am interested in applications when there is a very good theoretical reason.

Professional Activities

• I am a member of the editorial board of Algorithmica.
• I am a member of the steering committee of ESA and ALENEX.
• I am a member of the programme committee of CPM 2025, WABI 2025, SPIRE 2025, and PSC 2025.
• I organized ALGO 2023, the premier European event on algorithms, at CWI in Amsterdam.
• I was on the programme committee of ALENEX 2024 (co-chair), WABI 2024 (co-chair), PSC 2023 (co-chair), WABI 2023, ISAAC 2022, SPIRE 2022, WABI 2022, CPM 2022, CiE 2022, SPIRE 2021, WABI 2021, ALENEX 2021, SOFSEM 2021, WALCOM 2021, CPM 2020, FUN 2020, ECCB 2020, WABI 2020, SPIRE 2020, WALCOM 2020, CPM 2019 (co-chair), SPIRE 2019, IWOCA 2019, WABI 2018, WALCOM 2018, IWOCA 2018, SEA 2017 (co-chair), IWOCA 2017, SPIRE 2017, CPM 2016, IWOCA 2016, SPIRE 2015, IWOCA 2015, IWOCA 2014, IWOCA 2013.

Teaching at the VU

Algorithms in Sequence Analysis (Postgraduate course, 6 EC)

Ph.D Supervision

I am currently supervising Ben Bals (Year 1, joint with Yasamin Nazari and Daniel Dadush), Hilde Verbeek (Year 3), and Michelle Sweering (write-up).
I was the lead supervisor of Esteban Gabory (2025), Lorraine Ayad (2019), Chang Liu (2019), and Ahmad Retha (2018).

Latest Research Outputs

• Giulia Bernardini, Huiping Chen, Alessio Conte, Roberto Grossi, Veronica Guerrini, Grigorios Loukides, Nadia Pisanti, Solon P. Pissis: Indexing Strings with Utilities. ICDE 2025 [arXiv]
• Lorraine A. K. Ayad, Gabriele Fici, Ragnar Groot Koerkamp, Grigorios Loukides, Rob Patro, Giulio Ermanno Pibiri, Solon P. Pissis: U-index: A Universal Indexing Framework for Matching Long Patterns. SEA 2025 [arXiv]
• Solon P. Pissis: Optimal prefix-suffix queries with applications. SOSA 2025 [arXiv]
• Ling Li, Wiktor Zuba, Grigorios Loukides, Solon P. Pissis, Maria Matsangidou: Scalable Order-Preserving Pattern Mining. ICDM 2024 [arXiv]
• Wiktor Zuba, Grigorios Loukides, Solon P. Pissis, Sharma V. Thankachan: Approximate Suffix-Prefix Dictionary Queries. MFCS 2024 [doi]