ITU Professor involved in the upgrading of European theoretical computer science
The European conference in theoretical computer science, ICALP, has achieved top ranking. The current Chair of ICALP’s Steering Committee, Thore Husfeldt, Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, is excited to see that the upgrade has already resulted in more world-class researchers presenting their results in Europe.
Written 30 March, 2026 13:06 by Jari Kickbusch
For decades, European conferences in theoretical computer science (TCS) have been held in the shadow of the big American conferences. This might change now. The most prestigious European conference in the field, ICALP (short for International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming), was recently upgraded from A to A⋆ by iCORE, the most important organisation that assesses the quality of computer science conferences.
The ranking has been celebrated by computer scientists at many European universities, not least at the IT University of Copenhagen (ITU), where Professor Thore Husfeldt has played a vital role in improving and promoting European TCS research. He says that the ICALP upgrade has already resulted in a 20 percent increase in submissions for the 2026 conference compared to last year.
“I’m over the moon. ICALP joins the ranks of ‘flagship’ venues with an A⋆ ranking. This is immensely satisfying. Europe’s main conference in theoretical computer science now has the same official rank as the top US venues. That means more top researchers will submit their best papers to ICALP, and fewer European researchers will feel incentivised to travel to the US to present their best ideas,” he says.
Play the game
Thore Husfeldt hosted the annual ICALP conference at the IT University of Copenhagen in 2014. Three years later, in 2017, he decided to run for a council member position at the European Association of Theoretical Computer Science, which was then the governing body for ICALP. His goal was to improve the scientific level of the conference. Today, he is the Chair of ICALP’s Steering Committee and is pleased that, through a team effort from the European TCS research community, it has been possible to raise the quality of the conference considerably. He therefore expects that the conference will become even more popular in the coming years.
“The quality of a conference depends on factors such as selectivity, the quality of the review process, the anonymity of submissions, the composition of the programme committee, and the choice of conference venue. Each of these aspects can be influenced by personal preferences, political and social agendas, traditions, etc. In ICALP, however, we chose to maintain a focus on values such as professional competence, merit, and quality, and this has paid off in the form of higher quality and better ranking. This makes a real difference for many junior researchers. Now, they don’t need to submit their papers somewhere else for promotion or funding reasons. ICALP is a brilliant event that researchers love to attend; the community is great, but some institutions advised young researchers not to submit to ICALP because it was ‘only A’,” he says.
Thore Husfeldt’s colleague, Professor Eva Rotenberg, who is a council member of the European Association of Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS), is equally excited to see the acknowledgement of European theoretical computer science conferences.
The European view
The head of the Section for Theoretical Computer Science at ITU, Riko Jacob, congratulates Thore Husfeldt and the rest of the European TCS community. He predicts that the upgrade will not only impact ITU’s and European competitiveness in the field of TCS, but also influence the approach to and understanding of the research field.
“ICALP maintains a broad view of what constitutes TCS, sometimes called the ‘European’ view. In the US, CS Theory is mainly algorithms and computational complexity, but in Europe it also includes topics like Logic and Formal Methods for programming languages. That’s also how we understand TCS at ITU. We include all the computer-science subdisciplines that use mathematically rigorous design and analysis,” he concludes.
“Previously, if I wanted to send my work to an A⋆-ranked conference, I could choose between three American conferences. With the new ranking, I have gained two A⋆-ranked venues, namely SoCG (Symposium for Computational Geometry, ed.) and ICALP, both of which are excellent, high-quality venues. Aside from increasing geographical diversity, these two conferences have in common that their proceedings are published in a low-cost, open-access, Creative Commons-licensed manner,” she says.
Jari Kickbusch, phone 7218 5304, email jark@itu.dk