Email

alexander.bork at cs.rwth-aachen.de

Address

Room 4205
Ahornstraße 55
D-52074 Aachen

Phone

+49 241 80 21252

I have been a PhD student at the Software Modeling and Verification Group (MOVES) headed by Professor Joost-Pieter Katoen since April 2021. Additionally, I am a doctoral researcher within the Research Training Group UnRAVeL.

Research

We cannot avoid POMDPs (…) because the real world is one.

Stuart J. Russel, Peter Norvig
Artificial Intelligence – A Modern Approach (Fourth Edition), p.578

My research focus is on the verification of partially observable stochastic models, in particular the analysis of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). In contrast to classical stochastic models, in partially observable models a decision maker must base its decisions on the available information in a state and not the complete state itself. A special focus of my work is the development of approaches that can be used in practice to verify certain properties on partially observable models and to synthesise strategies for such properties.

I am also interested in general topics of probabilistic verification, in particular probabilistic model checking.
I am a developer of the probabilistic model checker Storm.

Thesis Projects

If you are interested in writing a Bachelor’s/Master’s thesis within my research area, don’t hesitate to contact me!

Finished Projects

• Umut Dural, Automatic Algorithm Selection for Probabilistic Model Checking using Machine Learning, Bachelor’s Thesis, 2023.
• Gergana Tropcheva, Strategy Computation for a Markovian Disease Spread Model, Bachelor’s thesis, 2023.
• Christina Gehnen, POMDP-based Execution Models for Probabilistic Programs with Partial Observability, Master’s thesis, 2022. (co-supervised with Tobias Winkler)

Peer Reviews

Journals

• Logical Methods in Computer Science (lmcs) 2022/23 – Reviewer

Conferences

• TACAS 2024 – Member of Artifact Evaluation Committee
• AAMAS 2024 – Subreviewer
• UAI 2023 – External Reviewer
• TACAS 2023 – Member of Artifact Evaluation Committee
• CAV 2022 – External Reviewer
• FoSSaCS 2022 – External Reviewer

Teaching

I’m currently involved in the following teaching activities:

• Lecture: Modeling and Verification of Probabilistic Systems (WS 23)

Past Semesters

• Lecture: Model Checking (SS 23)
• Proseminar: Programming Languages (SS 23)
• Seminar: Probabilistic Programming (WS 22)
• Lecture: Model Checking (SS 22)
• Proseminar: Introduction to Program Analysis (SS 22)
• Lecture: Modeling and Verification of Probabilistic Systems (SS 21)

Publications

2023
[bibtex] @conference{SESPSP2023, title = {Search and Explore: Symbiotic Policy Synthesis in POMDPs}, author = {Roman Andriushchenko and Alexander Nikolai Bork and Milan Češka and Sebastian Junges and Joost-Pieter Katoen and Filip Macák}, publisher = {Springer}, booktitle = {LNCS}, volume = {13966}, pages = {113-135}, type = {Conference Paper}, year = {2023}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-37709-9_6}, url = { https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/968844}, }× [issue]	Roman Andriushchenko, Alexander Nikolai Bork, Milan Češka, Sebastian Junges, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Filip Macák. Search and Explore: Symbiotic Policy Synthesis in POMDPs, 35. International Conference on Computer-Aided Verification (CAV 2023), Volume 13966 of LNCS, 113-135, Springer, 2023.
2022
[bibtex] @conference{UAETRP2022, title = {Under-Approximating Expected Total Rewards in POMDPs}, author = {Alexander Nikolai Bork and Joost-Pieter Katoen and Tim Quatmann}, publisher = {Springer}, booktitle = {LNCS}, volume = {13244}, pages = {22-40}, type = {Conference Paper}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-99527-0_2}, url = { https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/844526}, }× [issue]	Alexander Nikolai Bork, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Tim Quatmann. Under-Approximating Expected Total Rewards in POMDPs, 28. International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS 2022), Volume 13244 of LNCS, 22-40, Springer, 2022.
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