Ziad Ismaili Alaoui

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PhD Student

Theoretical Computer Science

I am a current doctoral student at the University of Liverpool since October 2024. I am a member of the ACTO and NDC groups. I work under the guidance of Sebastian Wild, Nikhil Mande and Viktor Zamaraev. Prior to this, I completed my Master’s degree at the University of York under the guidance of Detlef Plump.

Note: My surname is “Ismaili Alaoui,” in full. My first name is “Ziad.” I do not have a middle name.

Interests: Graph Transformation, Graph Rewriting, Graph Algorithms, Succinct Data Structures, Compression, Tournaments, Query Complexity

To contact me, please send me an email at ziad.ismaili-alaoui (at) liverpool (dot) ac (dot) uk. (I used to have my email address reversed to reduce the risks of spam from web scrapers, but I decided to be more reasonable.)

Education

Work Experience

Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Liverpool (Since January 2025)

Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of York (February 2024 to May 2024)

Talks

  1. “Succinct Preferential-Attachment Graphs”, 51st International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG), Europäische Akademie Otzenhausen (Germany), June 12th 2025.
  2. “Implementing Binary Search Trees in GP 2”, 16th International Workshop on Graph Computation Model (GCM), Koblenz (Germany), June 10th 2025.
  3. “Succinct Preferential-Attachment Graphs”, Analysis of Algorithms (AofA) 2025, Toronto (Canada), May 8th 2025.
  4. “Finding Strong Kings in Tournaments”, Postgraduate Combinatorics Conference (PCC) 2025, Glasgow (the United Kingdom), May 2nd 2025.
  5. “Linear-Time Graph Programs for Unbounded-Degree Graphs”, International Conference on Graph Transformation (ICGT) 2024, Enschede (the Netherlands), July 11th 2024.

Publications

Preprints

  1. Z. Ismaili Alaoui, Namrata and S. Wild, Succinct Preferential-Attachment Graphs, ArXiv e-prints, arXiv:2506.21436, 2025.

    We present a compressed data structure for graphs generated by the Barabási-Albert model, which aims to achieve space usage close to the instance-optimal information-theoretic minimum (i.e. lg(1/p) bits, where p is the probability of generating the graph through the model), while supporting navigational queries (e.g., determining whether two vertices are adjacent) efficiently. Our key contributions are the analysis of the instance-optimal space usage, which includes results that may be of independent interest.

  2. Z. Ismaili Alaoui and N. S. Mande, Hardness of Finding Kings and Strong Kings, ArXiv e-prints, arXiv:2504.19386, 2025.

    Define a tournament to be a complete directed graph, such that every pair of vertices is connected by exactly one directed edge. A king, in a directed graph, is a vertex from which every other vertex is reachable by a path of at most 2 edges. A strong king is a king k such that for every vertex v that dominates it, the number of length-2 paths from k to v is strictly greater than from v to k. We show that the randomised (and therefore deterministic) query complexity of finding a king in an arbitrary directed graph is Θ(n²). Similarly, we also demonstrate that the query complexity (randomised and deterministic) of finding a strong king in a tournament is Θ(n²).

  3. Z. Ismaili Alaoui and D. Plump, Rule-Based Graph Programs Matching the Time Complexity of Imperative Algorithms, ArXiv e-prints, arXiv:2501.09144, 40 pages, 2025.

Conference and Workshop Papers

  1. Z. Ismaili Alaoui and D. Plump, Linear-Time Graph Programs without Preconditions, Proc. 15th International Workshop on Graph Computation Models (GCM 2024). Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, arXiv:2503.20465.
  2. Z. Ismaili Alaoui and D. Plump, Linear-Time Graph Programs for Unbounded-Degree Graphs, Proc. 17th International Conference on Graph Transformation (ICGT 2024). Lecture Notes in Computer Science 14774, pages 3-20. Springer, 2024. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-64285-2_1.