Dr. Ashlin Iser

Efficient Symbolic Reasoning and Trustworthy AI – Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Over 20 years of hands-on software engineering experience – from bare-metal performance optimization to full-stack system design – combined with academic expertise in algorithm engineering and automated reasoning.

🔬 Research Interests

I specialize in Efficient Symbolic Reasoning (SAT/SMT, planning, optimization, data-driven algorithm development and tuning) and Trustworthy, Explainable AI. My work focuses on efficient symbolic solvers for complex combinatorial problems and their applications, most recently in neuro-symbolic AI.

📈 Engagement

Professional Activities: Organizer of the International SAT Competitions (2015; annually since 2020); active program committee member (e.g., SAT, ECAI) and reviewer for leading journals (e.g., AIJ, NCOMMS).

Teaching & Mentorship: Focused on graduate-level courses (including “Practical SAT Solving” with an LQI of 100, and the “Recent Advances in SAT Solving” seminar) along with mentoring research and software engineering projects. Experienced in organizing large-scale undergraduate lab courses (Algorithms, Programming) with up to 700 participants.

Supervision: Over 30 completed theses (Bachelor, Master, Diploma), split between academic, research-focused topics at the institute and industry-partnered collaborations (CAS Software AG, PLANTA Projekt-Management Systeme GmbH).

Publications: 24 peer-reviewed papers (journals, conferences & workshops), listed on my Google Scholar profile.

Open Source: All projects on my GitHub profile are open source, most notably the Global Benchmark Database (GBD).

🛠 Technical Expertise

Algorithm & Performance Engineering: Bare-metal and low-level optimization, high-performance solver engineering for large-scale combinatorial problems, and parallel algorithm design.

Full-Stack & Architecture: End-to-end system design spanning algorithmic backends, web frontends, and relational data modeling.

Technologies: High Performance Computing (HPC), Constraint & Logic Solving, Database Systems and Modeling, Machine Learning, Software Testing, Static Code Analysis.

Languages & Tools: C++, Python, SQL, C, Java, diverse Scripting Languages and Web Technologies, and extensive experience with Linux environments.

📚 Selected Publications

Sustainable Benchmarking Tool (2026, SAT)
Ashlin Iser, Marie Anastacio, Théo Matricon, Laurent Simon, Holger H. Hoos

Active Learning for SAT Solver Benchmarking (2025, JAR)
Tobias Fuchs, Jakob Bach, Ashlin Iser

Global Benchmark Database (SAT 2024)
Ashlin Iser, Christoph Jabs

Oracle-Based Local Search for Pseudo-Boolean Optimization (ECAI 2023)
Ashlin Iser, Jeremias Berg, Matti Järvisalo

A Comprehensive Study of k-Portfolios of Recent SAT Solvers (SAT 2022)
Jakob Bach, Ashlin Iser, Klemens Böhm

Unit Propagation with Stable Watches (CP 2021)
Ashlin Iser, Tomáš Balyo

SAT Competition 2020 (AIJ 2021)
Nils Froleyks, Marijn Heule, Ashlin Iser, Matti Järvisalo, Martin Suda