CV & Publications

Education

• PhD candidate at RPTU Kaiserslautern - Computer Science Department, 2020-
• M.Sc. in METU - Mathematics Department, 2020
• B.Sc. in METU - Computer Engineering Department, 2017

Teaching

• Winter 2023/2024: Teaching Assistant
  • RPTU Kaiserslautern, “Concurrency Theory”
• Winter 2022/2023: Teaching Assistant
  • Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, “Concurrency Theory”
• Fall 2017/2018: Student Teaching Assistant
  • Middle East Technical University, “Introduction to C Programming”

Advising

I have co-advised Munko Tsyrempilon (RPTU Kaiserslautern) together with Anne-Kathrin Schmuck, who succesfully defended his master’s thesis in January 2024.

Publications

• Infinite-state Games with Energy Objectives Beyond Counters [ICALP 2026, extended version] Irmak Sağlam, Georg Zetzsche

• Incremental Data-Driven Policy Synthesis via Game Abstractions [AAAI 2026, extended version] (oral presentation — 4.6% acceptance rate) Irmak Sağlam*, Mahdi Nazeri, Alessandro Abate, Sadegh Soudjani, Anne-Kathrin Schmuck

• Quantitative Strategy Templates [ATVA 2025, extended version] Ashwani Anand, Satya Prakash Nayak, Ritam Raha, Irmak Sağlam, Anne-Kathrin Schmuck

• Fair Quantitative Games [FoSSaCS 2025, extended version] Ashwani Anand, Satya Prakash Nayak, Ritam Raha, Irmak Sağlam, Anne-Kathrin Schmuck

• A Decremental Algorithm for Fair Büchi Games (Distinguished Paper) [ATVA 2024] Irmak Sağlam, Anne-Kathrin Schmuck, Munko Tsyrempilon

• Fair omega-Regular Games [FoSSaCS 2024, extended version] Daniel Hausmann, Nir Piterman, Irmak Sağlam, Anne-Kathrin Schmuck

• Rabin Games and Colourful Universal Trees [TACAS 2024 | extended version] Rupak Majumdar, Irmak Sağlam, K. S. Thejaswini

• Directed Regular and Context-free Languages [STACS 2024 | extended version] Moses Ganardi, Irmak Sağlam, Georg Zetzsche

• Solving Two-Player Games under Progress Assumptions [VMCAI 2024 | extended version] Satya Prakash Nayak, Irmak Sağlam, Anne-Kathrin Schmuck, K. S. Thejaswini

• Solving Odd-Fair Parity Games [FSTTCS 2023 | extended version] Irmak Sağlam, Anne-Kathrin Schmuck

• On the closed Ramsey numbers $R^{cl}(\omega+n, 3)$ [Israel Journal of Mathematics 2021 | arXiv] Burak Kaya, Irmak Sağlam

• Synthesis of Controllable ptSTL Formulas [SIU 2020, arXiv] Irmak Sağlam*, Ebru Aydın Göl

• Cause Mining and Controller Synthesis with STL [CDC 2019 | arXiv] Irmak Sağlam*, Ebru Aydın Göl

Master’s Thesis

Some New Bounds on Closed Ordinal Ramsey Numbers

Talks

• IRIF Automata Seminar (October 24, 2025), “An Efficient Subclass of Fairness on Games on Graphs & Gadget Based Algorithms”
• Highlights 2025, “Fair Quantitative Games”
• University of Oxford, Verification Seminars (June 12, 2025),
  “An Efficient Subclass of Fairness in Games on Graphs: Theory and Gadget-Based Algorithms”
  (abstract)
• University of Oxford, Algorithms and Complexity Seminars (June 19, 2025),
  “The Complexity of Deciding Directedness” (abstract)
• FoSSaCS 2025, “Fair Quantitative Games”
• ATVA 2024, “A Decremental Algorithm for Fair Büchi Games”
• DLT 2024, “Directed Regular and Context-Free Languages” (Invited to the `Highlights of Language Theory’ session)
• Highlights 2024, “Fair omega-Regular Games”
• FoSSaCS 2024, “Fair omega-Regular Games”
• STACS 2024, “Directed Regular and Context-free Languages”
• FICS 2024, “Fixpoints for Fair Parity/$\bot$ Games” (abstract)
• VMCAI 2024, “Solving Two-Player Games under Progress Assumptions” with Satya Prakash Nayak (talk)
• GALOP 2024, “Fair omega-Regular Games”
• FSTTCS 2023, “Solving Odd-Fair Parity Games” (talk)
• Theorietag 2023, “Checking Directedness of Regular and Context-free Languages” (Proceedings, Slides)
• Highlights 2023, “Solving Odd-Fair Parity Games”
• WiL 2023, “Rabin Games and Colourful Universal Trees”
• MOVEP 2022, “Justification Graphs for Parity Games under Strong Transition Fairness”

Sub/External reviews

LICS’26, TACAS’26, AAAI’26, FSTTCS’25, MFCS’25, ICALP’25, CAV’25, ICALP’24, VMCAI’24, TACAS’24

Organization

• “Games on Graphs” Workshop at Highlights Collaborative Research Week 2025
  September 8–10, 2025
  Saarbrücken, Germany

Research Visits

• October 20 - 24, 2025 IRIF (Paris, France) Host: Thomas Colcombet

• June 4 – July 4, 2025
  The University of Oxford (Oxford, UK)
  Host: Sandra Kiefer

• October 28, 2024
  National Institute of Informatics (Tokyo, Japan)
  Host: Kazuki Watanabe

Work experience

• 2020: Project Team Lead (Part-Time)
  • Ratio Technologies
  • Analysis of the unwanted behaviour related to customer trends on a long-term multidimensional dataset for a large major appliances company. Providing insights on how to converge to customer needs.
• 2018-2020: Research Assistant
  • METU Computer Engineering Department - Cyber Physical Systems Research Group
  • Supervisor: Asst. Prof. Ebru Aydın Göl
  • Project no: #117E242 funded by TUBITAK
  • Research regarding formal methods, automata theory and control systems. Formal method approaches adopted for synthesizing a feedback controller that enhances the behaviour of discrete time systems given over labeled datasets.
• Summer 2016: Internship
  • TSK Modsimmer - Temizer Laboratory
  • Research on the intersection of finance and genetic algorithms. Generation of one protfolio management and one parity trading algorithm, using genetic algorithms.
• Summer 2014: Internship
  • NCR Corporation/Istanbul
  • Informatics/Programming Department
  • Development of an object oriented working interface with C# for log monitoring.