PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Anthony Widjaja Lin

Also known as Anthony W. To

Anthony Widjaja Lin is a computer scientist whose work connects automated reasoning for strings, formal verification and transformer theory. Born in Indonesia, he earned degrees in Melbourne and Toronto and completed an informatics PhD at Edinburgh in 2010. He held research and faculty posts at Oxford and Yale-NUS, received ERC grants in 2017 and 2023, and coauthored work on string solving and transformer expressivity. He is a professor of Automated Reasoning at RPTU and a Max Planck Fellow at MPI-SWS; he took up these roles in 2019, and ICLR named his 2026 transformer paper an Outstanding Paper.

Now at
RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, Max Planck Society and University of Kaiserslautern-Landau
Badges

Timeline

  1. By 2010

    Degrees in Melbourne, Toronto and Edinburgh

    Born in Indonesia, he earns a BSc (Honours) at Melbourne University and an MSc at the University of Toronto. He completes a PhD in Informatics at the University of Edinburgh in 2010 under Leonid Libkin and Richard Mayr.

  2. 2010–2013

    An Oxford postdoctoral fellowship

    From 2010 to 2013, he holds an EPSRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Oxford, hosted by Marta Kwiatkowska.

  3. 2014–2019

    Yale-NUS and Oxford faculty roles

    He joins Yale-NUS as an assistant professor in 2014. In 2016, he becomes an associate professor in programming languages at Oxford and a Governing Body Fellow at Kellogg College; he leaves Oxford in February 2019. His research focuses on constraint solving, program analysis and formal verification.

  4. 2017

    An ERC Starting Grant

    He receives an ERC Starting Grant in 2017.

  5. 2023

    An ERC Consolidator Grant

    The ERC awards him a Consolidator Grant in 2023 for five years of research on methods to analyze complex programs and prove their correctness; the award provides around two million euros.

  6. 2025

    Regular constraint propagation

    In 2025, he coauthors “The Power of Regular Constraint Propagation,” a string-solving method that repeatedly computes pre- or post-images of regular languages under string functions to narrow possible values of string variables. The authors implement it in OSTRICH and report performance gains on random PCP and bioinformatics benchmarks.

  7. 2026

    Transformers are inherently succinct

    With Pascal Bergsträßer and Ryan Cotterell, he coauthors “Transformers are Inherently Succinct,” a theoretical study of how compactly transformers encode concepts compared with alternatives such as RNNs. ICLR names the paper an Outstanding Paper in 2026.

  8. Since 2019

    Professor at RPTU and MPI-SWS

    In 2019, he takes up a professorship in Automated Reasoning at RPTU and a Max Planck Fellowship at MPI-SWS. He is a W3 full professor in theoretical computer science at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau.

Career

  1. Since 2019RPTU University Kaiserslautern-LandauProfessor of Automated Reasoning
  2. Since 2019Max Planck SocietyMax Planck Fellow
  3. Since 2019University of Kaiserslautern-LandauProfessor of Automated Reasoning; W3 Full Professor in Theoretical Computer Science
  4. From 2014Yale-NUS CollegeAssistant Professor
  5. 2010–2019University of OxfordPostdoctoral Research Fellow, Associate Professor in Programming Languages

Education

  1. 2010University of EdinburghPhD
  2. University of MelbourneBSc (Honours)
  3. University of TorontoMSc

From the biography.

  1. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Max Planck Society. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Max Planck Society. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes Max Planck Society. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.
  4. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes Max Planck Society. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Homepage of Anthony Widjaja Lin [previously Anthony W. To] | Home Page of Anthony W. Lin anthonywlin.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford: String Solving with Word Equations and Transducers: Towards a Logic for Analysing Mutation XSS cs.ox.ac.uk. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Anthony Widjaja Lin — Education | Unifers unifers.ai. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Anthony W. Lin | Department of Computer Science cs.ox.ac.uk. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Die Eroberung von Datenreihen: Informatiker der RPTU erhält zwei Millionen Euro vom Europäischen Forschungsrat nachrichten.idw-online.de. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. [PDF] The Power of Regular Constraint Propagation | CiteDrive citedrive.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. The Power of Regular Constraint Propagation (SPLASH 2025 - OOPSLA) - SPLASH 2025 2025.splashcon.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Announcing the ICLR 2026 Outstanding Papers – ICLR Blog blog.iclr.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Anthony Widjaja Lin | CsAuthors.net csauthors.net. Checked 21 October 2026.