"Small Dynamic Complexity Classes" was awarded the E.W. Beth Dissertation Prize 2016 for outstanding dissertations in the fields of logic, language, and information. The thesis studies the foundations of query re-evaluation after modifying a database.  It explores the structure of small dynamic descriptive complexity classes and provides new methods for proving lower bounds in this dynamic context. One of the contributions to the former aspect helped to confirm the conjecture by Patnaik and Immerman (1997) that reachability can be maintained by first-order update formulas.

Thomas Zeume received his PhD from the computer science department at the TU Dortmund University, advised by Thomas Schwentick. His research focuses on the connection of logic, complexity theory, and database theory. Thomas was awarded the E.W. Beth Dissertation Prize 2016 for outstanding dissertations in the fields of logic, language, and information and he received the Best Student Paper Award at the 2014 Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science conference.