At the Faculty of Information Technology CTU in Prague (FIT CTU), experts on algorithms and string processing gathered at the end of August 2025 for two significant events. First came the Prague Stringology Conference 2025, followed by the Summer Stringmasters 2025 workshop.
This year’s Prague Stringology Conference was already the 28th edition and, at the same time, marked the 30th event organized by the Prague Stringology Club. Sixteen experts attended the conference, discussing, among other topics, efficient compression of documents and large datasets, data structures for bioinformatics, and other current challenges in data processing.
The conference was followed by the smaller and more informal Summer Stringmasters workshop, which has been a traditional opportunity for close collaboration among researchers in stringology since 2007. Seven participants gathered in Prague this year, focusing on theoretical properties of strings that reveal the limits of practical solutions. The discussions also involved Professor Bill Smyth of McMaster University, one of the founders of the entire tradition. The workshop took place in smaller working groups and was devoted primarily to new research ideas and spontaneous collaboration.
“Both the conference and the workshop have shown that stringology has not only deep theoretical significance but also practical impacts in fields dealing with large structured data. For example, we can mention working with a genome database of part of the (not only) human population or an archive of similar documents. At the same time, it is valuable for us that participants meet in person, establish new collaborations, and come up with original ideas together,” said Prof. Ing. Jan Holub, Ph.D., from FIT CTU, the main organizer of both events.
