Events and Activities

Explore current and upcoming events and activities happening at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Oct
15
2024

Computer Science/Discrete Mathematics Seminar II

Analytic Insights into the Zig-Zag Product and Its Friends: Part II
Gil Cohen
10:30am|Simonyi 101 and Remote Access

The well-known Zig-Zag product and related graph operators, like derandomized squaring, are fundamentally combinatorial in nature. Classical bounds on their behavior often rely on a mix of combinatorics and linear algebra. However, these traditional...

Oct
21
2024

Computer Science/Discrete Mathematics Seminar I

When and How are (promise) Constraint Satisfaction Problems Efficiently Solvable?
Venkatesan Guruswami
10:30am|Wolfensohn Hall and Remote Access

Computational problems exhibit a diverse range of behaviors in terms of how quickly and effectively they can be solved.  What underlying mathematical structure (or lack thereof) in a computational problem leads to an efficient algorithm for solving...

Oct
22
2024

Computer Science/Discrete Mathematics Seminar II

Sheaves on Graphs, the Hanna Neumann Conjecture, and My Debt to Number Theory and Algebraic Geometry
Joel Friedman
10:30am|Rubenstein Commons | Meeting Room 5

I will discuss the Hanna Neumann conjecture of the 1950's and some tools in graph theory that I used to solve it.  The tools include sheaf theory on graphs, Galois theory for graphs, and the preservation of "local properties" under base change (for...