Seminars

The Theoretical Computer Science and Discrete Mathematics Seminars will take place every Monday at 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. and every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. at the Institute for Advanced Study. The lectures will be held in S-101, the seminar room in Simonyi Hall, unless stated otherwise.

If you are interested in attending future seminars and are not already on our mailing list from previous years, please send an e-mail to Andrea Lass and ask to be added.

alass email

 

Upcoming Seminar Titles Include:

Oct
14
2024

Computer Science/Discrete Mathematics Seminar I

Analytic Insights into the Zig-Zag Product and Its Friends: Part I
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
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...