The C&O department has 36 faculty members and 60 graduate students. We are intensely research oriented and hold a strong international reputation in each of our six major areas:
- Algebraic combinatorics
- Combinatorial optimization
- Continuous optimization
- Cryptography
- Graph theory
- Quantum computing
Read more about the department's research to learn of our contributions to the world of mathematics!
News
Three C&O faculty win Outstanding Performance Awards
The awards are given each year to faculty members across the University of Waterloo who demonstrate excellence in teaching and research.
Sina Kalantarzadeh wins Governor General's Gold Medal
The Governor General’s Gold Medal is one of the highest student honours awarded by the University of Waterloo.
Two C&O faculty win Outstanding Performance Awards
The awards are given each year to faculty members across the University of Waterloo who demonstrate excellence in teaching and research.
Events
Algebraic and Enumerative combinatorics seminar -Scott Neville-Eventual sign coherence
| Speaker: | Scott Neville |
| Affiliation: | LACIM |
| Location: | MC 6460 |
Abstract: The sign coherence of c-vectors is one of the fundamental theorems of cluster algebras with principal coefficients. Gekhtman and Nakanishi posed the Asymptotic Sign Coherence Conjecture for cluster algebras with arbitrary coefficients, which says sign coherence should eventually hold in any sufficiently generic infinite mutation sequence. We prove that for cluster algebras from quivers of arbitrary rank, their conjecture holds with probability 1 for a random mutation sequence. Our results also establish the conjecture in full generality for many families of quivers. This is joint work with Amanda Burcroff.
There will be a pre-seminar presenting relevant background at beginning graduate level starting at 1:30pm in MC 5417.
Crypto Reading Group - Mojtaba Fadavi and Anna Henderson-HQC PKE/KEM
Abstract: This session is devoted to the HQC cryptosystem itself, in both its public-key encryption and key-encapsulation forms. We will explain how the scheme works, describe its main components and design choices, and discuss the corresponding security analysis, including comments on the post-quantum setting. By this stage, the reading group should have enough background to appreciate both the structure and the rationale of HQC.
References: [1] and [4]
[1] C. Aguilar-Melchor, O. Blazy, J.-C. Deneuville, P. Gaborit and G. Zémor. Efficient Encryption From Random Quasi-Cyclic Codes. In IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 64, no. 5, pp. 3927–3943, 2018.
[4] HQC Team. Hamming Quasi-Cyclic (HQC), NIST Submission, 2025.
A week-by-week plan is outlined at the following link: https://www.leonardocolo.com/seminars/Spring26.html.
|
CombOpt ReadingGroup - Kevin Cheung-The home-away pattern set feasibility problem in sports scheduling
Abstract: In sports scheduling, a single round-robin schedule for $2n$ teams consists of $2n-1$ rounds so that each team plays each of the other $2n-1$ teams exactly once across the rounds and that each team plays exactly one game in each round. With each game played at the venue of one of the two opposing teams, a table of home-away patterns can be extracted from a single round-robin schedule so that the $(i,j)$-entry indicates whether team $i$ plays a home game or an away game in round $j$. The home-away pattern set feasibility problem turns the process around and asks: Given an arbitrarily constructed table of home-away patterns, is there a single round-robin schedule compatible with it? Even though single round-robin schedules do not often arise in practice, it is not uncommon in sports scheduling to first specify when teams should play home games and then decide on which opponents they should play against. Being able to efficiently determine if a home-away pattern set is feasible can help with quick generation of potential schedules. As of today, it is not known if the problem is NP-complete. This talk will focus on polynomial-time checkable necessary conditions for feasibility and conditions under which they are also sufficient. Some personal reflections on the problem will conclude the talk. |