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.
Prof. Alfred Menezes is named Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research
The Fellows program, which was established in 2004, is awarded to no more than 0.25% of the IACR’s 3000 members each year and recognizes “outstanding IACR members for technical and professional contributions to cryptologic research.”
C&O student Ava Pun receives Jessie W. H. Zou Memorial Award
She received the award in recognition of her research on simulating virtual training environments for autonomous vehicles, which she conducted at the start-up Waabi.
Events
Tutte colloquium-David Torregrossa Belén
Title:Splitting algorithms for monotone inclusions with minimal dimension
| Speaker: | David Torregrossa Belén |
| Affiliation: | Center for Mathematical Modeling, University of Chile |
| Location: | MC 5501 |
Abstract: Many situations in convex optimization can be modeled as the problem of finding a zero of a monotone operator, which can be regarded as a generalization of the gradient of a differentiable convex function. In order to numerically address this monotone inclusion problem, it is vital to be able to exploit the inherent structure of the operator defining it. The algorithms in the family of the splitting methods achieve this by iteratively solving simpler subtasks that are defined by separately using some parts of the original problem.
In the first part of this talk, we will introduce some of the most relevant monotone inclusion problems and present their applications to optimization. Subsequently, we will draw our attention to a common anomaly that has persisted in the design of methods in this family: the dimension of the underlying space —which we denote as lifting— of the algorithms abnormally increases as the problem size grows. This has direct implications on the computational performance of the method as a result of the increase of memory requirements. In this framework, we characterize the minimal lifting that can be obtained by splitting algorithms adept at solving certain general monotone inclusions. Moreover, we present splitting methods matching these lifting bounds, and thus having minimal lifting.
Algebraic and enumerative combinatorics seminar-Alex Fink
Title:The external activity complex of a pair of matroids
| Speaker | Alex Fink |
| Affiliation | Queen Mary University of London |
| Location | MC 5479 |
Abstract: In 2016, Ardila and Boocher were investigating the variety obtained by taking the closure of a linear space within A^n in its compactification (P^1)^n; later work named this the "matroid Schubert variety". Its Gröbner degenerations led them to define, and study the commutative algebra of, the _external activity complex_ of a matroid. If the matroid is on n elements, this is a complex on 2n vertices whose facets encode the external activity of bases.
In recent work with Andy Berget on Speyer's g-invariant, we required a generalisation of the definition of external activity where the input was a pair of matroids on the same ground set. We generalise many of the results of Ardila--Boocher to this setting. Time permitting, I'll also present the tropical intersection theory machinery we use to understand the external activity complex of a pair.
For those who attended my talk at this year's CAAC on this paper, the content of the present talk is meant to be complementary.
There will be a pre-seminar presenting relevant background at the beginning graduate level starting at 1:30pm,