Seminar

Title: Generating Functions: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications

Abstract:

Generating functions are an invaluable tool in many areas of discrete mathematics and beyond.

Title: Erdos-Hajnal meets Gyarfas-Sumner

Abstract:

The Gyarfas-Sumner conjecture says that every graph with huge (enough) chromatic number and bounded clique number contains any given forest as an induced subgraph. (And non-forests do not have this property.)

Title: Knots and their (embedded) graphs

Abstract: 

There is a classical and well-known way to describe an alternating knot or link as a plane graph, known as its Tait graph.

Title: LWE Part 2: A quantum discrete Gaussian sampler.

Abstract: In this talk we will describe how a (quantum) Gaussian sampler could be constructed if we had access to a solver of a decoding problem.

Title: Tractable Approximations to Robust Conic Optimization Problems (paper by D. Bertsimas, M. Sim)

Abstract: We review the paper listed in the title of this talk. In the paper, Bertsimas and Sim propose a relaxed robust counterpart for general conic optimization problems

Title: Implementing cryptography at scale 

Abstract: Many cryptographic primitives have rough edges which make them difficult to use properly (by both experts and non-experts).

Title: D. Bertsimas, I. Popescu - Optimal inequalities in probability theory: A convex optimization approach

Abstract: Abstract. We propose a semidefinite optimization approach to the problem of deriving tight moment

Title: Unitary groups over finite fields

Abstract: I will discuss the unitary groups over finite fields, and the structures on which they act (these include 2-designs and generalized quadrangles).

Title: Excluding claws in binary matroids

Abstract: A simple binary matroid is claw-free if no rank-3 flats are independent. We discuss an exact structure theorem for such matroids and sketch its proof. This is joint work with Peter Nelson.

Title: Data-driven Inverse Optimization with Imperfect Information

Abstract:

We continue our reading group with a paper by Kuhn et al with the same title as above.