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SIAM Activity group on Discrete Mathematics
DM-Net
----------------------------------------------------------------March 14, 2011
(Number 2011.02)
----------------------------------------------------------------Email contributions to:
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CONTENTS:
1. Editor's Note
2. The 24th Cumberland Conference on Combinatorics, Graph
Theory, and Computing – May 12-14 – University of
Louisville, Louisville, KY
3. The first SIAM conference on Applied Algebraic Geometry –
October 6-9 – North Carolina State University, Raleigh,
NC
4. Fields Institute Summer Thematic Program on the
Mathematics of Constraint Satisfaction – June 26 to
August 16 – University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
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1. *** Editor's Note ***
-----Keep sending your announcements of interest to the discrete
mathematics community to dm-net@siam.org.
Announcements for prior conferences:
 Triangle Lectures in Combinatorics (TLC) – April 9, 2011 –
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
[http://www.math.ncsu.edu/TLC]
 Midwest GrapH TheorY Conference: MIGHTY LI – April 15-16,
2011 – Fort Wayne, IN
[http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/]
 15th International Conference on Random Structures and
Algorithms RS&A2011 – May 24-28, 2011 – Atlanta, GA
[http://rsa2011.amu.edu.pl/]
 3rd Canadian Discrete and Algorithmic Mathematics Conference
(CanaDAM) – May 31-June 3, 2011 – Victoria, British
Columbia, Canada
[http://CanaDAM.Math.ca/2011]
 Infinite and finite sets: Conference in honor of András
Hajnal’s 80th birthday – June 13-17, 2011 – Budapest,
Hungary
[http://www.renyi.hu/conferences/hajnal80/]



Call for Papers: IWOCA 2011, 22nd International Workshop On
Combinatorial Algorithms – June 20-22, 2011 – Victoria, BC,
Canada
[http://www.iwoca.org/iwoca2011]
Turán100: Paul Turán Memorial Conference – August 22-26,
2011 – Budapest Hungary
[http://www.renyi.hu/~turan100/]
EUROCOMB 2011: 6th Biannual European Conference on
Combinatorics – August 29-September 2, 2011 / Katona ’70 –
September 3-4, 2011 – Budapest, Hungary
[http://www.renyi.hu/conferences/ec11]
[http://www.renyi.hu/conferences/katona70]
The URL for the newsletter archive is
http://orion.math.iastate.edu/rymartin/dm-net/dm-net.html
-- Ryan Martin
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2. *** The 24th Cumberland Conference on Combinatorics, Graph
Theory, and Computing – May 12-14 – University of Louisville,
Louisville, KY ***
-----The 24th Cumberland Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory, and
Computing will be held at the University of Louisville from
Thursday, May 12 through Saturday, May 14, 2011. At this point we
are pleased to announce a new development: travel and lodging
expenses may be provided by the National Science Foundation, for
participants without federal support, students, and attendees from
traditionally underrepresented groups; please consult the
conference website for further details and a reimbursement form.
The reimbursement form must be received by Friday, April 15th in
order for us to fully consider the support request.
The program has also been revised and expanded to include details
on plenary addresses and a reception on Friday, May 13th,
sponsored by the University of Louisville Logistics and
Distribution Institute, at the Kentucky Derby Museum.
This annual conference has brought together combinatorial
mathematicians and computer scientists from the southeastern and
midwestern United States since 1988. The conference features four
hour-long plenary addresses by invited speakers and 60 twentyminute contributed talks. Plenary addresses this year will be
presented by:
* Maria Axenovich (Iowa State University): "Unaviodable Patterns
in Colorings"
* Jeno Lehel (University of Memphis): "From the irregularity
strength of graphs to the degree irregularity of random
hypergraphs"
* Dhruv Mubayi (University of Illinois at Chicago): "Coloring
Simple Hypergraphs"
* William T. Trotter (Georgia Institute of Technology): "Planarity
for Partially Ordered Sets"
Abstracts for these addresses and further information on the
financial support available are on the website at:
< http://www.math.louisville.edu/Cumberland/ >
Registration and abstract submission are available via the
website. The deadline for abstract submission is Friday, April 8,
2011, or when all speaking slots are filled.
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3. *** The first SIAM conference on Applied Algebraic Geometry –
October 6-9 – North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC ***
-----This conference, sponsored by SIAM's new activity group in
algebraic geometry SI(AG)^2, will cover applications of algebraic
geometry and related fields to biology, coding theory,
cryptography, computer graphics, quantum computing, control theory
geometric design, complexity theory, machine learning,
optimization, robotics, computational geometry, and statistics.
"Algebraic geometry" is broadly interpreted to include at least
algebraic geometry, commutative algebra, noncommutative algebra,
symbolic and numeric computation, algebraic and geometric
combinatorics, representation theory, and algebraic topology.
Plenary Speakers:
Stephen Fienberg, Carnegie Mellon U
Robert Ghrist, U Pennsylvania
Leonid Gurvits, Los Alamos National Lab
Tanja Lange, TU Eindhoeven
Tom Lyche, University of Oslo
Robert Macpherson, Institute for Advanced Study
Bernd Sturmfels, UC Berkeley
Lihong Zhi, Academia Sinica
*** We would be very happy to have minisymposia in the
intersection of discrete mathematics and one of more of the areas
above! ***
1)
Minisymposia Submission Page Now Open
Deadline for Submission, March 7, 2011
We are maintaining a list of minisymposia that will be at the
meeting at the SI(AG)^2 wiki (16 so far!). Go to the current
events page
< http://wiki.siam.org/siag-ag/index.php/Current_events >
and follow the link to the list of minisymposia. If you are
interested in organizing a minisymposium, please contact the
Program Committee Chairs, Dan Bates (bates@math.colostate.edu) and
Frank Sottile (sottile@math.tamu.edu) to discuss how your
minisymposium will fit in with the conference themes and
complement existing minisymposia.
To *officially* submit your minisymposium, go to the conference
website < http://www.siam.org/meetings/ag11/ >
and follow the link for submissions on the right-hand column, and
follow the instructions. A minisymposium consists of five to ten
25-minute talks. Note that the April 6, 2011 deadline for speaker
abstracts is NOT a hard deadline: you can make changes to your
list of speakers and their titles and abstracts up until July 28,
2011.
2)
Contributed Paper and Poster Submission Page Now Open
Deadline for Submission: April 6, 2011
Go to the conference website
< http://www.siam.org/meetings/ag11/ >
and follow the link for submissions on the right-hand column,
and follow the instructions. There will be a prize for best
poster.
***************************
Conference Co-Chairs
Dan Bates, Colorado State University, USA
Frank Sottile, Texas A & M University, USA
Program Committee
Elizabeth Allman, University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA
Gunnar Carlsson, Stanford University, USA
Tor Dokken, SINTEF Group, Norway
Erich Kaltofen, North Carolina State University, USA
Jean B. Lasserre, LAAS-CNRS and Institute of Mathematics,
Toulouse, France
Kristin Lauter, Microsoft Research, USA
Local Organizing Committee
Seth Sullivant, Chair, North Carolina State University, USA
Erich Kaltofen, North Carolina State University, USA
Irina Kogan, North Carolina State University, USA
Michael Singer, North Carolina State University, USA
Agnes Szanto, North Carolina State University, USA
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4. *** Fields Institute Summer Thematic Program on the Mathematics
of Constraint Satisfaction – June 26 to August 16 – University of
Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada ***
-----Program Organizers:
Venkatesan Guruswami, Carnegie Mellon University,
Pavol Hell, Simon Fraser University
Matt Valeriote, McMaster University
Ross Willard, University of Waterloo
Program Website:
http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/1112/constraint/index.html
Overview:
During July and August 2011, the Fields Institute will host a
thematic program on the Mathematics of Constraint Satisfaction.
The program will include a 5-day summer school, three focused
workshops, the Coxeter Lectures, regular weekly seminars, and
extended periods of time for in-residence researchers and students
for intensive study. The program will bring together researchers
from various communities within pure mathematics and theoretical
computer science.
Outline of Scientific Activities:
The main activities of the program will be concentrated around a
series of three workshops, a summer school, and the Coxeter
Lectures. The summer school will take place during the last week
of June, 2011 and the three workshops will be held at regular
intervals throughout the summer. The Coxeter Lectures will be
given by Moshe Vardi (Rice) on July 11-13, 2011.
Participation in the Program
All scientific events are open to the mathematical sciences
community, but visitors are requested to indicate their interest
in participating in some or all of the planned events by filling
out the information form found on the program website. The
information form can also be used to request office space or
funding. Fields scientific programs are devoted to research in the
mathematical sciences, and enhanced graduate and post-doctoral
training opportunities. Part of the mandate of the Institute is to
broaden and enlarge the community, and to encourage the
participation of women and members of visible minority groups in
our scientific programs.
Deadlines
Requests for support or office space may be submitted at any time
by filling out the application form found on the program website.
The organizing committee will start to review requests in late
February of 2011.
Additional Information
For additional information on the program, please send an email to
thematic@fields.utoronto.ca. To receive updates on the program
please subscribe to our mailing list at
www.fields.utoronto.ca/maillist.
Please circulate this announcement to any person who might be
interested in participating in the program.
Details of Scientific Activities:
June 26-30, 2011 Fields Summer School
Each day of the summer school will consist of four 90 minute
lectures plus time set aside for school participants and
instructors to meet to discuss questions and problems related to
the lectures. Lecture notes and problem sets will be prepared in
advance and posted on the program website. A primary goal of the
summer school is to provide the participants with a thorough and
intense introduction to the main themes of the summer program.
The four threads of the summer school, along with the lecturers
are:
* An Introduction to the CSP: Andrei Krokhin (Durham University)
* Graph Theory and Combinatorics: Jaroslav Nesetril (Charles
University)
* Universal Algebra: Ross Willard (University of Waterloo)
* Approximability of CSPs: Ryan O'Donnell (CMU), Venkatesan
Guruswami (CMU)
July 11-13, 2011 The Coxeter Lectures
A series of three lectures given by Moshe Y. Vardi, Rice
University
July 11- 15, 2011 Workshop on Graph Homomorphisms
Organized by:
Pavol Hell (Simon Fraser University),
Claude Tardif (Royal Military College, Kingston),
Xuding Zhu (Zhejiang Normal University)
This workshop will focus on all aspects of graph homomorphisms,
from those directly related to constraint satisfaction problems,
such as minimum cost and list homomorphisms, versions of
projectivity, and polymorphisms, to those related to basic graph
theoretic notions such as colourings, tree-width and tree-depth,
and those related to notions from category theory, such as adjoint
functors, to those related to statistical physics such as counting
homomorphisms, and study of connection matrices. The goal is to
bring together the main players in all aspects of graph
homomorphisms, and share views of new trends and techniques.
Invited Speakers:
Zdenek Dvorak (Charles University)
Jan Foniok (ETH Zurich)
Hossein Hajiabolhassan (Shahid Beheshti University)
Hamed Hatami (McGill)
Pavol Hell (SFU)
Daniel Kral (Charles University)
Jan Kratochvil (Charles University)
Benoit Larose (Champlain College)
Jarik Nesetril (Charles University)
Patrice Ossona de Mendez (CAMS-CNRS, Paris)
Arash Rafiey (IDSIA, Lugano)
Mark Siggers (Kyungpook University)
Claude Tardif (Royal Military College, Kingston)
Peter Winkler (Dartmouth)
Xuding Zhu (Zhejiang Normal University)
August 2 - 6, 2011 Workshop on Algebra and CSPs
Organized by:
Libor Barto (Charles University and McMaster University),
Andrei Krokhin (Durham University),
Ross Willard (University of Waterloo)
The main goal of this workshop is to highlight the recent advances
on the CSP Dichotomy Conjecture arising from the algebraic
approach. It will focus on the various algebraic notions and
results that have been developed in the attempts to resolve this
conjecture and connected problems and will also include
presentations on related algebraic topics, such as Maltsev
Conditions and Tame Congruence Theory. The workshop may also
include presentations on CSPs over infinite templates, quantified
CSPs, and connections with logic, finite model theory, and
complexity.
Invited Speakers:
Manuel Bodirsky (Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau)
Andrei Bulatov (Simon Fraser University)
Victor Dalmau (UPF, Barcelona)
Martin Dyer (University of Leeds)
Peter Jeavons (University of Oxford)
Vladimir Kolmogorov (University College, London)
Marcin Kozik (Jagiellonian University)
Gabor Kun (IAS)
Benoit Larose (Champlain College)
Miklos Maroti (University of Szeged)
Barnaby Martin (Durham University)
Ralph McKenzie (Vanderbilt University)
Michael Pinsker (TU Vienna)
August 12-16, 2011 Workshop on Approximability of CSPs
Organized by:
Andrei Bulatov (Simon Fraser University),
Johan Hastad (KTH, Stockholm),
Prasad Raghavendra (Microsoft Research and Georgia Tech).
The workshop will focus on the recent advances in our
understanding of the approximation threshold of various CSPs,
based on progress in both algorithmic techniques and methods to
show tight non approximability results. The power of various
convex programming relaxations for CSPs, the construction of gap
instances highlighting limitations of such relaxations, and the
connections of these to the complexity of approximating CSPs will
be a prominent theme of the workshop. The Unique Games conjecture
and results revolving around it will naturally be a centerpiece of
the workshop. This workshop is expected to have a more
interdisciplinary focus. In particular one of its aims is to
foster a cross fertilization of ideas between the algebraic
approach to characterize the tractability of CSPs and the analytic
approach to characterize the approximability of CSPs, and draw
parallels between the algebraic dichotomy conjecture and the
Unique Games conjecture that would hopefully shed some light on
both these prominent conjectures.
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DM-Net is a forum of the
SIAM Activity Group on Discrete Mathematics
We disseminate your contributions on anything of interest to the
discrete mathematics community. This includes personal news
about our members, conferences, mathematical problems, education
issues, job/fellowship information, research announcements, etc.
The moderator is Ryan Martin
----------------------------------------------------------------Send submissions to:
<dm-net@siam.org>
Send address changes to:
<dm-mgr@siam.org>
Info on joining SIAM and this activity group:
<service@siam.org>
Archive URL:
<http://orion.math.iastate.edu/rymartin/dm-net/dm-net.html>
----------------------------------------------------------------Jerrold Griggs
University of South Carolina Chair
Karen Collins
Wesleyan University
Vice Chair
John Schmitt
Middlebury College
Secretary
Kathie Cameron
Wilfrid Laurier University
Program Director
Ryan Martin
Iowa State University
DM-Net Editor
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