Postdoctoral job posting

The Algorithms, Randomness and Complexity (ARC) Center at Georgia Tech http://www.arc.gatech.edu/ is seeking a postdoctoral fellow to participate in research investigations. Candidates with a PhD in Computer Science, Mathematics, Operations Research or a related field are encouraged to apply. The selected candidate will have the opportunity to work on any aspect of algorithms and complexity, broadly interpreted, and collaborate with ARC faculty. The position is for up to two years, with a start date between July 1 and September 1. There is no teaching requirement, but the postdoc is encouraged to lead a research seminar. Interested candidates should send a CV, research statement, and request 3 letters of recommendation be sent to: arc-postdoc@cc.gatech.edu. Applications should be received by December 10, 2011 for full consideration. Please contact Elizabeth Ndongi (ndongi@cc.gatech.edu) for any further information.

How to apply for Spring 2012 Funding

Interested students should submit a brief (2 page maximum) description of a research project, including its goal(s) and proposed approach, and indicating the mentor(s)/advisor(s). In addition, one of the project advisors should submit a one-paragraph letter of recommendation (to be submitted separately from the proposal) in which (s)he succinctly argues that the student(s) and the project are worthy of support. Research topics in the broad areas of algorithms, randomness and complexity are suitable and could range from purely theoretical investigations to system building based on new algorithmic ideas. Projects could be based on collaborative efforts between two or more groups/faculty members. Please see the ARC webpages for previously funded projects.

A proposal should describe a focused research problem, and its importance and significance should be made evident to non-expert readers. It should also contain a clear description of the approach to be taken, make a convincing case that this approach is particularly attractive, and detail potential research outcomes. Proposals should describe well-developed ideas which can be explored further during at least one semester. Proposals that are precise in explaining the problem(s) (for example which include sufficient mathematical details to state the problem) and also which are well-motivated and are clearly understandable by non-experts have been most successful in the past. Students are strongly encouraged to have their advisor(s) review the proposal before submitting it.

Funding decisions will be made by the ARC committee consisting of Alexandra Boldyreva, CS; Santanu Dey, ISYE; Ton Dieker (chair), ISYE; Vladimir Koltchinskii, Mathematics; Milena Mihail, CS; and Dana Randall, CS and Math (Adjunct). Applications and advisor's paragraphs should be sent by email to Elizabeth Ndongi (ndongi@cc.gatech.edu) no later than 20 October, 2011. Preference will be given to projects that are in line with ARC's mission and typical awards will be matching grants, i.e., the mentor/advisor supports half an RA and ARC provides the other half. The committee's general policy is to pick the best applications. However, if a student already received ARC funding in a preceding semester (SPRING/FALL), then he/she would have lower priority than others who have not been funded by ARC in the current year, but are judged worthy of funding.

Students Fellowships Awarded for Fall 2011

The ARC Committee consisting of Ton Dieker (chair), ISYE, Alexandra Boldyreva, CS, Santanu Dey, ISYE, Vladimir Koltchinskii, Math, Milena Mihail, CS and Dana Randall, CS and Math (Adjunct) has announced the winners of ARC Fellowships for Fall 2011. Many thanks to the committee members for their work in considering a large pool of competitive applicants. Congratulations to the winners and all the best in their research efforts! The recipients, and their advisors, are:

How to apply for Fall 2011 Funding

Interested students should submit a brief (2 page maximum) description of a research project, including its goal(s) and proposed approach, and indicating the mentor(s)/advisor(s). Research topics in the broad areas of algorithms, randomness and complexity are suitable and could range from purely theoretical investigations to system building based on new algorithmic ideas. Projects could be based on collaborative efforts between two or more groups/faculty members. Please see the ARC webpages for previously funded projects.

Funding decisions will be made by the ARC committee consisting of Alexandra Boldyreva, CS; Santanu Dey, ISYE; Ton Dieker (chair), ISYE; Vladimir Koltchinskii, Mathematics; Milena Mihail, CS; and Dana Randall, CS and Math (Adjunct). Applications should be sent by email to Elizabeth Ndongi (ndongi@cc.gatech.edu) no later than Thursday, June 30, 2011. Preference will be given to projects that are in line with ARC's mission and typical awards will be matching grants, i.e., the mentor/advisor supports half an RA and ARC provides the other half. The committee's general policy is to pick the best applications. However, if a student already received ARC funding in a preceding semester (SPRING/FALL), then he/she would have lower priority than others who have not been funded by ARC in the current year, but are judged worthy of funding. This information is online at http://arc.gatech.edu/fellowships.php

ARC Thematic Years

The first of the thematic years spanning Fall 2011 - Dec 2012 will focus on topics at the intersection of Optimization and Computer Science. Besides hosting short and long term visitors, workshops on Integer and Convex Programming and Submodular Optimization are planned. These activities will be coordinated by a committee consisting of Bill Cook, Arkadi Nemirovskii, Santosh Vempala and Eric Vigoda.

Visitors:

Alan Frieze , Ravi Kannan , Bob Tarjan, Frank Vallentin and Noga Alon (October 2011- December 2012)

Tetali Takes Over for Vempala as ARC Director

After four years the Algorithms & Randomness Center (ARC) and ThinkTank will have a new director, as Prasad Tetali (CS) takes over for founding director Santosh Vempala (CS), effective April 1.

ARC 4th Anniversary April 1, 2011

The annual event of the Algorithms and Randomness Center (a.k.a. Algorithms, Randomness and Complexity Center), will be on Friday, April 1 (yes, don't be fooled), featuring a distinguished lecture by Robert E. Tarjan (James McDonnell Prof. of CS, Princeton; Nevanlinna Prize 1983; Turing Award 1986; NAS, NAE) on, you guessed it, balanced search trees! Rumor has it that Prof. Tarjan will have some time to help make your programs and data structures more efficient.

In addition, we'll have exciting talks by meta-learning meta-theorist Nina Balcan, security superman Wenke Lee and prolific polymath Prasad Tetali, posters by the 10 ARC fellowship winners for the current academic year, and much more (and for those who need more than food for thought, we'll have breakfast, coffee and lunch). Here's the complete program:

http://www.arc.gatech.edu/arc4.php

February 24-25, 2011

ARC co-organizes workshop on resisting censorship

Chris Peikert Named a 2011 Sloan Research Fellow

Students Fellowships Awarded for Spring 2011

The ARC committee, consisting of Prasad Tetali (chair, Math and CS), Vladimir Koltchinskii (Math), Milena Mihail (CS), Sasha Boldyreva (CS), Bill Cook (ISYE) and Ton Dieker (ISYE). Many thanks to the committee members for their work in considering a large pool of competitive applicants. Congratulations to the winners and all the best in their research efforts! The recipients, and their mentors, are:

Jinwoo Shin Nominated For The George M. Sprowls PhD Award

Jinwoo Shin who has joined the Algorithms and Randomness Center (ARC) as a Postdoc was awarded the Sprowls Award by The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT for the best PhD thesis dissertation, for his thesis titled, “Efficient Distributed Medium Access Algorithm". Congratulations Jinwoo!!

ARC welcomes three Post Docs

ARC announces three exciting additions!

Jinwoo Shin (PhD MIT, advisor Devavrat Shah), with interests in dynamics of networks and stochastic processes, intends to work with many ARC faculty and will be hosted by Ton Dieker and Prasad Tetali.
Elena Grigorescu (PhD MIT, advisor Madhu Sudan), whose research topics so far include property testing and algebraic coding theory will be hosted by Chris Peikert and Santosh Vempala. Elena is a Computing Innovations ARC fellow.
Lev Reyzin (PhD Yale, advisor Dana Angluin), working on fundamental aspects of learning theory as well as new models, will be hosted by Nina Balcan and Santosh Vempala. Lev is our Simons ARC postdoc.

ARC Student Fellowships

Student Fellowships Awarded for Fall 2010

The ARC committee, Prasad Tetali (chair, Math and CS), Vladimir Koltchinskii (Math), Milena Mihail (CS), Sasha Boldyreva (CS), Bill Cook (ISYE) and Ton Dieker (ISYE), has announced the winners of ARC Fellowships for Fall 2010 (listed in alphabetical order). Congratulations all!

Karthik Chandrasekaran, CS/ACO (mentor: Santosh Vempala, CS) "The Complexity of Cutting Plane Methods for Random Integer Programs"
Vinod Cheriyan, ISYE, (mentor: Anton J. Kleywegt, ISYE; Federico Bonetto, Math) - "A Model of Asset Price Bubbles that Shows Chaotic Dynamics"

Qie He, ISYE, (mentors: Shabbir Ahmed; George Nemhauser, ISYE) "A Polyhedral Study of Stochastic Integer Programming

Stas Minsker, Math, (mentor: Vladimir Koltchinskii, Math) "Plug-in Approach to Active Learning"

Farbod Shokrieh, Math/ECE (mentor: Matt Baker, Math) "A Torelli Theorem and a New Set of Invariants for Graphs"

Ying Xiao, CS/ACO, (mentor: Santosh Vempala, CS) "Tensors and Random Constraint Satisfaction Problems"

Previous News & Events

ARC3 Distinguished Lecture videos are online now here

Postdoctoral job posting

The Georgia Tech Algorithms and Randomness Center is looking for a postdoctoral fellow. Applications should be received by January 10, 2010 for full consideration.

Brubaker Nominated For ACM Ph.D. Award

FOCS 2009 presentation videos are online now here

ARC Student Fellowships

Student Fellowships Awarded for Spring 2010

The ARC committee, Prasad Tetali (chair), Bill Cook, Eric Vigoda, Vladimir Koltchinskii, Milena Mihail and Ton Dieker, has announced the winners of ARC Fellowships for Spring 2010 (listed in alphabetical order). Congratulations all!

ARC ThinkTank New Faculty

Nina Balcan, Chris Peikert and Prasad Raghavendra will be joining as new assistant professors in Fall 2009 and Fall 2010 respectively!

ARC members well-represented at ACM-SIAM in NY.

ARC members, including graduate students Sam Greenberg, Amanda Pascoe and Charlie Brubaker, presented the following papers at the ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), held Jan 4-6 in New York City.

Robust PCA and Clustering in Noisy Mixtures, S. Charles Brubaker, ARC/Georgia Tech.
sampling Biased Lattice Configurations using Exponential Metrics
Sam Greenberg, Amanda Pascoe and Dana Randall, ARC/Georgia Tech.
Coloring Triangle-free Graphs on Surfaces
Zdeněk Dvořák and Daniel Král, Czech Republic; Robin Thomas, ARC/Georgia Tech.
Three-coloring Triangle-free Planar Graphs in Linear Time
Zdeněk Dvořák, Czech Republic; Ken-ichi Kawarabayashi, Japan; Robin Thomas, ARC/Georgia Tech.
Expanders via Random Spanning Trees: Navin Goyal, Luis Rademacher and Santosh Vempala, ARC/Georgia Tech.

ARC Student Fellowships Awarded

The following projects were funded for Spring, 2009: