This seminar is run by me, Steve Fenner.

Spring 2007

The seminar will start up again in Spring 2007.

Past Announcements

Notices of previous seminars can be found here.

Scope and Purpose of the Seminar

Broadly speaking, Theoretical Computer Science consists of those aspects of information and computation that can be given a rigorous mathematical treatment.

Typical but not exclusive topics of interest include*:

• algorithms and data structures,
• computational complexity,
• cryptography and security,
• computational geometry,
• algorithmic graph theory and combinatorics,
• randomness in computing,
• parallel and distributed computing,
• machine learning,
• applications of logic,
• algorithmic algebra and coding theory,
• computational biology,
• computational game theory,
• quantum computing and other alternative models of computation,
• theoretical aspects of databases, information retrieval, and networks.

*(I pulled these topics from the Calls-for-Papers of the two major annual Theory conferences --- IEEE FOCS and ACM STOC --- both of which list the same topics.)

I envision this seminar as an opportunity for USC students, USC faculty, and visitors to share ideas in theoretical computer science (TCS) by presenting interesting research --- new or classic, theirs or other people's --- as well as giving more introductory surveys or tutorial-type talks.

If you are interested, please send me email, and I'll put you on the mailing list. If you are interested in any topics not listed above, please let me know that, too.

Links

Here is my original handout from the Fall 2005 organizational meeting, significantly enhanced, about the culture of TCS. Sometime, I'll incorporate it into this page.

This page was last modified Monday December 4, 2006 at 15:37:32 EST.