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CS Colloquium: Jiapeng Zhang (Harvard) - Sunflowers and Their Applications in Computer Science and Mathematics
Thu, Feb 20, 2020 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jiapeng Zhang, Harvard University
Talk Title: Sunflowers and Their Applications in Computer Science and Mathematics
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: The sunflower is a simple notion in combinatorics, originally invented and studied by Erdos and Rado in 1960. Surprisingly, it has deep connections to fundamental problems in computer science, such as matrix multiplication, efficient data structures, computational complexity and cryptography. In my talk, I will explain our new results on sunflowers, how ideas emerging from computer science were critical in the proof, and how our new techniques can help shed light on some central problems in computer science and mathematics.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Jiapeng Zhang is a postdoc at Harvard with Prof. Salil Vadhan. He did his PhD at UC San Diego with Prof. Shachar Lovett. His research focuses on boolean function analysis, computational complexity, learning theory and cryptography.
Host: Shaddin Dughmi
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
