Computer Science News
Computing Your Career 2022
We recently hosted our flagship careers event, find out what went on and who attended.
Full Aero-Engine Compressor Visualization Selected as Finalists for the SciVis Showcase at the Supercomputing 2022 Conference
Numerical simulations and visualizations developed by researchers from the High Performance and Scientific Computing (HPSC) group led by Dr. Gihan Mudalige at Warwick’s Department of Computer Science in collaboration with Rolls-Royce, PPCU Hungary and Universities of Surrey and Birmingham have been selected as one of the six finalists for the Scientific Visualization and Data Analytics Showcase at the 2022 Supercomputing (SC) Conference, held in Dallas TX. SC is the premier international conference on supercomputing providing a major forum for presenting the highest level of accomplishments in high-performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis. It is held annually in the US and attended by over 10000 attendees from all over the world. A video regarding the work can be found here.
Best Paper Award at SODA 2023
We are delighted to announce that the paper "Dynamic Matching with Better-than-2 Approximation in Polylogarithmic Update Time", coauthored by Sayan Bhattacharya and Peter Kiss from the Theory and Foundations Research Division at Warwick, along with Thatchaphol Saranurak (University of Michigan) and David Wajc (Stanford University), has received the best paper award at SODA 2023.
Computing a maximum matching in a graph is a fundamental problem in combinatorial optimisation. The paper considers this problem in a dynamic graph, which keeps changing over time via a sequence of edge insertions and deletions. It was a decade-old open question to decide whether one can beat the performance guarantee of the simple greedy algorithm for this problem (which gives 2 approximation), in a dynamic setting. The paper answers this question in the affirmative, and provides the first efficient dynamic algorithm which can maintain a better-than 2 approximation to the size of the maximum matching in the input graph.
Ian Mertz joins the department as a Research Fellow
We're happy to announce that Ian Mertz has joined the department as a Research Fellow. He is currently funded by the project "New approaches to unconditional computational lower bounds", with support from the Royal Society.
Ian Mertz completed his PhD at the University of Toronto in 2022 under the supervision of Toniann Pitassi, with stints at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing (UC Berkeley) and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Ian Mertz completed his PhD at the University of Toronto in 2022 under the supervision of Toniann Pitassi, with stints at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing (UC Berkeley) and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Ian's primary research area is computational complexity theory. His interests at the moment include catalytic computing, lifting theorems, arithmetic circuit complexity, and proof complexity.
PhD positions at the University of Warwick, UK (Application deadline: 4 November, 2022)
PhD positions are available at the Theory and Foundations group in the Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, UK. The group works on various aspects of theoretical computer science such as:
* automata and formal languages,
* logic and games,
* algorithmic game theory,
* online and dynamic algorithms,
* sublinear and streaming algorithms,
* parameterized complexity and structural graph theory,
* string algorithms,
* parallel algorithms,
* approximation algorithms,
* combinatorial and graph algorithms,
* random structures and randomized algorithms,
* computational complexity,
* privacy-preserving algorithms, cryptography and quantum computing.
The group has strong ties with the Centre for Discrete Mathematics and its Applications (DIMAP), established in 2007 jointly with Warwick Mathematics Institute and Warwick Business School. Together with DIMAP, the group is one of the leading theory groups in Europe, with regular publications in top international conferences and journals in theoretical computer science.
The Department of Computer Science at Warwick offers an excellent research environment. It was ranked 4th in the latest UK research assessment in Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2021. The University of Warwick is one of the founding members of the Alan Turing Institute.
The university campus is located on the border of two counties, West Midlands and Warwickshire, is about one hour train ride from London, and 15 minutes from Birmingham International Airport.
The applicants are expected to have a strong background in discrete mathematics, algorithms, or related topics with undergraduate and/or Master's degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics, or related disciplines. The position(s) will be fully funded, and the successful applicant(s) will be receiving a stipend at rate in line with current Research Councils UK rates.
If you are interested in this opening, please send an email to either Dr Sayan Bhattacharya (S.Bhattacharya@warwick.ac.uk) or Dr Tom Gur (Tom.Gur@warwick.ac.uk), with a SINGLE .pdf file containing your CV and the names and email addresses of two references, by 4 November 2022. You are strongly encouraged to informally contact faculty members in the group you might want to work with prior to submitting your application.
Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed informally during the week of 14 November - 18 November, 2022.
List of faculty members in the group:
https://warwick.ac.uk/focs/people/<https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/research/focs/people/>
Centre for Discrete Mathematics and its Applications:
https://warwick.ac.uk/dimap/<https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/dimap/>
Interdisciplinary CS-Physics EPSRC New Horizons Award in Quantum Computing
We are delighted to report that Dr Tom Gur (Warwick CS) and Dr Animesh Datta (Warwick Physics) have been awarded an EPSRC New Horizons on "Property Testing for Quantum Engineering". This project aims to bring together computer scientists and physicists towards the end of designing new approaches for fault-tolerant quantum computing.
End-to-end verifiable online voting to be trialled in New Town, India
From this Saturday (1 Oct to 5 Oct 2022), local residents of New Town, Kolkata, India will be able to use their mobile phones to vote for their favourite puja (a festival decoration for worshipping) as part of the annual Durga Puja festival celebration. New Town is a modern satellite city of Kolkata with about one million population. Durga Puja is one of the most important festivals in India, especially in Kolkata.
The online voting system implements a cryptographic protocol called DRE-ip, which was proposed by Dr Siamak Shahandashti and Professor Feng Hao in 2016 in an ERC-funded project. This protocol ensures that the e-voting system is end-to-end verifiable, hence giving every voter a chance to verify the tallying integrity of an election. The DRE-ip protocol was previously used in a Gateshead e-voting trial for polling station voting in 2019. This time it will be trialled for online voting, supported by a Royal Society international collaboration grant and University Policy Support Fund in collaboration with Professor Bimal Roy of the Indian Statistical Institute and the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA), West Bengel, India.
The online voting system has been developed by a group of 2021/2022 Master of Engineering (MEng) students (Horia Druliac, Matthew Bardsley, Chris Riches and Chris Dunn) in the Computer Science department as part of their MEng group project. The same group of students won the 2022 Innovation award.