Guruswami, Kothari and Manohar recently solved a conjecture of Feige about even covers in hypergraphs, with beautiful techniques that have several applications. I would like to describe some of their ideas in a subsequent post or series of posts. Feige’s conjecture is about an hypergraph analog of the question of how big can the girth of a graph be relative to its density, and I would like to start by sharing a “proof from the book” about the latter problem. In an undirected graph, the girth is the length of the shortest simple cycle. If a graph has odd girth , and we perform a BFS in it start ..read more

I am looking for three postdoctoral fellows for the next academic year to work with me at Bocconi. The positions offer an internationally competitive salary (up to 65,000 Euro per year, tax-free, plus relocation assistance and travel allowance), in a wonderful location. The strict application deadline is January 31, 2023. Each position is for one year, renewable to a second year. Among the topics that I am interested in are spectral graph theory, average-case complexity, “applications” of semidefinite programming, random processes on networks, approximation algorithms, pseudorandomness an ..read more

Next Monday, June 27, I am organizing a workshop on issues around fairness, bias and discrimination in AI and Machine Learning. Here is a link to the program. Remote participation is possible (link in the website), and in-person participation is free but we ask people to register so we can print badges and order the appropriate number of coffee breaks. This workshop is being organized in partnership with EDGE, an Italian NGO that works on LGBT rights, and it is the first event of their initiative “A+I: Algoritmi + Inclusivi”, which will feature an awareness campaign and a series of video inter ..read more

As previously announced, next week Alon Rosen and I are organizing a workshop at Bocconi, which will actually be the union of two workshops, one on Recent Advances in Cryptography and one on Spectral and Convex Optimization Techniques in Graph Algorithms. Here is the program. In short: where: Bocconi University’s Roentgen Building (via Roentgen 1, Milano), Room AS01 when: June 15-18 what: talks on cryptography and graph algorithms, including two hours devoted to Max Flow in nearly-linear time how: register for free ..read more

Some time ago, I received a message to the effect that I was being considered for membership in the “Academy of the XL”, to which my reaction was, hey, we have all gone out of shape during the pandemic, and body-shaming is never… then it was explained to me that, in this context, “XL” means “forty” and that the Academy of the Forty is Italy’s National Academy of Science. Italy has a wonderfully named, and well-known within the country, National Academy of Arts and Science, the Accademia dei Lincei, which means something like academy of the “eagle-eyed” (literally, lynx-eyed), that is, people t ..read more

Below is the call for participation to STOC 2022, which will take place in Rome in the third week of June. If you would like to come to Italy a few days in advance, Alon Rosen and I are organizing two co-locating workshops on graph algorithms and on cryptography in Milan on June 15-18 (details forthcoming). If you want to stay longer, I am organizing a mini-workshop on fairness in AI in Milan on June 27 (more details about it in a few days). Registration will be free for both events. There are several high-speed trains every day between Rome and Milan, taking about 3 hours. Call for Participat ..read more

Thirty years ago, I was in the middle of the second semester of my third year of undergrad, and one of the courses that I was enrolled in was on information theory. I was majoring in computer science, a major that had just been established at Sapienza University when I signed up for it in 1989, organized by a computer science department that had also just been established in 1989. The new Sapienza computer science department was founded mostly by faculty from the Sapienza mathematics department, plus a number of people that came from other places to help start it. Among the latter, Renato Capo ..read more

Yesterday, Bocconi’s Rector signed the decree that created the new Computing Sciences department. This is only the ninth department to be created in our 120 year old university, and the first, I believe, in a couple of decades. It is the first department with an engineering and science mission (the other eight department are, in random order, Accounting, Marketing, Finance, Economics, Managements, Social Sciences, Law, and Decision Sciences). A few weeks ago, we were joined by Francesca Buffa and Marc Mezard. Francesca, a computational biologist formerly at Oxford medical school, is now the fo ..read more

新年快乐！ ..read more

Bocconi University is recruiting for tenure-track positions in computer science. Some details are here. Candidates must apply online by January 15 (end of day Central Europe time) for the application to be considered. To apply online, go to https://jobmarket.unibocconi.eu/ and look at the only opening that has a Jan 15 expiration (currently it is at the top of the list). The negotiable start date is September, 2022. By that time the new Computing Sciences department will be fully operational. We are interested in all areas of computer science. Alon Rosen, Dirk Hovy and I are very happy to talk ..read more