March 19-22, 2012 at Georgia Tech

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Shabbir Ahmed (School of ISyE, GaTech), Nina Balcan (School of CS, GaTech), Satoru Iwata (RIMS, Kyoto University), and Prasad Tetali (School of Math and School of CS, GaTech)

 

Workshop Theme

Submodular functions are discrete analogues of convex functions, arising in various fields of computer science and operations research. Since the seminal work of Jack Edmonds (1970), submodularity has long been recognized as a common structure of many efficiently solvable combinatorial optimization problems. Recent algorithmic developments in the past decade include combinatorial strongly polynomial algorithm for minimization, constant factor approximation algorithms for maximization, and efficient methods for learning submodular functions. In addition, submodular functions find novel applications in combinatorial auctions, machine learning, and social networks. This workshop aims at providing a forum for researchers from a variety of backgrounds for exchanging results, ideas, and problems on submodular optimization and its applications. The first day will be devoted to tutorial-style lectures!

Confirmed Speakers

Jeff Bilmes (University of Washington), Chandra Chekuri (UIUC), Satoru Fujishige (Kyoto University), Gagan Goel (Google Research), Michel Goemans (MIT), Carlos Guestrin (CMU), Nick Harvey (UBC), Satoru Iwata (Kyoto University), Kamal Jain (e-Bay), Andreas Krause (ETH), Jon Lee (U. Michigan), Tom McCormick (UBC), Aranyak Mehta (Google Research), Vahab Mirrokni (Google Research), Kazuo Murota (University of Tokyo), Kiyohito Nagano (University of Tokyo), Maurice Queyranne (UBC), Amin Saberi (Stanford), Akiyoshi Shioura (Tohoku University), Maxim Sviridenko (IBM), Zoya Svitkina (Google), Jan Vondrak (IBM), Laszlo Vegh (Georgia Tech).

Sponsors

Algorithms & Randomness Center, ACO Ph.D. Program, the School of Math and the School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (Georgia Tech), Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. (USA), Yandex Corp. (Russia), IMA (Minnesota)