Fall School on Algorithms for Hard Problems

September 23-27, 2002
Bildungszentrum Matt
Schwarzenberg, Switzerland

The themes of the school are algorithmic techniques for dealing with hard optimization problems arising in practice. The focus is on algorithms with provable performance guarantees. In particular, the school will cover recent advances in the design and analysis of approximation algorithms, on-line algorithms, and fixed-parameter tractable algorithms in application domains such as machine scheduling, facility location and computational biology.

Confirmed lecturers are:

Susanne Albers (Universität Freiburg)
Rolf Niedermeier (Universität Tübingen)
Peter Rossmanith (Technische Universität München)
David Shmoys (Cornell University)
Angelika Steger (Technische Universität München)
Gerhard Woeginger (University of Twente)

Schedule and Abstracts

The intended audience of the school are final-year master students as well as doctoral students in fields related to the themes of the school. Participants should have a basic knowledge of algorithms and should be interested in learning about the state of the art in this area. The school will also be a good opportunity to get to know other people working in the field and to establish contacts that may lead to research collaborations in the future.

ORGANIZATION AND LOCATION

The school is organized within the European graduate program "Combinatorics, Geometry, and Computation" (http://www.cgc.ethz.ch/), which brings together ETH Zurich and the three universities of Berlin. It will take place in Bildungszentrum Matt in Schwarzenberg (Switzerland), a village in the vicinity of the Pilatus mountain range that is reachable in 30 minutes from Lucerne and in 90 minutes from Zurich (by train and bus). See also here.

SCHOOL SCHEDULE

Participants are expected to arrive in Schwarzenberg on Sunday, September 22, 2002. Lectures will then be given from Monday to Friday. Each lecturer will teach one or several lectures, covering half a day or a full day of the school's program. Lectures will be accompanied by exercises that can be solved by the students during times especially reserved for this purpose. On at least one of the days we will have an excursion in the afternoon.

PARTICIPATION

Participation is open to all qualified applicants, but the number of participants will be limited to a maximum of about 30. There will be no participation fee, but an amount of approximately 500 SFr. (Swiss Francs) will have to be paid to cover the costs for accomodation (shared double- room) and meals (from Sunday evening to Friday evening). Students who want to participate in the school should send an application letter with a curriculum vitae (stating also their previous knowledge in fields related to the theme of the school) and a brief letter of reference by a university professor to the following address until July 21, 2002:

    Prof. Thomas Erlebach
    Institut TIK, ETH Zurich
    Gloriastrasse 35
    CH-8092 Zurich
    Switzerland
    Email: erlebach@tik.ee.ethz.ch
    Fax: +41-1-632-1036
    Phone: +41-1-632-7050

We have received many more applications than we have places in the school already before the early application deadline (June 5, 2002). Therefore, it is very unlikely that we can accept additional participants.

CONTACT

For further information, please contact one of the organizers:

Thomas Erlebach
Peter Widmayer

Last modified on 2006-07-23 by Thomas Erlebach