Applications of Matroid Theory and Combinatorial Optimization to Information and Coding Theory (09w5103)

Objectives

The aim of the workshop is to bring together experts from pure and applied mathematics, computer science, and engineering, who are working in the areas of matroid theory, combinatorial optimization, linear programming, coding theory, network coding and related fields. We envisage around 25percent of the participants to be graduate students and postdoctoral fellows working in these areas.

As much of the work described in the subject overview above is recent or ongoing, the time seems ripe for a workshop that provides an environment within which researchers from various disciplines can talk to each other at length. The goal is to allow for the exchange of mathematical ideas and tools that can help tackle some of the open problems of central importance in coding theory and network coding, and at the same time, get pure mathematicians and computer scientists to be interested in the kind of problems that arise in these applied fields. It is also possible that these interactions lead to new directions of research in optimization and matroid theory as well.

There is currently no other forum (conference or workshop) that could serve as a natural meeting point for researchers from the wide variety of disciplines outlined above. This underlines the importance of holding a workshop that specifically provides such a forum. Given the large number of disciplines we expect to be represented, a 5-day workshop at BIRS would be ideal.

We summarize our principal objectives as follows:

- To introduce, via tutorials, techniques and acquired knowledge from each of the areas outlined above to experts in other areas

- To report recent results

- To pose and discuss open problems

In terms of format, we envision four one-hour talks per day, including tutorials on the contributing subjects, as well as sessions on open problems.