ICE-TCS seminar by Benjamin Moore on "Smoothed analysis for graph isomorphism"

Today, the ICE-TCS seminar series at Reykjavik University hosted a talk by Benjamin Moore (Institute of Science and Technology Austria) who is visiting our postdoctoral researcher Nicolaos Matsakis. 

Benjamin presented the main results in his paper "Smoothed analysis for graph isomorphism", coauthored with his ISTA colleagues Michael Anastos and Matthew Kwan. (In passing, I just saw that Matthew Kwan received the main prize of the Austrian Mathematical Society last year. Congratulations!) 

To my mind, Benjamin did an excellent job in presenting the context for their exciting (but very technical) contribution and the main ideas that underlie it. Kudos! The work by Benjamin and his collaborators provides another explanation of the effectiveness of the colour refinement algorithm (also known as the one-dimensional Weisfeiler-Leman algorithm) in checking whether two graphs are isomorphic. I encourage you to read at least the introduction of their paper, which will be presented at STOC 2025, and the ISTA news article here, which does a much better job at putting their work in context than an interested, but ignorant, observer like me ever could. FWIW, I find results like theirs, which offer some explanation as to why theoretically hard problems are seemingly easy in practice, fascinating and I feel like that paper might be a strong candidate for a best paper award. 

It was also fitting to see recent work on smoothed analysis being presented at our seminar series since Daniel Spielman and Shang-Hua Teng received the 2008 Gödel Prize at ICALP 2008, which was held at Reykjavik University. Time flies, but great work is timeless. 

Interview with Magnús Már Halldórsson on Reykjavik University's website

Magnús Már Halldórsson, the director of ICE-TCS, was interviewed by the Communication Department at Reykjavik University to mark the 20th anniversary of ICE-TCS on April 29, 2025. The interview appeared last Friday on the Reykjavik University web site. In my biased opinion,  Magnús hit all the right notes. I hope that some of our students and colleagues, as well as the staff at Icelandic funding agencies and politicians, read it. 

I am also pleased to see theoretical computer science at the Department of Computer Science at Reykjavik University get some visibility on the university's website after twenty years. It leave the job of determining the level of contribution and the visibility ICE-TCS has given to the department and to computer science research in Iceland to others. 

In case anyone is interested in having a look at them, our annual reports from June 2007 till the whole of 2024 are available here. (Thanks to Tarmo Uustalu for reviving the centre's website and for keeping up to data!)

Dagstuhl Publishing – Highlights of 2024

On behalf of Dagstuhl Publishing, Michael Wagner has posted the highlights for 2024. IMHO, the computer-science research community owes the team at Dagstuhl Publishing and Schloss Dagstuhl a lot for its sustained support of research and open-access publication activities. I encourage any readers I might have to read the highlights for 2024 and share them within their networks. This is the least we can do to thank everyone at Dagsthul for their work. 

If you are a PC chair or an SC member of a high-quality conference that publishes its proceedings with a commercial publisher, and you care about open-access publication of research results and artefacts, consider suggesting that your conference apply for publishing its proceedings in LIPIcs. 

Last, but not least, consider submitting some of your best work to the journal Transaction on Graph Data and Knowledge, if it is in the areas covered by that diamond-open-access journal!

27th Estonian Winter School in Computer Science, EWSCS 2025 Viinistu, Estonia, 3-6 March 2025

I received the following announcement from my colleague Tarmo Uustalu. Spread the news of this excellent winter school for young researchers!

The 2025 edition of the Estonian Winter School in Computer Science (EWSCS) will be held in Viinistu, Estonia, in the period 3-6 March 2025. Editions of EWSCS are general TCS schools with topics from both Theory A and B. EWSCS is a long-running series; the first school happened in 1996 and this is its 27th edition. The schools are mostly intended for PhD students as well as ambitious MSc and BSc students, but are open for anyone.

This year's programme features the following four courses on combinatorics, modern database theory, concurrency connected to topology, and provable cybersecurity.

• Anders Claesson, University of Iceland, Reykjavik. Combinatorial species. 
• Uli Fahrenberg, EPITA Rennes. Discrete and continuous models for concurrent systems: from Petri nets to directed spaces. 
• Miika Hannula, University of Tartu. Conjunctive query evaluation. 
• Marino Miculan, University of Udine. Provable security, ProVerif.

Check the school webpage for abstracts and the timetable. 

Participation fee is 490 EUR. Covered in the fee are accommodation for three nights in twin rooms, with full board, and transportation from Tallinn to the school venue and back.

Application deadline: 12 Feb 2025.