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Computer, Computational and Statistical Sciences: CCS-5

Design and Analysis of Efficient Algorithms

The basic research goal is to design and analysis of efficient sequential/parallel/distributed algorithms for important combinatorial problems in location theory, communication networks, logic, high performance computing and scheduling. Motivated by the practical application, whenever possible, our research tries to blend theoretical analysis along with empirical analysis of our algorithms. We are interested in designing exact, as well as approximate algorithms.

Current research areas include:

Syntactic and Algebraic Characterizations of  Efficient Approximability

The goal of this project is to  provide non-trivial algebraic (and syntactic) characterizations of classes of NP- and PSPACE-hard optimization problems that are efficiently approximable. As a step in this direction, we have given algebraic characterizations of a large class of problems having polynomial time approximation schemes. In contrast, under standard complexity theoretic assumptions, we also provide lower bounds for problems specified using using certain algebraic framework.

Network Design and Location Theory

In this line  of research we have  been successfully investigating the complexity and  approximability  of several  multi-criteria  network design  and location theoretic problems. Such problems arise in the  design of communication and transportation network.  Some problems investigated  are especially important  in the design and analysis of high speed communication networks, processor assignment and statistical clustering. Two basic lines of research currently explored are (i) multi-criteria problems and (ii) network upgrade problems. 

Experimental Algorithmics

We are currently investigating the performance of several well  known graph problems in an experimental context. The difference between  theoretical and empirically observed performance of algorithms have yielded several new insights in the past. Our goal is further work along these lines with the aim of eventually designing algorithms that theoretically good and practically appealing. Problems being currently investigated include graph coloring problems, flow problems and geometric optimization problems.

Representative Publications:

"Upgrading Bottleneck Constrained Forests,'' S.O. Krumke,  M.V. Marathe, H. Noltemeier, S.S. Ravi, and H.C. Wirth, invited paper to appear in Discrete Applied Mathematics, 1999. Preliminary version appeared in  Proc. 24th Workshop in Graph Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG), Aachen, Germany, pp. 215-226 (June 1998).

"Improving  Minimum Cost Spanning Trees by Upgrading Nodes,'' S.O. Krumke,  M.V. Marathe, H. Noltemeier, R. Ravi,  S.S. Ravi, R. Sundaram, and H.C. Wirth, in J. Algorithms, 33(1), pp. 92-111 (1999).

"Improving  Spanning Trees by Upgrading Nodes,'' S.O. Krumke,  M.V. Marathe, H. Noltemeier, R. Ravi,  S.S. Ravi, R. Sundaram, and H.C. Wirth, invited paper to appear in  Theoretical Computer Science, 221(1-2), pp 139-155 (1999). Preliminary version appeared in Proc. 24th  International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), Bologna, Italy, LNCS Vol. 1256, pp. 281--291, Springer Verlag (July, 1997).

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