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Microsoft Research Theory Group Seminar
Wednesday lunchtimes: ([NC]=non-catered)
12:30-2pm, room 4300
Thursday teatimes:
3:30-4:30pm, room 1927B or 2817
Microsoft Building 99
Page maintainted by: Alexandre Stauffer

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Videos (see links below): external access [E]; internal access [I]; Archive of publicly available talks

2012:

December 8 15:30, 99/1927 Janko Gravner Digital Snowflakes
February 17 13:30, 99/1915 Roberto Imbuzeiro Oliveira On the coalescence time of reversible random walks

2011:

December 8 15:30, 99/1927 Nisheeth Vishnoi Approximating the Exponential, the Lanczos Method and an O(m polylog(n))-Time Spectral Algorithm for Balanced Graph Partitioning
October 27 15:30, 99/1927 James Lee Laplacian eigenvalues and expansion of small sets
October 20 15:30, 99/1927 Niv Buchbinder The randomized k-server conjecture
October 13 15:30, 99/1927 Nicolas Curien Introduction to the theory of random planar maps
September 29 15:30, 99/1927 James Lee Sparsest Cut, discrete differentiation, and local rigidity of sets in the plane
September 21 15:30, 99/1927 Tanmoy Chakraborty Mechanism Design for a Risk Averse Seller
September 7 15:30, 99/1927 Amin Saberi Game Dynamics, Equilibrium Selection and Network Structure
September 1 15:30, 99/1927 Itai Benjamini Aspects of random walks on groups
August 17 15:30, 99/1927 Klaus Schmidt Abelian Sandpiles and the Harmonic Model
August 11 15:30, 99/1927 Benny Sudakov Nonnegative k-sums, fractional covers, and probability of small deviations
August 10 15:30, 99/1927 R. Ravi Approximation Algorithms for Correlated Knapsacks and Non-Martingale Bandits
August 4 15:30, 99/1927 Balasubramanian Sivan Near Optimal Online Algorithms and Fast Approximation Algorithms for Resource Allocation Problems
July 28 15:30, 99/1927 Omer Tamuz From Agreement to Asymptotic Learning
July 21 10:30, 99/1915 Venkatesan Guruswami Bridging Shannon and Hamming: Codes for Computationally Simple Channels
July 20 15:30, 99/1927 Ivan Corwin Beyond the Gaussian Universality Class
July 7 15:30, 99/1927 Jian Ding Asymptotics of cover times via Gaussian free fields: bounded-degree graphs and general trees
July 5 15:30, 99/1919 Andrey Raigorodsky Web graph models: properties and applications
June 30 15:30, 99/1927 Asaf Nachmias The percolation phase transition in the Hamming cube
June 29 15:30, 99/1927 Charles Smart Convergence of the Abelian sandpile
May 27 15:30, 99/1927 Sebastian Cioaba On a conjecture of Brouwer regarding the connectivity of strongly regular graphs

2010:

November 12 3:30, 99/1927 S. Muthukrishnan Ad Exchanges: Auctions and Optimizations
November 5 3:30, 99/1927 Jeff Kahn Factors in random graphs and hypergraphs
November 3 3:30, 99/1927 Elliot Anshelevich Contribution Games in Social Networks
October 28 3:30, 99/1927 Dan Romik Arctic circles, random domino tilings and square Young tableaux
October 27 3:30, 99/1927 Leonard Schulman Solvency Games
October 22 3:30, 99/1927 Nick Wormald Asymptotic enumeration of sparse 2-connected graphs
October 20 3:30, 99/1927 Ran Raz How to fool people to work on circuit lower bounds
October 15 1:30, 99/1927 Sergey Fomin Total positivity and cluster algebras
September 28 1:30, 99/1927 Elchanan Mossel Learning on social networks
September 2 3:30, 99/1927 Fabio Martinelli Glauber dynamics for the 2D Ising model at low temperature
September 1 3:30, 99/1927 Fabio Toninelli Metastabiity and logarithmic energy barriers for a polymer dynamics
September 1 1:30, 99/1919 Debmalya Panigrahi Online Non-Metric Facility Location and Related Problems
August 31 1:30, 99/1927 Yossi Azar Ranking with Unrelated Intents or Submodular Valuations
August 30 3:30, 99/1927 Pietro Caputo Proof of Aldous' spectral gap conjecture
August 27 3:30, 99/2917 Fabio Toninelli Zero-temperature 3D Ising dynamics and dimer coverings
August 24 1:30, 99/1915 Siddhartha Sen New Balanced Search Trees
August 23 10:30, 99/1915 Claire Mathieu Approximation Schemes for Optimization
August 18 1:30, 99/1927 Konstantin Makarychev Metric Extension Operators, Vertex Sparsifiers and Lipschitz Extendability
August 17 1:30, 99/1927 Glencora Borradaile Finding all min st-cuts in planar graphs.
August 16 3:30, 99/1927 Persi Diaconis Random Tri-Diagonal Doubly Stochastic Matrices.
August 10 1:30, 99/1927 Michael Krivelevich Embedding spanning trees in random graphs.
July 30 1:30, 99/1927 Benny Sudakov All pairs shortest path in quadratic time with high probability.
July 27 1:30, 99/1927 Alexandre Stauffer Mobile Geometric Graphs: Detection, Coverage and Percolation.
July 26 3:30, 99/1927 Rick Kenyon The double dimer model with quaternions.
July 22 10:30, 99/1927 Maria Florina Balcan Approximate Clustering without the Approximation.
July 9 2:00, 99/2817 Zhongyang Li Vertex models and holographic projection.
July 8 3:30, 99/2817 Nike Sun On a result by Chatterjee on the maximum of a discrete Gaussian free field.
July 6 3:30, 99/1919 Christos Papadimitriou Simple stochastic games and a new class of total functions .
June 30 3:30, 99/1919 James Lee Talagrand's majorizing measure theorem: The proof.
June 30 2:00, 99/1927 Hugo Duminil-Copin Self-avoiding walks on the honeycomb lattice.
June 23 5:00, 99/1915 James Lee Talagrand's majorizing measure theory: Lower bounds.
June 22 1:30, 99/1927 Vijay Vazirani Can the Theory of Algorithms Ratify the "Invisible Hand of the Market"?.
June 17 10:30, 99/1919 Claire Mathieu How to Route Vehicles in the Plane, in Theory.
June 17 10:30, 99/1915 Aravind Srinivasan New Constructive Aspects of the Lovasz Local Lemma.
June 15 3:30, 99/1915 David Aldous Scale-invariant random spatial networks.
June 14 4:00, 99/2817 James Lee An introduction to Talagrand's majorizing measure theory.
June 11 1:30, 99/1915 Anup Rao Pseudorandom Generators for Regular Branching Programs.
June 9 3:30, 99/1927 Jonah Sherman Breaking the Multicommodity Flow Barrier for \sqrt{log(n)}-Approximations to Sparsest Cut.
June 4 1:30, 99/1927 Tobias Friedrich Quasirandom Load Balancing.
June 3 3:30, 99/1927 Yuval Peres Cover times, blanket times, and the Gaussian free field.
May 28 1:30, 99/1915 Ryan O'Donnell Kahn-Kalai-Linial and Kruskal-Katona.
May 27 3:30, 99/1927 Alexandre Stauffer Percolation in a mobile environment.
May 27 10:30, 99/1927 Chinmay Karande New Algorithmic Developments in Ad-auctions.
May 25 3:30, 99/1927 Jay Rosen A sufficient condition for the continuity of permanental processes with applications to local times of Markov processes and loop.
May 24 10:30, 99/1927 Gunnar Carlsson Topology and Data.
May 21 3:30, 99/1927 Vladas Sidoravicius Abundance of Maximal Paths.
May 18 3:30, 99/2817 Marcelo Hilario Fixation for Distributed Clustering Processes.
May 14 3:30, 99/2817 David Wilson xor-Ising model
May 13 3:30, 99/2817 Karl Mahlburg Percolation, Probability, and Partitions
May 7 4:00, 99/1915 Svante Janson Width and height of conditioned Galton-Watson trees
Apr 29 3:30, 99/2817 Robert Masson Random walks on the two dimensional uniform spanning tree
Apr 27 3:30, 99/2817 Chris Hillar Word equations in a uniquely divisible group
Apr 23 3:30, 99/2817 Vladas Sidoravicius Growth and random walks in dynamically evolving random environment
Apr 22 3:30, 99/2817 Lionel Levine Fast simulation of large-scale growth models
Apr 20 3:30, 99/2817 Nikhil Devanur Local Dynamics in Bargaining Networks via Random Turn Games
Apr 15 3:30, 99/2817 Allan Sly Cutoff for the Ising model on the lattice
Apr 12 3:30, 99/2817 Jian Ding Cover times, blanket times, and majorizing measures.
Apr 1 3:30, 99/2817 Ori Gurel-Gurevich Nonconcentration of Return Times
Mar 25 3:30, 99/2817 Ander Holroyd Multi-dimensional percolation
Mar 18 3:30, 99/1927 Soumik Pal Wright-Fisher model with negative mutation rates
Mar 11 3:30, 99/1919 Nicole Immorlica Pricing Information Cascades
Mar 10 3:30, 99/1927 Christos Papadimitriou Computing Nash equilibria: The plot thickens
Feb 18 3:30, 99/1927 David Aldous Concentration for Markov chain cover times
Feb 16 3:30, 99/1915 Nati Linial Some computational and combinatorial applications of simplicial topology
Feb 4 1:30, 99/1915 Zoya Svitkina Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Path and Directed Latency Problems
Jan 27 1:30, 99/1915 Warren Schudy Approximation Schemes for Dense Variants of Feedback Arc Set, Correlation Clustering, and Other Fragile Min Constraint Satisfaction Problems
Jan 25 10:30, 99/1919 Mike Hochman Local entropy averages and projections of fractal measures
Jan 21 10:30, 99/1919 Grant Schoenebeck Understanding the Limitations of Linear and Semidefinite Programming
Jan 20 10:30, 99/1919 Niv Buchbinder The Randomized k-Server Conjecture (Online Algorithms meet Linear Programming)
Jan 19 3:30, 99/1915 Remco van der Hofstad First passage percolation on random graphs
Jan 15 10:30, 99/1927 Anne Fey Limiting shapes for a nonabelian sandpile growth model
Jan 8 10:30, 99/1915 Nitish Korula Online Allocations and Advertising
Jan 7 10:30, 99/1919 Ilias Diakonikolas Threshold Functions: Approximation, Pseudorandomness and Learning
Jan 6 10:30, 99/1915 Nikhil Srivastava Twice-Ramanujan Sparsifiers

2009:

Nov 20 15:30, 99/2817 Gagan Goel Algorithms for Auctions with budget constraints
Oct 22 15:30, 99/2817 Mohammad-Taghi Hajiaghayi Improved Approximation Algorithms for Prize-Collecting Steiner Tree and TSP
Oct 8 15:30, 99/2817 Geoffery Grimmett (Cambridge University) Influence and sharp thresholds for product and FKG measures
Oct 1 15:30, 99/1927B Robin Moser (ETH Zurich) A Constructive Proof of the Lovász Local Lemma
Oct 1 14:00, 99/1927B Noga Alon (Tel-Aviv University) Eliminating Cycles in the Torus
Sep 29 3:30, 99/1919 Eyal Winter (Hebrew University) Contracting with Asymmetric Externalities
Sep 24 3:30, 99/1927B Sven Seuken (MSR and Harvard) [I] Economics meets UI Design: Toll Bridge Pricing and P2P Backup Markets
Sep 23 12:30, 99/4300, [NC] Nikhil Devanur (MSR) An O(n log n) algorithm for a load balancing problem on a tree
Sep 17 3:30, 99/1927B Ben Birnbaum (U Washington) [I] On Local Dynamics for Two Equilibrium Concepts
Sep 16 12:30, 99/4300, [NC] Kamal Jain (MSR)