Faculty with interests in combinatorics and discrete math
Mathematics Department: József Balogh, Philippe Di Francesco, Kevin Ford, Zoltán Füredi (emeritus), Alexandr Kostochka, Rinat Kedem, Paul Weichsel (emeritus), Douglas West (emeritus), Alexander Yong.
Others with related interests include Yuliy Baryshnikov, Iwan Duursma, Bruce Reznick
Computer Science Department: Chandra Chekuri, Jeff Erickson, Sariel Har-Peled, Sheldon Jacobson, Lenny Pitt, and Manoj Prabhakaran.
Electrical & Computer Engineering Department: Richard Blahut, Donna Brown, Bruce Hajek, Ralf Koetter, Michael Loui, Dilip Sarwate, and the Applied Computation Theory Group.
Activities
In addition to the combinatorics activities, seminars in theoretical computer science in the Computer Science Department also often discuss topics in discrete mathematics. Algebraic combinatorics and combinatorial representation theory connects to many topics in other fields such as algebraic geometry, commutative algebra, symplectic geometry, and mathematical physics. Thus many students benefit from the wide array of seminars available at Illinois. Weekly details are found in the Mathematics Department seminar schedule.
We organize trips for faculty and students to regional meetings such as, ALGECOM (Algebra-Geometry-Combinatorics), MIGHTY (MIdwest GrapH TheorY), MCCCC (Midwest Conference on Combinatorics, Coding, and Cryptography), the Cumberland Conference (on Graph Theory, Combinatorics, and Computing), and special sessions in graph theory or combinatorics at nearby regional AMS meetings.
In the past (starting in 2004), a REGS group (Research Experiences for Graduate Students) supported initially by our department’s VIGRE grant, subsequently by departmental funding, and later by our MCTP grant. The grant has now ended, so for the present the REGS program will not continue on a formal basis. However, new opportunties exist though the current NSF RTG grant.