University of Utah Theory Reading Group
We are a student-led reading group in the Kahlert School of Computing, and every week we discuss research
from across the field of theoretical computer science. We also use this time slot to host our Theory Seminars
(highlighted in gray).
Logistics
Time: Fridays, 12:00-1:00pm.Location: MEB 3515, or Meldrum Conference Room (WEB 2760) for our Theory Seminars.
Contact: Eli Friedman (eli.friedman at utah.edu). Send questions, comments, or requests to speak.
Fall 2026 Schedule
| Date | Speaker | Title |
|---|---|---|
| August 28 | Felicia Lucke (ENS Lyon) | Finding Matching Cuts |
| September 4 | Prasanth Yalamanchili | Minimizing the Kirchhoff Index |
| September 11 | Eli Friedman | The CUT Query Model |
| September 25 | Dylan McKellips | Star Coloring Stencil Graphs |
| October 2 | Samuel Powell | Fractional Vertex Cover Reliability of Graphs |
| October 9 | David Gleich (Purdue) | Powers of magnetic graph matrix: Fourier spectrum, walk compression, and applications |
| October 23 | Mark Gillespie (Utah!) | Intrinsic Triangulations in Geometry Processing [slides] |
| October 30 | Alex Crane | |
| November 7 | ||
| November 7 | ||
| November 20 | Jenny Lin (Utah!) |
Previous Terms
Spring 2026
Spring 2026 Schedule
| Date | Speaker | Title |
|---|---|---|
| January 21 February 4 |
Siddhant Chaudhary | Large Deviations for Sums of Partly Dependent Random Variables [Janson04]
Entropy-Based Concentration Inequalities for Dependent Variables [RA15] |
| February 11 | Eli Friedman | Balls into Bins and Power of Two Choices [ABKU99] |
| February 18 | Dylan McKellips | Courcelle's Theorem [Courcelle90] |
| March 4 | Alex Crane | Various proofs of Brooks' Theorem |
| March 18 | Prasanth Yalamanchili | Clustering-Based Edge Augmentation for Minimizing the Kirchhoff Index [BY26] |
| March 25 | Eli Friedman | Simple Approximation Algorithms for Polyamorous Scheduling [BGJ+25] |
| April 1 | Bruce Brewer | A Dynamic Data Structure for Priority-Queue Updates [BW26] |
Fall 2025
Fall 2025 Schedule
| Date | Speaker | Title |
|---|---|---|
| September 5 | Alex Crane | Edge Modification for Probabilistic Graphs [BCJ+25] |
| September 12 | Siddhant Chaudhary | Learning Entangled Single-Sample Gaussians [CDKL14] |
| September 16 | Eli Friedman | Threshold Algorithms for Prophet Inequality Problems |
| October 14 | Md Mumtahin Habib Ullah Mazumder | Maximizing Non-monotone Submodular Functions [FMV11] |
| October 21 | Dylan McKellips | Computing Dense and Sparse Subgraphs of Weakly Closed Graphs [KKS23] |
| November 4 | Prasanth Yalamanchili | Graph Sparsification |
| November 11 | Bruce Brewer | Voronoi Diagrams |
| November 18 | Anastasiia Tkachenko | Computing Dominating Sets in Disk Graphs with Centers in Convex Position [TW25] |