CombinaTexas: A Combinatorics Conference for the South-Central U.S.

摘要：主要研究人员正在组织一次组合学会议，会议将于2000年3月下旬在德克萨斯农工大学举行。其目的是每年春天在美国中南部的一所大学举行一年一度的组合学会议。目前每年有几个区域组合学/图论会议，包括东南组合学会议、中西部图论会议、俄亥俄河谷的坎伯兰会议和马萨诸塞州的史密斯会议。目前，德克萨斯州或任何周边州都没有举行类似的一系列会议。与此同时，该地区的组合学家人数近年来一直在稳步上升，这就产生了对定期沟通工具的需求。会议系列将努力吸引来自组合学不同分支领域、处于不同职业阶段和来自该区域内不同大学的演讲者，以及来自该区域以外的少数杰出演讲者。第一场演讲的演讲者包括两位国际演讲者(柏林理工大学的Guenter Ziegler和牛津大学的Dominic Welsh)以及五位来自该地区的演讲者(堪萨斯大学的玛格丽特·拜尔、北得克萨斯大学的Joseph Kung、路易斯安那州立大学的詹姆斯·奥克斯利、亚利桑那州立大学的威廉·特罗特和德克萨斯农工大学的凯瑟琳·严)。NSF提供的资金将使提名者能够向其他机构的研究生和博士后提供津贴，允许他们参加会议，并为七位主要演讲者提供国内旅费和适度的酬金。该地区组合数学社区的增长反映了过去几十年组合数学活动和重要性的增长。计算机技术的激增只会加速这一趋势，因为组合学和离散数学为计算的理论和实践提供了基础。这种增长的速度和该领域应用的广度增加了研究人员之间定期交流的需要。在这个国家的这一地区尤其如此，研究人员之间的地理距离阻碍了更多的即兴交流。会议的形式满足了这些需求，鼓励来自不同分领域的基础广泛的会谈，并包括海报会议和其他非正式讨论场合。

Abstract:The Principal Investigators are organizing a conference on combinatorics to be held at Texas A&M University in late March, 2000. The intent is to establish an annual combinatorics conference to be held each spring at a university in the South-Central United States. There are currently several regional combinatorics/graph theory conferences held annually, including the Southeastern Combinatorics Conference, the Midwest Graph Theory Conference, the Cumberland Conference in the Ohio River Valley, and the Smith Conference in Massachusetts. No similar series of meetings are currently being held in Texas or any of the surrounding states. At the same time, the number of combinatorialists in the region has been rising steadily in recent years, creating a need for a regular vehicle for communication. The conference series will strive to bring in speakers from diverse subfields of combinatorics, at varying career stages, and from different universities within the region, as well as a small number of distinguished speakers from outside the region. Speakers for the first talk include two international speakers (Guenter Ziegler of the Technische Universitaet Berlin and Dominic Welsh of Oxford University) as well as five speakers from the region (Margaret Bayer of the University of Kansas, Joseph Kung of the University of North Texas, James Oxley of Louisiana State University,William Trotter of Arizona State University, and Catherine Yan of Texas A&M University). The funds provided by the NSF will enable the proposers to offer stipends to graduate students and postdocs from other institutions to allow them to attend the conference as well as to provide domestic travel expenses and modest honoraria for the seven primary speakers.The growth of the combinatorics community in the region is reflective of the growth in the activity and importance of combinatorics in the last few decades. The proliferation of computer technology has only accelerated this trend, since combinatorics and discrete mathematics provide the foundations on which the theories and practices of computation are based. The speed of this growth and the breadth of the field's application increases the need for regular communication between researchers. This is especially true in this part of the country, in which the geographical distances between researchers impedes more impromptu communication. The format of the conference addresses these needs, encouraging broad-based talks from diverse subfields and including a poster session and other occasions for informal discussions.