Conference: Contemporary Combinatorics 2011

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The aim of this conference is to bring together a group of outstanding mathematicians who work on topics related to combinatorics, understood in the widest sense. Invited speakers will address a diverse set of topics including graph theory, Ramsey theory, operation research, theoretical computer science, probabilistic combinatorics, simplicial complexes, biostatistics and bioinformatics. The meeting will provide an opportunity for mathematicians from the Mid-South to benefit not only from the lectures but also from personal contacts with the speakers. The main speaker is Jon Kleinberg from Cornell University. A popular lecturer, he has done great work on networks and is particularly well known for his HITS algorithm, an algorithm for web search that builds on the eigenvector-based methods used by many commercial search engines. Kleinberg is also known for his work on algorithmic aspects of the small world experiment. Among other honors, he received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2005 and the Nevanlinna Prize in 2006, an award that is given out once every four years along with the Fields Medal; it is the premier distinction in Computational Mathematics. His most recent book, entitled Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010.Two lectures will be aimed at a general audience and high school students from the best schools in the Memphis area will be invited to attend. In the first lecture, Joel Spencer will give a contextual talk positioning Erdos as one of the most significant mathematicians of the 20th century. In the second lecture, Kleinberg will focus on questions related to flow of information through networks, emphasizing mathematical models for information flow in human social networks and their reflections in the on-line world.