Mathematical Sciences: Some Combinatorial Investigations Arising From Theoretical Computer Science

该奖项支持新不伦瑞克市新泽西州立大学罗格斯分校的Michael Saks教授的研究。这是一项为期24个月的标准拨款，由数学科学部的代数和数论项目和计算机研究部的理论计算机科学项目共同资助。Saks教授是一位年轻的数学家，他在组合学和理论计算机科学之间的边界上取得了非常重要的成果。他最近的工作涉及部分有序集的存在性定理，这些定理是由搜索和排序算法理论中的问题引起的。他的一些成果是惊人的。在他目前的提案中，他甚至更多地转向了起源于计算机科学的组合学问题。他计划分析分布式计算中的某些问题：由一组独立行动并在某些网络上通信的单个处理器执行任务的性能。这种分布式系统的一个关键问题是可靠性，也就是说，要设计系统，使其即使在一些计算机出现故障时仍能正常工作。这项重要的研究无疑会带来丰厚的回报。

This award supports the research of Professor Michael Saks at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick. It is a twenty four month standard grant made by the Algebra and Number Theory Program in the Division of Mathematical Sciences and the Theoretical Computer Science Program in the Division of Computer Research. Professor Saks is a young mathematician who has burst onto the scene with his very important results which lie on the border between combinatorics and theoretical computer science. His work in the recent past dealt with existence theorems on partially ordered sets that were motivated by problems in the theory of searching and sorting algorithms. Some of his results were spectacular. In his current proposal he moves even more toward problems in combinatorics whose origin lies in computer science. He plans to analysize certain questions in distributed computing: the performance of tasks by a set of individual processors acting independently and communicating over some network. A critical issue for such distributed systems is reliabililty, that is, to design the system so that it still works even when some of the computers are faulty. This important research will undoubtably pay rich dividends.