Twenty-First Cumberland Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing

第21届坎伯兰组合学、图论和计算会议马克·N·埃林厄姆离散数学和计算机科学领域的国际研究会议将于2008年5月15日至17日在田纳西州纳什维尔的范德堡大学举行。这次会议是第21届坎伯兰组合学、图论和计算会议。坎伯兰会议是一年一度的会议，旨在将中南部和东南部的离散数学和计算机科学的研究人员聚集在一起。它于1988年首次举办，此后每年都举行。场地每年都在变化，在不同的大学之间穿梭。许多杰出的研究人员在以前的坎伯兰会议上做过主要演讲。会议的重点是组合学、图论和计算。这些领域构成了我们许多现代信息基础设施的基本理论背景，以及许多优化活动的现代方法，如交通和调度。来自这些领域的工具被用于生态、互联网等通信网络、经济和商业以及军事后勤等多个领域。会议旨在促进研究人员之间的互动，允许传播最新的研究成果，并宣传这些领域在现代社会中的重要性。会议预计将有约100人参加，分两到三个平行的会议，将有五个主要小时的演讲者和大约60个演讲，每个演讲持续15到20分钟。在撰写本报告时，川林健一(日本国立信息学研究所)、尼尔·罗伯逊(俄亥俄州立大学)、斋藤明(日本日本大学)和比亚恩·托夫特(丹麦南部大学)已接受邀请担任主要演讲人。这次会议是由范德比尔特大学的Mark Ellingham和Gexin Yu组织的。除了是东南部数学家和计算机科学家的聚会场所外，这次会议还将聚焦于两个旨在刺激未来研究的特殊领域。将有前瞻性的聚焦于匹配、因子和因式分解以及Hadwiger猜想的会议。这些都是目前非常活跃的研究领域，这些会议应该会吸引来自更广泛领域的强大研究人员参加。此外，大会将专门纪念迈克·普卢默的70岁生日，这是迈克一直致力于的两个主题。在这两个领域中，每个领域都将有主要演讲者和特别演讲环节。

ABSTRACT Twenty-First Cumberland Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing Mark N. Ellingham An international research conference in the area of discrete mathematics and computer science will be held at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee from 15th to 17th May, 2008. The conference is the Twenty-First Cumberland Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing. The Cumberland Conference is an annual conference held to bring together researchers in discrete mathematics and computer science in the mid-south and southeast. It was first held in 1988, and has been held every year since then. The venue changes from year to year, moving around between universities. Many outstanding researchers have given principal talks at previous Cumberland Conferences. The conference focuses on combinatorics, graph theory and computing. These areas form the essential theoretical background for much of our modern information infrastructure, and for many modern methods of optimizing activities such as transportation and scheduling. Tools from these areas are used in areas as diverse as ecology, communication networks such as the Internet, economics and business, and military logistics. The conference aims to promote interaction between researchers, to allow for the dissemination of the most recent research results, and to publicize the importance of these areas in modern society. The conference is expected to have about 100 participants.There will be five principal hour speakers and about sixty contributed talks, each of fifteen or twenty minutes' duration, in two or three parallel sessions. At the time of writing, Ken-ichi Kawarabayashi (National Institute of Informatics, Japan), Neil Robertson (Ohio State University), Akira Saito (Nihon University, Japan), and Bjarne Toft (University of Southern Denmark) have accepted invitations to be principal speakers. The conference is organized by Mark Ellingham and Gexin Yu, both of Vanderbilt University. Besides being a meeting place for mathematicians and computer scientists from the southeast, the conference will have a focus on two special areas designed to stimulate future research. There will be forward-looking focused sessions on Matchings, Factors and Factorizations, and on Hadwiger's Conjecture. These are currently very active areas of research, and these sessions should attract attendance from strong researchers from a wider area. In addition, the conference will be dedicated in honor of Mike Plummer's 70th birthday, and these are two topics in which Mike has worked. There will be principal speakers and special contributed talk sessions in each of these two areas.