The list of accepted papers at #FOCS2026 is out! sanjeevkhanna.org/FOCS2026_Acc...

Meike Neuwohner, Vera Traub, Rico Zenklusen Approximation Schemes for Planar Graph Connectivity Problems https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.21128

Had a great time organizing (with Julian Mestre, R Ravi, and Mik Zlatin) a post #FOCS2025 2-day workshop on Trends in Approximation and Online Algorithms! Featuring an amazing lineup of speakers (from established experts to rising stars) + wiki edit-a-thon + gelato cart from Mapo 1/n

📢 #FOCS2026 will be held in NewYork City, USA! Nov 8–11, 2026 at NYU (colocated with TCC) General Chair: Marshall Ball PC Chair: Sanjeev Khanna (Co-Chair: Sepehr Assadi)

Stoked about the new work with Édouard Bonnet, Tuukka Korhonen, Jason Li, and Tomáš Masařík: a simple linear time algorithm to find a balanced separator in minor-free graphs. A more detailed blog post, giving a complete pseudocode: minorfree.github.io/SepLinear/ Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2512.01587

I hate conference deadlines, but somehow, deadlines make magic happen. A week ago, we had a jumble of texts, but now we have what looks like a nice paper.

STOC 2026 is offering experimental pre-submission feedback using an AI tool optimized for checking mathematical rigor. Results won't go to PC or be used for training purposes. Opt-in via the submission server by November 1. Details: acm-stoc.org/stoc202... CFP: acm-stoc.org/stoc202...

SODA26 accepted papers out: www.siam.org/conferences-...

Accepted Papers | SIAM

ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA26) will take place from January 11–14, 2026 in Vancouver, Canada. This symposium focuses on research topics related to the design and analysis of effici...

siam.org

Some questions on spanners in my talk at the Simons Institute. Since the talk, progress has been made on a few questions, but most are open. minorfree.github.io/SpannerQues/

I agreed to review 6 SODA papers this year (not counting other reviews); an idiot is here. It's hard to say no; my past self struggled to find reviewers. People (non-PC members) accepting more than 6 reviews for a theory conference are definitely inspiring; 6 is my new record. What's your number?

Report new theory jobs here: kamathematics.wordpress.com/2025/06/03/t...

Theory Jobs 2025

The Theory community has a tradition of a crowdsourced spreadsheet of sharing who has accepted which jobs, previously hosted by Grigory Yaroslavtsev and Lance Fortnow. Past years have been slightly…

kamathematics.wordpress.com

On a Dagstuhl workshop that I recently co-organized: minorfree.github.io/Dagstuhl/

Tracy Kimbrel, former National Science Foundation program director extraordinaire, will receive the 2025 ACM SIGACT Distinguished Service Award. He spearheaded programs such as TRIPODS (foundations of data science) and AitF (Algorithms in the Field). 1/2

The Call for Papers (CfP) for #SODA26 is out: www.siam.org/conferences-... The submission server is open: soda26.hotcrp.com Deadline: ⏰ Monday, July 14, AoE (July 15, 11:59am UTC)

Jonathan Conroy and Arnold Filtser have recently solved the padded decomposition problem for minor-free graphs, one of my favorite open problems. Congratulations to both! Their paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2504.00278 My take: minorfree.github.io/PaddedSolved/

How to Protect Yourself from Threatening Skeletons: Optimal Padded Decompositions for Minor-Free Graphs

Roughly, a metric space has padding parameter $β$ if for every $Δ>0$, there is a stochastic decomposition of the metric points into clusters of diameter at most $Δ$ such that every ball of radius $γΔ$...

arxiv.org

I first got into smoothed analysis and linear programming during my master's. Now, 9 years later, we finally have matching upper and lower bounds. I spent a huge part of my life on this, and it feels weird that it's now finished.

Optimal Smoothed Analysis of the Simplex Method

Smoothed analysis is a method for analyzing the performance of algorithms, used especially for those algorithms whose running time in practice is significantly better than what can be proven through w...

arxiv.org

Huge congratulations to my amazing student Yeyuan Chen (+co-author Zihan Zhang of OSU advised by Zeyu Guo) for being awarded the STOC 2025 Best Student Paper Award! Their monumental result proves that explicit Reed-Solomon codes can correct more errors than previously known: arxiv.org/abs/2408.15925

Explicit Folded Reed-Solomon and Multiplicity Codes Achieve Relaxed Generalized Singleton Bounds

In this paper, we prove that explicit FRS codes and multiplicity codes achieve relaxed generalized Singleton bounds for list size $L\ge1.$ Specifically, we show the following: (1) FRS code of length $...

arxiv.org

I got a lot out of participating in WALDO back in 2021, so I definitely recommend checking it out! 😄

Clément Canonne@ccanonne.github.io · last yr.

An announcement: the Workshop on Algorithms for Large Data (Online) 2025 will take place 🗓️ April 14—16. waldo-workshop.github.io/2025.html Goal: "to generate new collaborations through an emphasis on big data algorithms, broadly defined" Register (free) by ⏰ April 7 to access the virtual platform

The next few talks on TCS+ (@tcsplus.bsky.social): 🍰 Tom Gur on Zero-Knowledge PCPs (March 19) (@tomgur.bsky.social) 🍰 Or Zamir on streaming and optimal F₂ moment estimation (April 9) 🍰 Ryan Williams on time v. memory (April 23) (@rrwilliams.bsky.social) Sweet!

The STOC 2025 Theory Fest is looking for workshop proposals! Apply here: stoc2025theoryfest.netlify.app Deadline is March 9th, so act fast!

Hey, it's March now. You know what would be great? Nominating trailblazing TCS researchers to the Knuth Prize! www.sigact.org/prizes/knuth...

FOCS 2026@focs2026.bsky.social · last yr.

Please nominate candidates to the 🏆 Knuth Prize, to be awarded this year during #STOC2025! The prize recognizes "major research accomplishments and contributions to the foundations of Computer Science over an extended period of time." ⏰ Deadline: March 31 www.sigact.org/prizes/knuth... #TCSSky

CALL FOR PAPERS: With Robert Calderbank, Krishna Narayanan, Henry Pfister and Mary Wootters, I'm editing a special issue of the IEEE BITS magazine on Error-Correcting Codes & invite expository/tutorial articles. Deadline: April 17 (white paper). Please circulate widely. www.itsoc.org/sites/defaul...

CRA statement on the cuts at NSF: "These cuts are the very definition of being pennywise and pound foolish — a shortsighted move that will undermine American innovation and technological leadership .." cra.org/cuts-to-nsf-...

Cuts to NSF and CISE Directorate Jeopardize American Leadership in Computing

A statement from the Computing Research Association (CRA) The reported termination today of 10 percent of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) workforce — including significant cuts to the Compu…

cra.org

the Four Russians Method is a technique for speeding up Boolean matrix multiplication and dynamic programming. The original paper is in Russian, and I am not aware of any English translation. Now we have a translation, by Ben Rozonoyer, a PhD student at UMass. minorfree.github.io/FourRussian/

The #FOCS2025 website is up! Featuring a Call for Papers and important dates: focs.computer.org/2025/ ⏰ Deadline: April 3, 2025 (8pm ET) ⏰ Notification: July 8, 2025 🗓️ Conference: December 14–17, 2025 Content and info will be added as it becomes available (workshops, activities, travel support).

STOC 25 accepted papers: acm-stoc.org/stoc2025/acc...

Just learnt about this: you can query DBLP to find out the most number of authors on a paper at a conf or a group of conf: SODA 11, FOCS 11, STOC 10. The new record this year at STOC 25 is 13.

дблп - ☮ Stop the war!@dblp.org · 2y ago

sparql.dblp.org/dblp/xZFrX9 Seems legit to me. ~MRA

A proof is a logical argument written to convince a skeptical audience. A corollary is that the best way to read a proof is to roleplay as a skeptical audience.

STOC25 notification was out. A record number of submissions, 735, and acceptances, 218. To compare with SODA 25, 655 submissions and 192 acceptances. This is probably the 1st time STOC has more submissions and acceptances than SODA.

New post summerizes what I've learnt over the last few years about Locality Sensitive Ordering, a technique for reducing geometric problems in R^d to problems in the line (1D): minorfree.github.io/LSO/