First Meeting (November 12-16, 2001)

Program Report

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Program

Organizers:

Patrick Fowler, University of Exeter, P.W.Fowler@exeter.ac.uk

Pierre Hansen, GERAD - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, pierreh@crt.umontreal.ca

Monday (Nov 12, 2001)

8:30 - 9:00 Breakfast and Registration
 
9:00 - 9:15 Welcome and Greeting:
 Fred S. Roberts, DIMACS Director
 
9:15 - 9:30 Introductory Remarks:
 Pierre Hansen, GERAD
 
9:30 - 10:10 Link
 Jonathan Berry, Elon College
 
10:15 - 10:45 Break
 
10:45 - 11:25 Designing Learning Algorithms for Practical Computing
 Mark Goldberg, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
 
11:30 - 1:30 Lunch and Informal Discussion
 
1:30 - 2:25 Interactive Conjecturing I - The Vega System
  Interactive Conjecturing II - Lab demo of Vega
 Tomasz Pisanski, University of Ljubljiana
 
2:30 - 3:00 Break
 
3:00 - 3:40 Overview of Graph
 Dragan Stevanovic, University of Nis, Yugoslavia
 
3:45 - 4:25 Lab demo of Link
 Jonathan Berry, Elon College
 
4:30 - 5:10 CaGe - an environment for the work with some classes of
 planar graphs 
 Sebastian Lisken, University of Bielefeld
 
5:15 - 5:55 SEAL: System for enhancing algorithms through learning
 Eric Breimer and Darren Lim, Rensselaer Polytechnic University

Tuesday (Nov 13, 2001)

8:30 - 9:00 Breakfast
 
9:00 - 9:40 Overview of Graffiti
 Siemion Fajtlowicz, University of Houston
 
9:45 - 10:25 Application of Graffiti
 Ermilinda DeLaVina, University of Houston-Downtown
 
10:30 - 11:00 Break
 
11:00 - 11:40 Overview of AGX 
  Pierre Hansen, GERAD
 
11:45 - 12:25 Application of AGX 
 Gilles Caporossi, Universite de Montreal
 
12:30 - 2:00 Lunch and Informal Discussion
 
2:00 - 2:40 Applications of AGX 
 Hadrien Melot, University of Brussels
 
2:45 - 3:15 Break
 
3:15 - 3:55 Lab demo of Graffiti 
 Ermilinda DeLaVina, University of Houston-Downtown
 
4:00 - 4:40 Lab demo of AGX 
 Gilles Caporossi, Universite de Montreal
 
4:45 - 5:25 Applications of Graffiti
  Barbara Chervenka, University of Houston-Downtown and
 Ryan Pepper, University of Houston
 
6:30 - 9:00 Buffet Dinner at Holiday Inn, South Plainfield,
 Followed by a Social Hour

Wednesday (Nov 14, 2001)

8:30 - 9:00 Breakfast
 
9:00 - 9:40 On Progress in Automated Conjecture-Making
 Craig Larson, University of Houston
 
9:45 - 10:25 McKays canonical construction path method. 
 An example: Posets
 Gunnar Brinkmann, University of Bielefeld
 
10:30 - 11:00 Break
 
11:00 - 11:40 Research in machine learning 
 Susan Epstein, Hunter College
 
11:45 - 12:25 Techniques for searching for maximum independent sets
 Wendy Myrvold, University of Victoria
 
12:30 - 1:30 Lunch
 
1:30 - 2:25 Some applications of graph theory in chemistry, or
 What do chemists want from mathematicians, and
 what can they give in return? 
 Patrick Fowler, Exeter University
 
2:30 - 3:00 Break
 
3:00 - 3:40 Lab demo of Graph
 Dragan Stevanovic, University of Nis, Yugoslavia
 
3:45 - 4:25 Polyhedral properties and duals of benzenoid indices
 Hernan Abeledo, George Washington University
 
4:30 - 5:00 Bounds on the stability number of a graph
  Gabriela Alexe, Rutcor, Rutgers University
 
5:00 - 5:20 Time for interaction; software made available 

Thursday (Nov 15, 2001)

8:30 - 9:00 Breakfast
 
9:00 - 9:40 Representation of Chemical Graphs, Maps and Polyhedra
 Tomasz Pisanski, University of Ljubljiana
 
9:45 - 10:25 Construction of combinatorial structures, a theoretical approach
 Reinhard Laue, University of Bayreuth
 
10:30 - 11:00 Break
 
11:00 - 11:40 Computer generated conjectures in mathematical chemistry
 Siemion Fajtlowicz, University of Houston
 
11:45 - 12:25 Chemical Evolution
  Robert Nachbar, Merck Research Laboratories
 
12:30 - 2:00 Lunch and Informal Discussion
 
2:00 - 2:40 CAR: Computer-Aided Research of Integral Graphs
 Dragan Stevanovic, University of Nis, Yugoslavia
 
2:45 - 3:30 Time for interaction; software made available
 
3:30 - 4:00 Break
 
4:00 - 4:40 Encoding fullerenes and geodesic domes
 Jack Graver, Syracuse University
 
4:40 - 5:30 Panel discussion on ideas generated by the working group

Friday (Nov 16, 2001)

8:30 - 9:00 Breakfast
 
9:00 - 9:40 Puzzles, Graphs and Graph Generators
 Dennis Shasha, New York University
 
9:45 - 10:25 Constraint graph generation for mathematical chemistry
 Reinhard Laue, University of Bayreuth
 
10:30 - 11:00 Break
 
11:00 - 11:40 An Application Framework for Combinatorial Algorithms
 Sandra Kingan, Pennsylvania State University
 
11:45 - 12:25 Minimum Total Distance d-trees
 Maolin Zheng, Frictionless 
 
12:30 - 2:00 Lunch 
 
2:00 - Conference ends, people can stay for informal discussion.

Report

Points that arose at the discussion session Thursday, November 15th, 2001.

(Notes taken by Patrick Fowler)

For the next meeting (Montreal, 2003 or 2004):

It would be a good idea to have a specific Conjectures session / Open problems early in meeting, and then a follow-up session later in the meeting when participants have tried their approaches out on these problems. More open scheduling of the timetable to leave even more time for interaction would be appreciated by most of the participants.

Action:

Conjectures, etc to be invited via the web page.

List of interesting problems (text to be supplied by working group members) to be published up on the page.

Contact can be made via the web page and the e-mail list maintained at DIMACS

Interesting links, e.g. to Written on the Wall and Graffiti, to be published on the web page GRAPH to be added on the page.

Links or copies of interesting papers of group members to be added to the page.

The main topic of the discussion was how to consolidate the efforts of all the groups who have made major investments in software and establishing a variety of widely different theoretical approaches, all with demonstrated success in particular domains.

The short-term need is for a common format for data exchange. After a lot of discussion of this point, it was suggested that a minimum first step is publication of the actual formats used by the existing programs VEGA, AGX, MOLGEN, CaGe, etc.

Action:

Program designers in the working group please supply details for the web page.

Kingan suggested JAVA programs linked to a graph server, and noted existence of XLMScheme. Myrvold suggested an agreement on language and platform; Brinkmann preferred a solution by modularity of programs and a common communication format; Pisanski wanted at least a common viewer for all the objects that would work in all the formats. Nachbar suggested that discussion be widened to infinite graphs and suggested that detailed consideration be given to whether the final formats would reflect a hierarchy of concepts (defined on what principle?) or would simply be defined separately for graphs, digraphs, multigraphs, etc. Lisken, Caporossi and others noted that piping was a powerful tool, though others added cautions about its usefulness in their own contexts, and Laue noted that there is a very different requirement in both format and handling when one is considering massive data transfer for large-scale computation rather than detailed work on a small number of objects.

Another point of discussion was a reminder that the workshop has also already produced very lively interchange of ideas and stimulated a number of pair-wise interactions which should lead to fruitful collaboration and eventual publication of results. It is already clear therefore that the workshop is likely to show a medium-term as well as a long-term benefits to workers in the field.

Action:

News about the various collaborations, lists of papers from the different groups and amplifications of discussion could all be to the working group email list, or placed centrally on the page. Significant updates to the web page will be notified to the mailing list by Sorin Alexe (salexe@dimacs.rutgers.edu) who is maintaining the page for us.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0100921

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