Job talks

October 27, 2009

I recently found out that when I gave my job talk at Oregon State University last year, I was being recorded.  I was hesitant to post it, but I hope that, despite this far-from-perfect performance, it might be useful to those on the job market this year.  Note that Oregon State is not a theory [...]

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INFORMS on the Smart Grid

October 12, 2009

I hadn’t heard of the “smart grid” until I arrived in Oregon.  Our department is pushing for a sustainability research collaboration initiative, SENERGI, and so it wasn’t long before I heard our former director, Terri Fiez, talking about the smart grid.  Now, at INFORMS in San Diego, I’m listening to a keynote on the smart [...]

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How to find a postdoc

October 8, 2009

While I hardly think I should be doling out advice …
In algorithms, there have been a lot of postdoc positions advertising on the two main email lists, TheoryNT and dmanet.  In my experience, many of the positions are in Europe.  I’ve found that a lot of postdoc’s get their position by word of mouth.
I think, [...]

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Approximation algorithms for constrained knapsack problems

October 5, 2009

Glencora Borradaile, Brent Heeringa, Gordon Wilfong
arXiv, October, 2009.

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What theory should every non-theory Ph.D. student know?

October 5, 2009

I’ve survived my first week of teaching graduate algorithms and data structures. “Survived” really isn’t the right word. I’ve had a lot of fun and the students in the class are bright and interactive, which makes a 50 minute lecture go by in a flash.
Since the time is going by so quickly, I [...]

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