Glencora Borradaile

Last year I spoke at the n-th Annual Combinatorial Potlatch and had a blast.  The informal workshop is a great idea; I wish there were more regional events like them.  Maybe there are and I just don’t know about them.  The n+1-st Annual Combinatorial Potlatch has been announced – I encourage you to go! This [...]

I’m participating in the Experience Theory Project at the University of Washington right now. ETP is an event for undergraduates with talent and interest in theoretical computer science, sponsored by the theory groups at the University of Washington and Microsoft Research. The purpose of the event is to exchange ideas about exciting results and research directions in [...]

I’m on the SODA 2011 program committee and finding it, as everything this last year (grant writing, NSF panelling, grad student advising), a condensed learning experience. Our reviews are almost due which means that this newbie has been through all but a a few of my stack. I asked for subreviews for roughly half my [...]

“In theory” as in “in theoretical computer science”. I am lucky to have a student through the CRA-W Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. Anna Harutyunyan joins me for 10 weeks from Utah State University.  I think it might be more of a learning experience for me than Anna (although my opinion is biased) and [...]

Based on David’s link to the AMS data on journal backlogs in my last post (thanks Dave!) and the ISI Web of Knowledge citation report, I’ve wasted some time making the following fancy graph. There are some obvious missing journals that I didn’t have the data for: Theory of Computing (no impact factor), JACM (no [...]

I had a search of the blogs and web at large to see if there was any evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) about the turnover rates for TCS (and friendly) journals.  Short answer: I couldn’t find much.  I would (and I am sure many other people would) appreciate any help in deciding what journal to submit [...]

Jérémy Barbay was visiting me this week from Universidad de Chile.  Although we overlapped at Waterloo by a few months, we had never talked in depth about research before.  His visit was great timing to scoop me out of some research doldrums after a stressful winter quarter.  He gave a great talk on adaptive analysis. [...]

I missed the business meeting to have dinner with a non-SODA-attending friend and so missed the voting over the location of SODA 2012 which was apparently a close tie. I’m a little dismayed at SODA being outside of North America.  As a graduate student I would have probably been excited in my responsibility-free state.  But [...]

Many people have been blogging on the technical content at SODA, but I won’t. Given that David has already hinted that I only value the first 10 minutes of most talks, clearly I’m not in the position to expound on the more than the definition of problems and all but the highest level of analysis. [...]

I recently went to a Christmas party where, instead of a gift exchange, there was a donation exchange.  Essentially, we each placed a cause’s name into a hat, people draw the names and are asked to donate to the cause.  You may donate any amount you wish (including nothing if you are particularly opposed to [...]