Mathematical Sciences: Asymptotic Aspects of Matching, Covering, and Coloring Problems

This award supports the research of Professor Kahn to work in combinatorics and graph theory. Professor Kahn will focus in on problems concerned with graphs and hypergraphs, where some parameter is tending towards infinity. In this situation a common occurrence is that in many ways such objects are unexpectedly well-behaved. The research is in the general area of combinatorics. Combinatorics attempts to find efficient methods to study how discrete collections can be organized. The behavior of discrete systems is extremely important to modern communications. For example, the design of large networks, as in telephone systems, and the design of algorithms in computer science all deal with discrete objects, and this makes use of combinatorial research.