Learn PCPs at DIMACS

Prahladh Harsha asked me to post the following announcement on the blog. I don't usually post announcements but this seems like an excellent opportunity to learn about approximation and PCPs from the masters. You can find many more links and short announcements on my Twitter Feed where you would also learn the FOCS accepted papers list is out. My thoughts on the FOCS papers tomorrow.

  

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DIMACS Tutorial on Limits of Approximation Algorithms: PCPs and Unique Games

When: July 20 - 21, 2009 
Where: DIMACS Center, CoRE Building, Rutgers University

I would like to advertise an upcoming tutorial on "Limits of Approximation Algorithms: PCPs and Unique Games", organized under the auspices of the DIMACS Special Focus on Hardness of Approximation. This tutorial is geared towards graduate students, postdocs and others who are theoretically oriented, but not necessarily familiar with the material.  The aim of the tutorial is to give participants a general overview of approximability, introduce them to important results in inapproximability, including some of the recent developments in the world of probabilistically checkable proofs (PCPs) and the unique games conjecture. 

The list of speakers includes: Matthew Andrews (Alcatel-Lucent Bell Laboratories), Sanjeev Arora (Princeton University), Moses Charikar (Princeton University), Prahladh Harsha (University of Texas, Austin), Subhash Khot (New York University) and Lisa Zhang (Alcatel-Lucent Bell Laboratories).

Registration is free and limited travel support is available for non-local participants (with preference to students and postdocs). More info on the workshop web site.