Maximilian Gorsky, The Disjoint Paths Problem lies in the Oort cloud of algorithms
2026-05-06 16:30 - 17:30 (Asia/Seoul) | Room B332, IBS (기초과학연구원)
In this talk we discuss recent work to that establishes that the bounds of the Vital Linkage Function is single-exponential. This has immediate impacts on the complexity of the k-Disjoint Paths Problem, Minor Checking, and more generally, the Folio-Problem. We in fact prove something even stronger: It turns out that it is not in fact the number of terminals (or more generally vertices) that matters in these problems, but rather their structure within the graph. Concretely, we show that the Vital Linkage Function is single-exponential only in the bidimensionality of the terminals, whilst the number of terminals contributes only polynomially. A direct consequence of this is an algorithm for the k-Disjoint Paths Problem running in $f(k)n^2$-time, where f(k) is singly exponential in k and doubly exponential in the bidimensionality of k. This derives directly from an algorithm for the Folio-problem we give that has an analogous runtime. Notably these are the first algorithms for these problems in which the function f is explicit. In particular, we give the first explicit bounds for the Vital Linkage Function.
Joint work with Dario Cavallaro, Stephan Kreutzer, Dimitrios Thilikos, and Sebastian Wiederrecht.

Benjamin Duhamel, Excluding a forest induced minor
2026-05-12 16:30 - 17:30
We give an induced counterpart of the Forest Minor theorem: for any t ≥ 2, the $K_{t,t}$-subgraph-free H-induced-minor-free graphs have bounded pathwidth if and only if H belongs to a class F of forests, which we describe as the induced minors of two (very similar) infinite parameterized families. This constitutes a significant step toward classifying the graphs H for which every weakly sparse H-induced-minor-free class has bounded treewidth. Our work builds on the theory of constellations developed in the Induced Subgraphs and Tree Decompositions series.
This is a joint work with É. Bonnet and R. Hickingbotham.

Xavier Goaoc, A canonical tree decomposition for order types, and some applications
2026-05-19 16:30 - 17:30
We introduce and study a notion of decomposition of planar point sets (or rather of their chirotopes) as trees decorated by smaller chirotopes. This decomposition is based on the concept of mutually avoiding sets (which we rephrase as modules), and adapts in some sense the modular decomposition of graphs in the world of chirotopes. The associated tree always exists and is unique up to some appropriate constraints. We also show how to compute the number of triangulations of a chirotope efficiently, starting from its tree and the (weighted) numbers of triangulations of its parts.
This is joint work with Mathilde Bouvel, Valentin Féray, and Florent Koechlin.

Fernanda Rivera Omaña, Erdős-Pósa theorem for matroids
2026-05-26 16:30 - 17:30
We will look at an analogue theorem of the classical Erdős-Pósa Theorem. We prove a $GF(q)$-representable matroid analogue of Robertson and Seymour’s theorem that planar graphs have an Erdős-Pósa property. Given a matroid $N$, we prove that for every matroid $M$ with bounded branch width, $M$ either contains $r$ skew copies of $N$, or there is a small perturbation of $M$ that doesn’t contain $N$ as a minor.
This is joint work with James Davies and Meike Hatzel.

Maria Chudnovsky, Induced minors and treewidth
2026-06-02 16:30 - 17:30
This talk deals with induced minor obstructions to treewidth. The natural setup for this problem is to consider the class of graphs excluding some planar graph, and some complete bipartite graph as induced minors, and some complete graph as a subgraph. Unfortunately, such classes still contain graphs of arbitrarily large treewidth. Moreover, a result of Alecu, Bonnet, Bureo Villafana and Trotignon and its extensions suggest that there is no elegant characterization of families of bounded treewidth in terms of induced obstructions.
On the other hand, it is conjectured that graphs in the classes as above have treewidth bounded by a poly-logarithmic function of their number of vertices. If true, this will imply the existence of quasi-polynomial time algorithms for a host of problems on such classes that are NP-complete in the general setting.
While this conjecture remains open, in joint work with Julien Codsi, David Fischer and Daniel Lokshtanov, we were able to prove the existence of a sub-polynomial bound on treewidth in terms of the number of vertices. This in turn leads to sub-exponential algorithmic behavior.
In this talk we will discuss some ideas of the proof, and, if time permits, some results in the more general setting when the bound on the clique size is removed.

J. Pascal Gollin, Dominated balanced separators in wheel-induced-minor-free graphs
2026-06-09 16:30 - 17:30
The grid theorem of Robertson and Seymour can be equivalently stated using balanced separators, that are separators whose deletion leaves every component with no more than half of the vertices of the graph, as follows. Every graph that excludes some planar graph as a minor has a balanced separator of bounded size. Building on this formulation, Gartland and Lokshtanov conjectured an induced minor version of that theorem inspired by coarse graph theory. They conjectured that every graph that excludes some planar graph as an induced minor has a balanced separator which is dominated by a bounded number of vertices. We confirm this conjecture for excluding any fixed wheel, that is, a cycle together with a universal vertex, as an induced minor.
This talk is based on joint work with Maria Chudnovsky, Matjaž Krnc, and Martin Milanič.

Harry Richman, Distinguishing graphs with tropical Weierstrass weights
2026-06-16 16:30 - 17:30
I will introduce a new structure on finite graphs, which takes the form of a labeling of the vertices by nonnegative integers (possibly repeated). This labeling is isomorphism invariant, and seems to reflect some mix of local and global structure of the graph. I will describe an algorithm for computing these labels, which uses a form of breadth-first search, and some results on the resulting labels. This construction comes from a tropical analogue of Weierstrass weights on algebraic curves, studied in the 1800s. Finally, I will discuss some speculation on whether this may or may not be helpful for the graph isomorphism problem.
This is a joint work with Omid Amini and Lucas Gierczak.

Stefan Weltge, The relaxation complexity of the standard simplex is logarithmic
2026-06-19 16:30 - 17:30
For a set $X$ of integer points, the relaxation complexity $operatorname{rc}(X)$ is the smallest number of facets of any polyhedron P whose integer points are precisely those of X. In this paper, we focus on the case where X is the discrete standard simplex $Delta_d = {0, e_1, …, e_d}$. We show that $operatorname{rc}(Delta_d) = O(log d)$ by an explicit, elementary construction. This improves upon the previously best-known upper bound $operatorname{rc}(Delta_d) = O(d / sqrt{log d})$ due to Aprile, Averkov, Di Summa, and Hojny (2022) and matches an asymptotic lower bound by Averkov and Schymura (2020). This is joint work with Simon Keil.

Ting-Wei Chao, The Oddtown Problem Modulo a Composite Number
2026-07-10 16:30 - 17:30
A family of sets in $[n]$ is called an $ell$-Oddtown if the sizes of all sets are not divisible by $ell$, but the sizes of pairwise intersections are divisible by $ell$. The problem was completely solved when $ell$ is a prime via an elegant linear algebraic method, showing that the family has size at most $n$. However, not much was known for composite numbers. By splitting the family into families correspond to each prime factor of $ell$, one can show that the number is at most $omega n$, where $omega$ is the number of prime factors of $ell$. We used both combinatorial and Fourier analytic arguments to prove that the number of sets in any $ell$-Oddtown is at most $omega n-(2omega+varepsilon)log_2 n$ for most $n,ell$.

Stephan Kreutzer, TBA
2026-07-28 16:30 - 17:30

Tomohiro Koana, TBA
2026-08-04 16:30 - 17:30

Meike Hatzel, TBA
2026-08-05 16:30 - 17:30

Jinyoung Park (박진영), TBA
2026-08-18 16:30 - 17:30
