Research in algorithms revolves around fundamental questions such as: How efficiently can we solve a given computational problem? If exact solutions are computationally expensive, can we find approximation algorithms that are efficient and provide guarantees on the quality of their solution? How should we implement an algorithm in software in order to achieve good performance on real data?
Algorithms research at Arizona spans several areas: from applied algorithms for computational science such as bioinformatics and computational biology, and computational astronomy (Kececioglu), to computational geometry (Efrat) and graph algorithms (Kobourov). Our research emphasizes discovering new theoretical results, as well as releasing practical software tools that implement our discoveries.
Our collaborations involve colleagues in the College of Medicine, the College of Engineering, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) located on campus. Recently-funded interdisciplinary projects include: NSF TRIPODS, a joint effort with the departments of Mathematics and Statistics that studies fundamental problems in data science; and NSF ANTARES, a collaborative effort with astronomers at NOAO for fast filtering of astronomical alerts from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).
