Glencora Borradaile

Our department has announced a new, entirely online, bachelor’s degree in computer science which can be completed in one year.  Given that we are a public university, this translates to a $17,500 degree*. I will admit, when I first heard the idea I did not have very good thoughts about it.  My negative thoughts included [...]

I recently gave a pair of talks in the Math Department’s Applied Math Seminar on basics of TCS.  It was intended for a mathematically mature audience with no background in TCS.  The slides for the talk are available here; they are far from perfect — but I will happily take suggestions on things that should be [...]

Applications for attendance at the Women in Theory workshop are due February 29. The Women in Theory (WIT) Workshop is intended for graduate and undergraduate students in the area of theory of computer science. The workshop will feature technical talks and tutorials by senior and junior women in the field, as well as social events [...]

(updated: now with links to projects) A friend asked me, in reference to my post about the call for proposals for REU positions from CRA, “What kind of projects did you have them work on?” Two years ago, I proposed two projects and used one.  (I was to have two students, but sadly the shuttle [...]

The solicitation for summer research projects for undergraduates from the CRA-W is out: the DREU.  I highly recommend proposing a project.  For those who haven’t heard of it, the DREU are Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (from Underrepresented Groups in Computer Science and Engineering). How it works: profs suggest projects; students apply; the fine people who [...]

I registered for FOCS via our school’s accountant.  It seems to have caused an automatic registration to ActiveAdvantage, run through active.com (which handled the FOCS registrations?).  After a one month “free trial membership”, the school’s credit card was charged $59.95 for a “membership renewal”. You may want to check your credit card bill to see [...]

Oregon State University is hiring!  In computer science! 4 positions! In algorithms! Okay, sure, they are probably not going to hire 4 algorithms people, but algorithms is in the list of targetted areas: We seek strong candidates with a commitment to quality teaching and with research strengths in the areas of programming languages, algorithms with [...]

I missed the FOCS business meeting for no good reason.  But I heard after that there was some discussion along the lines of how many papers FOCS should accept with people vying for fewer papers and a more prestigious conference.  Apparently there were complaints from the old guys that most of the conference was under [...]

In my grad algorithms class, I taught matroids.  This was last Thursday and came on the heels of a class and problem solving session on greedy algorithms.  The class, I think, went well.  I went slowly (Socratically), building up the definition of a matroid using the graphic matroid as an example, motivated by Kruskal’s algorithm [...]

It has happened several times to me now. I (sub)review a paper for a conference and for one reason or another the paper is rejected.  The next conference deadline rolls around and I get a request to review the same paper.  I have never turned down these requests until today, and even today it was [...]