The Future of Discrete mathematics


Stirin Castle, May 19 - 24, 1997

Stirin castle

As you may know, Charles University, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Institute of Chemical Technology have founded the Center for Discrete Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science and Applications (DIMATIA). The center is open to cooperation and actively seeks partners from all parts of the world. The activity of the center will be inaugurated by an international conference on "The Future of Discrete Mathematics" organized by DIMATIA jointly with DIMACS (USA). The conference will be partially supported by our agreements with DIMATIA associated members both from the Czech Republic and from abroad. This joint DIMATIA-DIMACS conference will be dedicated to the memory of Paul Erd"os as the founder of many of the theories of discrete mathematics as we know them today. The conference will address recent trends in Discrete Mathematics which have the potential for future development of the subject, as well as for its applications.

The conference will be held at Stirin castle in the Prague area in May 19-24, 1997. Stirin is a small, high-baroque castle which has recently been renovated as a conference center and a stylish hotel. The castle is situated in a beautiful park which includes a golf course and tennis courts. The common facilities include 2 conference rooms, 2 smaller banquet rooms and a chapel (used for concerts). These facilities as well as the restaurant are suitable for up to 70 people, which makes this site ideal for our purpose.

The conference fee is $ 150 and we have negotiated with the Stirin castle management a discounted cost for lodging and board of $ 400 (rates based on double occupancy). There is also a possibility of a cheaper accommodation in a nearby village Velke Popovice (one has to commute cca 10 minutes by bus) for $ 200 (including the meals in Stirin castle).

We hope that the conference will lead to a substantial scientific output. The program will consist mostly of invited and contributed talks. We will try to leave enough time for informal discussions.


J. Nesetril, J. Kratochvil (DIMATIA)
F.S. Roberts, R.L. Graham (DIMACS)
conference steering committee
Excerpt from the second announcement:

So far the following speakers agreed to deliver invited lectures: W. Deuber (Bielefeld), A. Frank (Budapest), R.L. Graham (DIMACS), P. Hell (Vancouver), A. Kostochka (Novosibirsk), L. Lovasz (Yale), E. Luks (Eugene), T. Luczak (Poznan), W. Mader (Hannover), J. Matousek (DIMATIA), J. Nesetril (DIMATIA), F. Roberts (DIMACS), V. Sos (Budapest), J. Spencer (New York), R. Thomas (Atlanta).

The official opening of the conference is on Monday at 4 pm. The registration office will be open from 3 pm till 9 pm on Monday and from 8 am till 4 pm on Tuesday. The official program will end on Sunday May 25 after lunch.


Preliminary Program of the Conference

Monday May 19, 1997

14:00 departures of buses from Malostranske nam.
15:00 expected arrival to Stirin

15:30-16:00 coffee

16:00 M. Rosenfeld: Three Problems in Combinatorial Number Theory
17:00 Robin Thomas: Permanents, Pfaffian Orientations, and Even Directed Circuits

19:00 dinner

Tuesday May 20, 1997

9:00 William T. Trotter: Ramsey Theory and Sequences of Random Variables

10:00-10:30 coffee break

10:30 Vera Sos: TBA
11:30 Fred S. Roberts: Meaningless Statements

12:30 lunch

14:00 Jiri Matousek: Upper Bounds in Geometric and Combinatorial Discrepancy
15:00 Gunter Rote: Convex 3-polytopes Can Be Realized with Linearly Many Bits per Coordinate

16:00-16:30 coffee break

16:30 Pavel Valtr: Several Recent Results on Geometric Graphs
17:00 Mary Inaba: Geometric Clustering Problem
17:30 Peter Brass: On Lattice-like Extremal Sets for Combinatorial Geometry Problems

19:00 dinner

Wednesday May 21, 1997

9:00 Joel Spencer: Sophisticated Probability

10:00-10:30 coffee break

10:30 Tomasz Luczak: Random Trees and Random Graphs
11:30 Krystyna T. Balinska: An Algorithmic Approach to a Random Process for Graphs with Bounded Degree

12:30 lunch

14:00 Eugene Luks: Algorithmic Applications of the Simple Groups Classification
15:00 Ludek Kucera: Fast Deflection Routing of Long Messages

15:45-16:15 coffee break

16:15 Josep Diaz: Approximation of #P Problems in RNC
16:45 Jiri Sgall: On Pairs of Intersecting Families
17:15 Pavel Pudlak: New algorithms for satisfiability

20:00 conference banquet

Thursday May 22, 1997

9:00 Jaroslav Nesetril: The Structure of Graph Homomorphisms

10:00-10:30 coffee break

10:30 Jan Kratochvil: List Colorings and Choosability of Graphs
11:15 Alexander Kostochka: On Colour-critical Graphs and Hypergraphs with Few Edges

12:30 lunch

15:00 afternoon excursion

19:00 dinner

Friday May 23, 1997

9:00 Laszlo Lovasz: Random Walks, Mixing, and Sampling

10:00-10:30 coffee break

10:30 Graham Brightwell: Recent Results in Partially Ordered Sets
11:30 Eric Sopena: Acyclic Improper Colorings

12:30 lunch

14:00 Jan Krajicek: Proof Complexity and Some Related Algebraico - combinatorial Problems
15:00 Arvind Gupta: Monadic Second Order Logic and Complement Problems

16:00-16:30 coffee break

16:30 Mike Fellows: The Shortest Vector Problem and the Prospects for Cryptosystems Based on NP-Hard Problems
17:00 Gyorgy Elekes: Metric Combinatorics and Combinatorial Algebra
17:30 Gabor Simonyi: Information Theory in Combinatorics
18:00 William F. Smyth: Periodicity in Strings

19:00 dinner

Saturday May 24, 1997

9:00 Walter Deuber: Ramsey Theory and Linear Algebra
10:00 Andras Frank: Algorithms for Increasing the Connectivity of Graphs

11:00-11:30 coffee break

11:30 Wolfgang Mader: An Extremal Problem for Subdivisions of $K_5$ and Topological Subgraphs in Graphs of Large Girth

14:00 lunch

15:30 Martin Klazar: Extremal Problems for Colored Trees
16:00 Miklos Simonovits: General Methods to Prove Exact Results in Extremal Graph Theory
17:00 Peter Mihok: The Structure of Hereditary Properties of Graphs and Minimal Reducible Bounds
17:30 Petr Pancoska: Proteins, Graphs and Spectra - Selected Problems

19:00 dinner

Sunday May 25, 1997

9:00 Jerry Griggs: The Distribution of Subset Sums in $R^m$ and in Finite Abelian Groups

10:00-10:30 coffee break

10:30 Bernhard Korte: TBA

11:30 lunch

13:00 departure of buses for Prague


Payments (subject to change)
Conference fee - US$ 150 or 4500 kc on site
Lodging and board in Stirin castle - US$ 400 or 12000 kc on site
Lodging and board in Stirin castle (single room) - US$ 550 or 16500 kc on site
Lodging in Velke Popovice and board in Stirin - US$ 200 or 6000 kc on site
Advance payments by money orders are possible in US funds, till April 15, 1997. In this case, ask the organizers for your individual banking connection.


Travel instructions: The participants that asked for extra accommodation in Prague before the conference will be accommodated in hotel Krystal, Jose Martiho 2, Praha 6. This hotel is conveniently located on the way from the airport to the downtown. See the map below. You can either take taxi or city transport bus No. 119 to Divoka Sarka and then trams No. 20 or 26 to tram stop Koospol.

hotel Krystal


Transportation to Stirin Stirin is located about 20km SE from Prague. See the maps below, the detailed one shows the local situation around Stirin and Velke Popovice. Stirin can be easily reached by car, use the freeway Prague direction Brno and take the exit to Velke Popovice. Local buses depart from subway station Roztyly (the red C line), bus stand No. 11. Weekdays timetable follows. The fare is 19 crowns one way.
Praha 6:30 11:15 14:15 16:05 19:10
Stirin 7:08 11:54 14:47 16:38 19:42

Stirin 5:33 6:30 8:14 15:13
Praha 6:00 7:00 8:45 15:40

For the convenience of the participants, a special bus will be arranged, leaving from Malostranske namesti 25 (where the building of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics is situated) on Monday May 19, at 2 pm. The participants are welcome to come to the department earlier during the day.
On Sunday May 25, a special bus will take the participants to Prague at 1 pm.
Stirin Stirin

March 11, 1997 dimatia@kam.mff.cuni.cz