An international research conference in the area of discrete mathematics and computer science will be held at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee from 21st to 24th May, 2001. The conference is entitled `Horizons in Combinatorics,' and will be held in conjunction with the 16th Annual Shanks Lectures. While all areas of graph theory, combinatorics and computing will be welcome at the conference, there will be an emphasis on the areas of ordered sets, colorings, and routing and flows in networks. The conference includes the Shanks Lectures, to be given by W. T. (Tom) Trotter, Jr. (Arizona State University). These lectures have played a prominent role in Department of Mathematics at Vanderbilt University for the past sixteen years. Many distinguished mathematicians in discrete mathematics (including Ron Graham and Laszlo Lovasz) and other areas (including Israel Gelfand and Ingrid Daubechies) have been among the invited lecturers. The other invited speakers for this year's conference are Jeff Kahn (Rutgers University), Eva Tardos (Cornell University), Robin Thomas (Georgia Institute of Technology), Bjarne Toft (University of Southern Denmark) and Peter Winkler (Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories). The organizers are Paul Edelman, Mark Ellingham, Jonathan Farley, Michael Plummer, and Jeremy Spinrad (all Vanderbilt University). The proposed conference will last four days, providing ample time for an estimated 70 to 100 contributed papers and for discussion among the attendees.
The conference focuses on combinatorics, graph theory and computing. These areas form the essential theoretical background for much of our modern information infrastructure, and for many modern methods of optimizing activities such as transportation and scheduling. Tools from these areas are used in areas as diverse as ecology, communication networks such as the Internet, economics and business, and military logistics. The conference aims to promote interaction between researchers, to allow for the dissemination of the most recent research results, and to publicize the importance of these areas in modern society.
