This award supports the research of Professor Thomas to work in combinatorics. Specifically, much of this work will be centered in the area of graph minors. A graph is a minor of another if the first can be obtained from a subgraph of the second by contracting edges. This area of graph theory is arguably one of the most signifcant ares in the past decade. Professor Thomas will also work in the areas of polynomial algorithms and mathematical logic. The research is in the general area of combinatorics. Combinatorics attempts to find efficient methods to study how discrete collections can be organized. The behavior of discrete systems is extremely important to modern communications. For example, the design of large networks, as in telephone systems, and the design of algorithms in computer science all deal with discrete objects, and this makes use of combinatorial research.
