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The Center for the Theory of Interactive Computation is a tight collaboration between IIIS, Tsinghua University and the Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University. The Center is to study foundational topics within the theory of computation using mathematical methods, with a special focus on the challenges arising with the development of interactive computation in the 21st century. |
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- Computational complexity theory, the study of computational resources needed to do computation, providing the necessary foundation for understanding feasibility or infeasibility of computational tasks.
- Cryptography, the study of how interactive computation can be made secure, a crucially important ingredient in an internet-based society.
- Quantum Informatics, the study of how information process works when the behavior of communication and computing equipment is governed by quantum mechanics, a study that becomes necessary, as our electronic equipment grows too small for classical physics to apply.
- Game Theory, the study of how multi-agent systems behave when agents have conflicting interests, a necessary perspective towards understanding interaction on networks spanning diverse sectors and countries across the globe.
Two Host Environments of the Center
The Danish group is the theory and cryptography group in Aarhus, whose permanent faculty consists of Prof. Peter Miltersen and Ivan Damgaard, and Assoc. Prof. Jesper Buus Nielsen and Kristoffer Hansen. Colocated with the group and led by Ivan Damgaard is the Center for Foundations of Electronic Markets (CFEM), a research center of the Danish Strategic Research Council. Also collocated with MADALGO, the Center for Massive Data Algorithmic (www. madalgo.au.dk), whose leaders are Prof. Lars Arge and Reader Gerth Brodal. Together, the groups form theoretical computer science division of the Aarhus University Computer Science Department. The TCS division has more than 30 Ph.D. students and is an extremely active research environment with several regular research seminars and frequent distinguished visitors. The Computer Science Department at Aarhus University has a proven track record of excellence in Ph. D. education. In particular, the Ph.D. school BRICS, originally funded by the Danish National Research Foundation, has operated for more than a decade and is a world renowned brand within Ph.D. education in theoretical computer science.
The Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) built by Prof Andrew Chi-Chih Yao at Tsinghua University aims to nurture talents and researchers as well as to actively promote the advancement of information sciences. The Institute enjoys a select group of permanent members and a large group of visitors who stay for varying durations, much in the same spirit as the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In particular, IIIS has a unique chair professor team made up of more than twenty famous scholars in theoretical computer science, including several Gödel and Nevanlinna prize winners. The team members regularly visit IIIS and are actively involved in the supervision of Ph. D. students.
The research interests of the aforementioned members include Theory, Security and Cryptography, Networks as well as Machine Learning & AI. With such a vibrant research environment and impressive research outputs, IIIS provides an ideal setting for fruitful interactions and collaborations among its members. Under the leadership of Prof. Yao, IIIS has become a world-renowned research center through a number of initiatives. Recently, IIIS has been instrumental in founding a new conference, “Innovations in Computer Science 2010 (ICS2010)” (see http://conference.itcs.tsinghua.edu.cn/ICS2010/) that seeks to promote research that carries a strong conceptual message. More specifically, it hopes to foster the kind of research that introduces a new concept or model, opens a new line of inquiry within traditional or cross-disciplinary areas, or introduces novel techniques or novel applications of known techniques.
Organizational Structure and Concrete Work Plans of the Center
The Center is led by the two Principal Investigators, Prof. Yao on the Chinese side and Prof. Miltersen on the Danish side. In addition, an executive committee consisting of permanent faculty from the two research groups will be formed. The PIs and the committee will be in charge of the scientific planning for the Center and activities.
Each year the two research groups will come together for a joint workshop either in Denmark or in China that will also serve both as a scientific workshop where the work of the groups is presented, new work is done, and joint activities ahead are planned and discussed. These workshops will be similar in structure to the workshop previously jointly held by the two groups (http://itcs.tsinghua.edu.cn/CTACC2009/). In addition to these internal workshops, we plan to organize in the project period a number of topical workshops with invited speakers from outside the project. Both sides have significant experience in organizing such workshops (e.g. http://www.cs.au.dk/cagt/sol.html). Such workshops will serve as a useful instrument for making rapid progress in a focused area.
During the period of 2011-2013, we plan to organize several summer schools for PhD students, one for each of the four subareas in Aarhus and Beijing. We plan for the first to take place in late June or early July in Aarhus. Long term exchanges of professors and postdocs between the two sites will also be scheduled.