About

Robin Thomas was a renowned mathematician and Regents' Professor in the School of Mathematics at Georgia Tech, who passed away on March 26, 2020, following a long struggle against Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Robin made major contributions to the development of graph theory and related fields, proving transformational results and mentoring dozens of junior researchers. 

Robin Thomas won the top prize in combinatorics, the Fulkerson prize, twice: first in 1994 for his work with Robertson and Seymour on Hadwiger's Conjecture, and then again in 2009 for proving the Strong Perfect Graph Theorem with Chudnovsky, Robertson, and Seymour. In his classes, however, Robin was very modest. He once attempted to attribute this influential theorem only to "CRST", until his assistant was obliged to point out what the "T" stands for.

Robin Thomas directed Georgia Tech's interdisciplinary PhD program in ACO (Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization) for 13 years, graduating 16 PhD students. Robin's lasting impact as a mentor was apparent at this conference. Many of the speakers and attendees worked with Robin as colleagues, postdocs, PhD students, undergraduates, and as friends. Robin's family were honored guests at the conference dinner, which featured wonderful talks and anecdotes in his memory.

Robin Thomas is also honored by the creation of the Robin Thomas Memorial Fellowship at Georgia Tech, by the 2022 conference CSGT which was dedicated to him and held in Prague, where he always maintained close ties, and by a 2023 issue of the journal JCTB, which was a tribute to his work.

This workshop is combined with the Atlanta Lecture Series in Graph Theory and Combinatorics, and will focus on recent advances in graph theory and combinatorics that are related to the work of Robin Thomas.

Registration

There is no registration fee. However, please register, in order to let us know that you will be attending the conference. We have limited funds that can be used to support graduate students and junior researchers, in particular those from underrepresented groups. Please let us know when you register. For any question related to registration and financial support, please conatct Zhiyu Wang (zwang672 at gatech.edu).

Registration Form

Invited Speakers

• Maria Chudnovsky, Princeton University 
• Zdenĕk Dvořák, Charles University 
• Guoli Ding, Lousiana State University 
• Andrea Jimenez, Universidad de Valparaiso 
• Dan Král', Masaryk University 
• Chun-Hung Liu, Texas A&M University 
• Martin Loebl, Charles University 
• Rose McCarty, University of Warsaw
• Bojan Mohar, Simon Fraser University 
• Theo Molla, University of South Florida 
• Sergey Norin, McGill University 
• Sang-il Oum, IBS and KAIST 
• James Oxley, Lousiana State University
• Jinyoung Park, Stanford University
• Luke Postle, University of Waterloo 
• Zixia Song, University of Central Florida 
• Prasad Tetali, Carnegie Mellon University 
• Paul Wollan, University of Rome 
• Youngho Yoo, Georgia Tech

Sponsors

• Math@Tech Hub (M@TH) - School of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology
• ACO -Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization, Georgia Institute of Technology
• National Security Agency and National Science Foundation (for Atlanta Lecture Series)