Instructor:
D. Sivakumar
IBM Almaden Research Center
The course will be an advanced introduction to computational complexity theory. We will cover the state of the art in unconditional results about fundamental complexity classes; this will include results on interactive and probabilistically checkable proofs, the derandomization of space bounded classes, and other topics that are still very active areas of research.
The course is intended for graduate students (or advanced undergraduate students) with some background in algorithms and the basic theory of computation (eg., Turing machines), and knowledge of probability.
There will be two lectures per week (Tue, Thu 11:00 -- 12:15, Gates B12) during the quarter. There will be weekly homeworks, and each homework is expected to require 2--4 hours of work, depending on the student's background and ability. The homeworks will contain a fair balance of variations/extensions of topics covered in lectures and exploration of related new material.