CALIN : Combinatorics, ALgorithms and INteractions

Head of team: Lionel Pournin

Combinatorics is a cross-disciplinary field, which links computer science, mathematics and physics in a remarkable way. This is why the CALIN team, created in 2010, brings together researchers from these three fields. They work on fundamental questions, often at the interface of several of these fields.

The team is organised in two non-disjoint axes :

• Axis 1 : is concerned with the analysis of algorithms and combinatorial structures. The aim here is to evaluate the complexity of the algorithms and the size of the structures they deal with. The tools and techniques used for this purpose include complex analysis, probability and random generation.

• Axis 2: deals with the interactions between combinatorics and physics. This type of interaction occurs for example in the study of certain models of quantum gravity. The subfields involved are geometry, topology, graph theory, dynamical systems, and optimisation.

Among the objects studied by the team’s researchers are functions, graphs, polytopes, networks, partial orders, decompositions of geometric or topological spaces and their algebraic descriptions.

Here you will find the list of team members (from which you can access their personal pages) and the team’s activity report.