Theoretical Computer Science at Boston University
Welcome to the Theoretical Computer Science (TCS) research group. Research in TCS (and in our group) encompasses diverse areas such as theory of computation, complexity, sublinear algorithms, optimization, distributed and parallel computing, data privacy, machine learning and more. The common theme behind the TCS approach to these research directions is a focus on precise models and rigorous mathematical analysis.
We hold a weekly Theory Seminar. Currently, we meet Mondays from 12:30 - 1:30pm simultaneously in person and over Zoom. For other events and general announcements, you can subscribe to the TCS mailing list here.
If you are interested in joining the TCS research group, potential PhD students should apply either to the Department of Computer Science or the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences PhD programs, depending on their interests and intended faculty advisors. Inquiries about postdoc positions should be directed to faculty directly.
News
- Ari Karchmer won "Best Student Paper" at ITCS '24 for their work "Distributional PAC-Learning from Nisan's Natural Proofs".
- Rathin Desai, Mark Bun, and Aloni Cohen (former BU postdoc, now at UChicago) won an "Outstanding Paper" award at ALT 2024 for their work "Private PAC Learning May be Harder than Online Learning".
- Gavin Brown, Adam Smith, and Sam Hopkins (MIT) won the COLT 2023 Mark Fulk Award for Best Student Paper for their paper "Fast, Sample-Efficient, Affine-Invariant Private Mean and Covariance Estimation for Subgaussian Distributions."
- Connor Wagaman was awarded a 2023 Hariri Institute Graduate Student Fellowship for pursuing innovative computationally-driven research with the potential for high impact.
- Satchit Sivakumar was named a 2023 Apple Scholar in AI/ML for his work on the foundations of privacy-preserving ML.
- Mark Bun was awarded a 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship.
- Adam Smith and collaborators were awarded the 2021 ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for their work on the fundamentals of differential privacy.
Related Groups & Events
- BU Algorithms & Theory
- BU Security
- BU Cyber Alliance
- BU Statistics and Probability Seminar
- Boston-area Data Privacy
- Charles River Crypto Day
- Northeastern Theory Seminar
- Harvard Theory of Computation Seminar
- MIT Theory of Computation Colloquium
- Harvard EconCS Seminar
Recent Graduate Courses
- CS 599: Rounding Techniques in Approximation Algorithms (F24)
- DS 657: Law and Algorithms (S24)
- DS 453/653 (S24)
- CS 538: Advanced Cryptography: Foundations of Cryptographic Protocols(F24)
- CS 538: Fundamentals of Cryptography (S24)
- CS 599: The Meta-Complexity Frontier (F23)
- CS 531: Advanced Optimization Algorithms (F23)
- CS 535: Complexity Theory (F23)
- DS 574: Algorithmic Mechanism Design (F23)
- DS/CS 563: Algorithmic Techniques for Taming Big Data (S23)
- DS 682: Responsible AI, Law, Ethics & Society (S23)
- CS 537: Randomness in Computing (F22)
- DS 574: Algorithmic Mechanism Design (F22)
- DS 657: Law and Algorithms (S22)
- CS 599: Mathematical Methods for Theoretical CS (S22)
Recent Alumni
- Pratik Sarkar (PhD '24)
- Ari Karchmer (PhD '24)
- Luowen Qian (PhD '24)
- Nicalas Alhaddad (PhD '24)
- Gabe Kaptchuk (Faculty '20-24)
- Ludmila Glinskih (PhD '24)
- Iden Kalemaj (PhD '24)
- Gavin Brown (PhD '23)
- Maryam Aliakbarpour (Postdoc '21–'23)
- Marcel Neunhoeffer (Postdoc '21–'23)
- Tomislav Petrovic (PhD '22)
- Rawane Issa (PhD '22)
- Talya Eden (Postdoc '21–'22)
- Marco Carmosino (Postdoc '19–'21)
- Nicholas Spooner (Postdoc '20–'21)
- Aloni Cohen (Postdoc '19–'21)
- Eylon Yogev (Postdoc '20–'21)
- Sarah Scheffler (PhD '21)
- Jiayu Zhang (PhD '21)
- Ramesh Krishnan Pallavoor (PhD '20)
- Adrian Vladu (Postdoc '17–'20)
- Audra McMillan (Postdoc '18–'20)
- Nithin Varma (PhD '19)
- Om Thakkar (PhD '19)
- Erasmo Tani (PhD student '17–'19, transferred to University of Chicago)
- Lorenzo Orecchia (Faculty '15–'19)
- Zhenyu Liao (PhD '18)
- Hannah Flynn (MS '18)
- Jelena Diakonikolas (Postdoc '16–'18)