Combinatorial Optimization

This group gathers pioneers of theory of computation whose primary contribution was combinatorial optimization, including graph theory and graph algorithms such as shortest path, minimum spanning tree and network flow, linear and integer programming, matching and scheduling problems, game theory and mechanism design, and evolutionary and genetic algorithms applied to discrete optimization problems. It follows the Theory and algorithms for application domains and Discrete mathematics headings of the ACM Computing Classification System under Theory of Computation. Their shared work is finding the best arrangement or solution among a large discrete set of possibilities, as distinct from classifying a problem inherent difficulty, which belongs to Computational Complexity Theory, or designing a general-purpose algorithm.