Shyan Akmal
Computer Science PhD Student
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Welcome!
I am a third-year PhD candidate studying Theoretical Computer Science at MIT, grateful to be advised by both Virginia Vassilevska Williams and Ryan Williams.
I am broadly interested in fine-grained complexity and algorithm design, and especially enjoy thinking about problems concerning graph algorithms, string algorithms, and applications of algebraic methods in computer science.
Previously, I received a B.S. in Computer Science & Mathematics from Harvey Mudd College, where I was fortunate to have several excellent mentors. In particular, I am indebted to Mohamed Omar for helping foster my interest in combinatorics, Jim Boerkoel for showing me how fascinating computer science research could be, and Ran Libeskind-Hadas for sparking my interest in complexity theory.
You can contact me using the email listed here .
Publications
Improved Merlin-Arthur Protocols for Central Problems in Fine-Grained Complexity
with Ce Jin, Lijie Chen, Malvika Raj, and Ryan Williams
Near-Optimal Quantum Algorithms for String Problems
with Ce Jin
MAJORITY-3SAT (and Related Problems) in Polynomial Time
with Ryan Williams
arXiv A Twitter Thread Oxford-Warwick Presentation Slides LIS Natural Computation Presentation
Improved Approximation for Longest Common Subsequence over Small Alphabets
with Virginia Vassilevska Williams
arXiv Conference Proceedings SM Thesis Version Presentation
Faster Algorithms for Bounded Tree Edit Distance
with Ce Jin
Quantifying controllability in temporal networks with uncertainty
with Savana Ammons, Maggie Li, Michael Gao, Lindsay Popowski, and Jim Boerkoel
Artificial Intelligence 2020 (Volume 289)
Quantifying Degrees of Controllability in Temporal Networks with Uncertainty
with Savana Ammons, Maggie Li, and Jim Boerkoel
ICAPS 2019 · Runner-Up for Best Student Paper
Conference Proceedings Presentation
On a Convex Set with Nondifferentiable Metric Projection
with Nguyen Mau Nam and J. J. P. Veerman
Problem of the Fortnight
During high school I participated in a few math contests, and in undergrad I wrote several problems for the Caltech Harvey Mudd Math Competition and USA Math Talent Search. Every two weeks I will post a recreational (non-research) math problem which I encountered during this time (and particularly enjoyed) below.
Balanced Pairwise Sums
Let $n$ be a positive integer.
Suppose $S$ is a finite set of positive integers with $|S| > 1$, such that when two distinct elements of $S$ are selected uniformly at random, the remainder when their sum is divided by $2^n$ is equal to each of the possible numbers $0, 1, \dots, 2^n-1$ with equal probability.
What is the smallest possible size $|S|$ of such a set?
A new problem will be posted here on December 13th, 2021.
Previously posted problems can be found here.