Hung Le

STOC 2026 is offering experimental pre-submission feedback using an AI tool optimized for checking mathematical rigor. Results won't go to PC or be used for training purposes. Opt-in via the submission server by November 1.

Details: acm-stoc.org/stoc202...
CFP: acm-stoc.org/stoc202...

Accepted Papers | SIAM ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA26) will take place from January 11–14, 2026 in Vancouver, Canada. This symposium focuses on research topics related to the design and analysis of effici...

SODA26 accepted papers out: www.siam.org/conferences-...

I did not expect the subtleties of the light version. Beautiful work!

Some questions on spanners in my talk at the Simons Institute. Since the talk, progress has been made on a few questions, but most are open. minorfree.github.io/SpannerQues/

I agreed to review 6 SODA papers this year (not counting other reviews); an idiot is here. It's hard to say no; my past self struggled to find reviewers. People (non-PC members) accepting more than 6 reviews for a theory conference are definitely inspiring; 6 is my new record. What's your number?

Theory Jobs 2025 The Theory community has a tradition of a crowdsourced spreadsheet of sharing who has accepted which jobs, previously hosted by Grigory Yaroslavtsev and Lance Fortnow. Past years have been slightly…

Report new theory jobs here: kamathematics.wordpress.com/2025/06/03/t...

On a Dagstuhl workshop that I recently co-organized: minorfree.github.io/Dagstuhl/

Tracy Kimbrel, former National Science Foundation program director extraordinaire, will receive the 2025 ACM SIGACT Distinguished Service Award. He spearheaded programs such as TRIPODS (foundations of data science) and AitF (Algorithms in the Field).
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The Call for Papers (CfP) for #SODA26 is out: www.siam.org/conferences-...

The submission server is open: soda26.hotcrp.com

Deadline: ⏰ Monday, July 14, AoE (July 15, 11:59am UTC)

How to Protect Yourself from Threatening Skeletons: Optimal Padded Decompositions for Minor-Free Graphs Roughly, a metric space has padding parameter $β$ if for every $Δ>0$, there is a stochastic decomposition of the metric points into clusters of diameter at most $Δ$ such that every ball of radius $γΔ$...

Jonathan Conroy and Arnold Filtser have recently solved the padded decomposition problem for minor-free graphs, one of my favorite open problems. Congratulations to both!

Their paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2504.00278

My take: minorfree.github.io/PaddedSolved/

Optimal Smoothed Analysis of the Simplex Method Smoothed analysis is a method for analyzing the performance of algorithms, used especially for those algorithms whose running time in practice is significantly better than what can be proven through w...

I first got into smoothed analysis and linear programming during my master's. Now, 9 years later, we finally have matching upper and lower bounds.

I spent a huge part of my life on this, and it feels weird that it's now finished.

Explicit Folded Reed-Solomon and Multiplicity Codes Achieve Relaxed Generalized Singleton Bounds In this paper, we prove that explicit FRS codes and multiplicity codes achieve relaxed generalized Singleton bounds for list size $L\ge1.$ Specifically, we show the following: (1) FRS code of length $...

Huge congratulations to my amazing student Yeyuan Chen (+co-author Zihan Zhang of OSU advised by Zeyu Guo) for being awarded the STOC 2025 Best Student Paper Award! Their monumental result proves that explicit Reed-Solomon codes can correct more errors than previously known:
arxiv.org/abs/2408.15925

I got a lot out of participating in WALDO back in 2021, so I definitely recommend checking it out! 😄

The next few talks on TCS+ (@tcsplus.bsky.social):
🍰 Tom Gur on Zero-Knowledge PCPs (March 19) (@tomgur.bsky.social)
🍰 Or Zamir on streaming and optimal F₂ moment estimation (April 9)
🍰 Ryan Williams on time v. memory (April 23) (@rrwilliams.bsky.social)

Sweet!

The STOC 2025 Theory Fest is looking for workshop proposals!
Apply here:
stoc2025theoryfest.netlify.app
Deadline is March 9th, so act fast!

Hey, it's March now. You know what would be great? Nominating trailblazing TCS researchers to the Knuth Prize!

www.sigact.org/prizes/knuth...

CALL FOR PAPERS: With Robert Calderbank, Krishna Narayanan, Henry Pfister and Mary Wootters, I'm editing a special issue of the IEEE BITS magazine on Error-Correcting Codes & invite expository/tutorial articles.
Deadline: April 17 (white paper). Please circulate widely.
www.itsoc.org/sites/defaul...

Cuts to NSF and CISE Directorate Jeopardize American Leadership in Computing A statement from the Computing Research Association (CRA) The reported termination today of 10 percent of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) workforce — including significant cuts to the Compu…

CRA statement on the cuts at NSF: "These cuts are the very definition of being pennywise and pound foolish — a shortsighted move that will undermine American innovation and technological leadership .."

cra.org/cuts-to-nsf-...

the Four Russians Method is a technique for speeding up Boolean matrix multiplication and dynamic programming. The original paper is in Russian, and I am not aware of any English translation. Now we have a translation, by Ben Rozonoyer, a PhD student at UMass.

minorfree.github.io/FourRussian/

The #FOCS2025 website is up! Featuring a Call for Papers and important dates: focs.computer.org/2025/

⏰ Deadline: April 3, 2025 (8pm ET)
⏰ Notification: July 8, 2025
🗓️ Conference: December 14–17, 2025

Content and info will be added as it becomes available (workshops, activities, travel support).

STOC 25 accepted papers: acm-stoc.org/stoc2025/acc...

So in 1999, people wrote a paper with 11 authors! Pretty amazing. How did they find each other?

Ah this is amazing! Thanks for these.

Just learnt about this: you can query DBLP to find out the most number of authors on a paper at a conf or a group of conf: SODA 11, FOCS 11, STOC 10. The new record this year at STOC 25 is 13.

A proof is a logical argument written to convince a skeptical audience. A corollary is that the best way to read a proof is to roleplay as a skeptical audience.

Is 13 the most number of authors on a STOC paper ever? I suspect Yes.

Ah yes, indeed.

STOC25 notification was out. A record number of submissions, 735, and acceptances, 218. To compare with SODA 25, 655 submissions and 192 acceptances. This is probably the 1st time STOC has more submissions and acceptances than SODA.

New post summerizes what I've learnt over the last few years about Locality Sensitive Ordering, a technique for reducing geometric problems in R^d to problems in the line (1D): minorfree.github.io/LSO/

Why Computer Scientists Consult Oracles | Quanta Magazine Hypothetical devices that can quickly and accurately answer questions have become a powerful tool in computational complexity theory.

My latest in @quantamagazine.bsky.social: why theoretical computer scientists like to pose questions to imaginary black boxes: