(CS Colloquium) Michael R. Fellows, The Evolution of the Multivariate Revolution in Algorithmics

There has been underway for some decades, with considerable practical consequences, a multivariate revolution in the design of algorithms and the assessment of computational complexity. Parameterized complexity has brought this shift into focus, naming the issues, and offering a multivariate mathematical framework for the central questions that confront the challenge of designing effective algorithms for intrinsically difficult computational problems. Iinternally to this new scientific direction of the central enabling scientific discipline of our time: algorithmics — who lacks a new flood of data? — is a story about how this multivariate revolution has evolved and is still unfolding. The talk will tell the story, in an entertaining way, accessible to students in any field of science that computing serves.