Posted to comp.theory February 5, 1996:

Below is the STOC96 program. Please report any correction to
Gary Miller at glmiller@cs.cmu,edu



Conference Title:  28th  Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC)

Conference Committees
        General Chair:  David S. Johnson, AT&T Bell Laboratories
        Program Chair:  Gary L. Miller, Carnegie-Mellon University
        Tutorials Chair:  (none)
        Publicity and Publications Chair: (none)
        Finance Chair:  Alok Aggarwal, IBM Research

        Advisory Committee: (none)

        Program Committee:
                Sanjeev Arora (Princeton)
                Jin-Yi Cai (SUNY Buffalo)
                Alan Frieze (CMU)
                Michel Goemans (MIT)
                Monika R. Henzinger (Cornell)
                Maurice Herlihy (Brown)
                Erich Kaltofen (NCSU)
                Joe Kilian (NECI)
                Thomas Lengauer (GMD)
                Gary L. Miller (CMU)
                Noam Nisan (Hebrew)
                Serge Plotkin (Stanford)
                Pavel Pudlak (Prague)
                Abhiram Ranade (Berkeley/IIT Bombay)
                Ronitt Rubinfeld (Cornell/MIT)
                Alistair Sinclair (Berkeley)
                ShangHua Teng (UMN)
                Les Valiant (Harvard)
                Vijay Vazirani (Georgia Tech)



Sessions schedule.

Session 1A:
Wednesday, May 22, 1996
9:20am-10:55am
Session Chair: Jin-Yi Cai (SUNY Buffalo)

9:20am
        The Linear-Array Conjecture of Communication Complexity is False
            Eyal Kushilevitz, Technion, Nathan Linial, Hebrew Institute,
            Rafail Ostrovsky, Bellcore

9:45am
        Testing of the long code and hardness for clique
                Johan Hastad, Royal Institute of Technology

10:10am
        The space complexity of approximating the frequency moments
                Noga Alon, Yossi Matias, Mario Szegedy AT/&T Bell Labs

10:35am
        Deterministic Restrictions in Circuit Complexity
                Shiva Chaudhuri, Max-Planck Institut f\'{u}r Informatik,
                Jaikumar Radhakrishnan, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research




Session 1B:
Wednesday, May 22, 1996
9:20am-10:55am
Session Chair: Monika R. Henzinger  (Cornell)

 9:20am
   Fast Algorithms for k-Node Connectivity Augmentation and Related Problems
     Joseph Cheriyan,  Waterloo,  Ramakrishna Thurimella, Univ
     of Denver

 9:45am
   Approximating s-t minimum cuts in O(n^2) time
     Andras A. Benczur, David R. Karger, MIT

10:10am
   Minimum Cuts in Near-Linear Time
     David R. Karger, MIT

10:35am
   Deterministic \tilde{O}(nm) Time Edge-Splitting in Undirected Graphs
     Hiroshi Nagamochi, Toshihide Ibaraki, Kyoto

coffee break: 10:55am - 11:30am

session number: 2
session title: (Talk by Knuth Prize Winner)
time: 11:30am - 12:30pm

Lunch: 12:30pm - 2:00pm


Session 3A:
Wednesday, May 22, 1996
2:00pm - 3:35pm
Session Chair:  Ronitt Rubinfeld  (Cornell/MIT)

2:00pm
  Learning Sat-k-DNF formulas from membership queries
    F. Bergadano, Universit\`{a} di Torino
    D. Catalano, Universit\`{a} di Catania
    S. Varricchio, Universit\`{a} di L' Aquila

2:25pm
  The Monotone Theory for the PAC-Model
    Nader H. Bshouty,  Calgary

2:55pm

  Noise-tolerant Learning Near the Information-theoretic Bound
    N. Cesa-Bianchi, Universit\`{a} di Milano
    E. Dichterman, Technion
    P. Fischer, Universit\"{a}t Dortmund H.U. Simon
    Hans Ulrich Simon, Univerisi\"{a}t Dortmund

3:20pm
  Noise-tolerant Distribution-Free Learning of General Geometric Concepts
    Nader Bshouty,  Calgary
    Sally Goldman,  David Mathias,  Subhash Suri, Washington University
    Hisao Tamaki, IBM Tokyo


Session 3B:
Wednesday, May 22, 1996
2:00pm - 3:35pm
Session Chair: Erich Kaltofen  (NCSU)

2:00pm
  The complexity of matrix rank and feasible systems of linear equations
    E. Allender, Rutgers
    R. Beals, DIMACS, Rutgers
    M. Ogihara,  Rochester

2:25pm
  Computing Roadmaps of Semi-algebraic Sets
     Saugata Basu, Richard Pollack, Courant
     Marie-Fran\c{c}oise Roy, IRMAR, Universit\'{e} de Rennes

2:55pm
  Using the Groebner basis algorithm to find proofs of unsatisfiability
     Matthew Clegg, UASD
     Jeffery Edmonds, York
     Russell Impagliazzo, UCSD

3:20pm
  Sparsity Considerations in Dixon Resultants
     Deepak Kapur, Tushar Saxena, SUNY Albany

Coffee Break:  3:35pm - 4:05pm

Session 4A:
Wednesday, May 22, 1996
4:05pm - 5:40pm
Session Chair:  Monika R. Henzinger (Cornell)

4:05pm
  Efficient 3-d Range Searching in External Memory
     Darren Erick Vengroff, Brown, Duke
     Jeffery Scott Vitter, Duke

4:30pm
  Purely Functional Representations of Catenable Sorted Lists
     Haim Kaplan, Robert E. Tarjan, Princeton

4:55pm
  A fast quantum mechanical algorithm for database search
    Lov K. Grover, AT\&T Bell Labs

Session 4B:
Wednesday, May 22, 1996
4:05pm - 5:40pm
Session Chair:  Ronitt Rubinfeld  (Cornell/MIT)

4:05pm
  Constructing Evolutionary Trees in the Presence of Polymorphic Characters
     Maria Bonet, U of Penn
     Cynthia Phillips, Sandia
     Tandy J. Warnow, Shibu Yooseph, U of Penn
4:30pm
  Efficient Algorithms for Inverting Evolution
     Martin Farach, Rutgers
     Sampath Kannan, U of Penn

------------------------
Session 5A:
Thursday, May 23, 1996
9:20am - 10:55am
Session Chair:  Maurice Herlihy (Brown)

 9:20am
  Modular Competitiveness for Distributed Algorithms
     James Aspnes, Yale
     Orli Waarts, UC Berkeley

 9:45am
  Communication-Efficient Parallel Sorting
     Michael T. Goodrich, John Hopkins

10:10am
  Automatic Methods for Hiding Latency in High Bandwidth Networks
     Matthew Andrews, Tom Leighton, MIT
     P. Takis Metaxas, Wellesley
     Lisa Zhang, MIT,

10:35am
  An $O(n \log n)$-Size Fault-Tolerant Sorting Network
     Yuan Ma, Stanford


Session 5B:
Thursday, May 23, 1996
9:210am - 10:55am
Session Chair:  Alistair Sinclair  (UC Berkeley)

 9:20am
  On Extracting Randomness From Weak Random Sources
     Amnon Ta-Shma, Hebrew

 9:45am
  Randomness-Optimal Sampling, Extractors, and Constructive Leader Election
     David Zuckermann,  Austin

10:10am
  Generating Random Spanning Trees More Quickly than the Cover Time
     David Bruce Wilson, MIT

10:35am
  Towards an analysis of local optimization algorithms
     Tassos Dimitriou, Russell Impagliazzo, UCSD


Coffee break: 10:55am - 11:25am


Session 6A:
Thursday, May 23, 1996
11:25am - 12:35pm
Session Chair:  Jin-Yi Cai  (SUNY Buffalo)


11:25am
  Evaluation may be easier than generation
     Moni Naor, Weizmann

11:50am
  The PL Hierarchy Collapses
     Mitsunori Ogihara,  Rochester

12:15pm
  Convergence Complexity of Optimistic Rate Based Flow Control Algorithms
     Yehuda Afek, Yishay Mansour, Zvi Ostfeld, Tel-Aviv


Session 6B:
Thursday, May 23, 1996
11:25 - 12:35pm
Session Chair: ShangHua Teng  (UMN)


11:25am
  Generating Hard Instances of Lattice Problems
     M. Ajtai, IBM Almaden

11:50am
  Translational Polygon Containment and Minimal Enclosure Using Linear
  Programming Based Restriction
     Victor J. Milenkovic, U of Miami

12:15pm
  Pushing disks together--the continuous-motion case
     Marshall Bern, Xerox
     Amit Sahai, UC Berkeley


Lunch: 12:35pm - 2:00pm


Session 7A:
Thursday, May 23, 1996
2:00pm - 3:35pm
Session Chair:  Michel Goemans (MIT)

 2:00pm
  A Threshold of ln n for approximating set cover
    Uriel Feige,  Weizmann

 2:25pm
  Fast Algorithms for parametric scheduling come from extensions to parametric
  Maximum Flow
     S. Thomas McCormick, UBC

 2:50pm
  Towards a syntactic characterization of ptas
     Sanjeev Khanna, Rajeev Motwani,  Stanford

 3:15pm
  Efficient Approximation Algorithms for MAX~CUT and COLORING
     Philip Klein, Hsueh-I Lu, Brown


Session 7B:
Thursday, May 23, 1996
2:00pm - 3:35pm
Session Chair: Abhiram Ranade   (Berkeley/IIT Bombay)


 2:00pm
   Dynamic Deflection Routing on Arrays
      Andrei Border, Digital Systems Research
      Eli Upfal, IBM Almaden

 2:25pm
   Universal Algorithms for Store-and-Forward and Wormhole Routing
      Robert Cypher, Johns Hopkins
      Friedhelm Meyer auf der Heide, Christian Scheideler,
      Berthold Vo\'{c}king,  Paderborn

 2:50pm
   Distributed Packet Switching in Arbitrary Networks
      Yuval Rabini, Eva Tardos Cornell

 3:15pm
   Adversarial Queueing Theory
      Allan Borodin, Toronto
      Jon Kleinberg, MIT
      Prabhakar Raghavan,  IBM Almaden
      Madhu Sudan, David P. Williamson, IBM T.J.Watson


Coffee break: 3:35pm - 4:05pm


Session 8A:
Thursday, May 23, 1996
4:05pm - 5:40pm
Session Chair:  Gary L. Miller (CMU)


 4:05pm
  Computing Betti numbers via combinatorial Laplacians
     Joel Friedman, UBC

 4:30pm
  Embedding graphs in an arbitrary surface in linear time
     Bojan Mohar, University of Ljubljana

 4:55pm
  Algorithms for Manifolds and Simplicial Complexes in Euclidean 3-Space
    Tamal K. Dey, IIT India
    Sumanta Guha, University of Wisconsin

 5:20pm
  On Bounding the Betti Numbers and Computing the Euler Characteristic of
  Semi-algebraic Sets
     Saugata Basu, Courant

Session 8B:
Thursday, May 23, 1996
4:05pm - 5:40pm
Session Chair:  Vijay Vazirani  (Georgia Tech)

 4:05pm
  Approximability and Nonapproximability Results for Minimizing Total Flow
  Time on a Single Maching
     Hans Kellerer, Universit\"{a}t Graz
     Thomas Tautenhahn, Universit\"{a}t Magdeburg
     Gerhard J. Woeginger, Eindhoven

 4:30pm
  How Good is the Goemans-Williamson MAX CUT Algorithm?
     Howard J. Karloff, Georgia Tech

 4:55pm
  A Tight Analysis of the Greedy Algorithm for Set Cover
     Petr Slavik, SUNY Buffalo

 5:20pm
  A constant-factor approximation algorithm for the k-MST problem
    Avrim Blum, R. Ravi, Santosh Vempala,  CMU


 Friday, May 24, 1996


Session 9A:
Friday, May 24, 1996
9:20am - 10:30am
Session Chair:  Thomas Lengauer (GMD)

 9:20am
  Reconstructing a Three-Dimensional Model with Arbitrary Errors
     Bonnie Berger, Jon Kleinberg, Tom Leighton, MIT

 9:45am
  On the Boosting Ability of Top-Down Decision Tree Learning Algorithms
     Michael Kearns, AT/&T Bell Lab.
     Yishay Mansour, Tel-Aviv

10:10am
  Robot Navigation with Range Queries
     Dana Angluin, Jeffery Westbrook, Wenhong Zhu, Yale

Session 9B:
Friday, May 24, 1996
9:20am - 10:30am
Session Chair:  Joe Kilian (NECI)

 9:20am
  Correlated Pseudorandomness and the Complexity of Private Computations
     Donald Beaver, Transarc Corp.

 9:45am
  Digital Signets for Protection of Digital Information
     Cynthia Dwork, Jeffery Lotspiech, IBM Almaden
      Moni Naor, Weizmann

10:10am
  Witness-Based Cryptographic Program Checking and Robust Function
  Sharing
     Yair Frankel, Peter Gemmell, Sandia National Labs,
     Moti Yung, IBM  T.J. Watson


Coffee break: 10:30am - 11:00am


Session 10A:
Friday, May 24, 1996
11:00am - 12:20pm
Session Chair: Serge Plotkin  (Stanford)


11:00am
  Non-Expansive Hashing
    Nathan Linial, Ori Sasson, Hebrew

11:25am
  Making Commitments in the Face of Uncertainty:  How to Pick a Winner
  Almost Every Time
     Baruch Awerbuch, Johns Hopkins,
     Yossi Azar, Amos Fiat, Tel Aviv,
     Tom Leighton, MIT

11:50am
  Lower Bounds for On-line Graph Problems with Application to On-Line Circuit
  and Optical Routing
    Yair Bartal, Berkeley,
    Amos Fiat, Tel Aviv Univ.
    Stefano Leonardi, Universit\`{a} di Roma

Session 10B:
Friday, May 24, 1996
11:00am - 12:10pm
Session Chair:  Noam Nisan (Hebrew)


11:00am
  Characterizing Linear Size Circuits in Terms of Privacy
     Eyal Kushilevitz, Technion,
     Rafail Ostrovsky, Bellcore,
     Adi Rosen, Tel-Aviv

11:25am
  Nondeterministic communication with a limited number of advice bits
     Juraj Hromkovic, Universit\`{a}t zu Kiel,
     Georg Schnitger, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universit\`{a}t

11:50am
  Public vs. Private Coin Flips in One Round Communication Games
     Ilan Newman, Haifa
     Mario Szegedy, AT/&T Bell Labs

Lunch: 12:10pm - 2:00pm


Session 11A:
Friday, May 24, 1996
2:00pm - 3:35pm
Session Chair:  Alan Frieze  (CMU)

 2:00pm
  Efficiently four-coloring planar graphs
     Neil Robertson, Daniel P. Sanders, Ohio State
     Paul Seymour, Bellcore
     Robin Thomas, Georgia Tech

 2:25pm
  The Angle-TSP Problem and the Weighted Linear Matroid Parity Problem
     A. Aggarwal, D. Coppersmith, T.J. Watson,
     S. Khanna, R. Motwani, Stanford
     B. Schieber, T.J. Watson

 2:50pm
  Faster Isomorphism Testing of Strongly Regular Graphs
     Daniel A. Spielman, UC Berkeley

 3:15pm
  Node-Disjoint Paths on the Mesh and a New Trade-off in VLSI Layout
     Alok Aggarwal, IBM Research
     Jon M. Kleinberg, MIT
     David P. Williamson, IBM Research

Session 11B:
Friday, May 24, 1996
2:00pm - 3:35pm
Session Chair:  Alistair Sinclair (Berkeley)

 2:00pm
  Modular 2 Counting Formulas Are Hard for Cutting Planes Proofs
     Xudong Fu,  Toronto

 2:25pm
  Extremal Bipartite Graphs and Superpolynomial Lower Bounds for Monotone
  Span Programs
     Laszlo Babai, Univ. of Chicago,
     Anna Gal, Institute for Advanced Study,
     Janos Kollar, Univ. of Utah,
     Lajos Ronyai, Hungarian Academy
     Tibor Szabo, Ohio State
     Avi Wigderson, Hebrew

 2:50pm
  A Lower Bound for Randomized Algebraic Decision Trees
     Dima Grigoriev, Penn State
     Marek Karpinski,  Bonn
     Friedhelm Meyer auf der Heide, Paderborn
     Roman Smolensky,  Bonn

 3:15pm
  Lower Bounds for Noisy Boolean Decision Trees
     William Evans, Nicholas Pippenger, UBC


Coffee break: 3:35pm - 4:05pm


Session 12A:
Friday, May 24, 1996
4:05pm - 5:40pm
Session Chair:  Sanjeev Arora (Princeton)

 4:05pm
  Adaptive Zero Knowledge and Computational Equivocation
     Donald Beaver, Transarc Corp.

 4:30pm
  Adaptively Secure Multiparty Computation
     Ran Canetti, MIT,
     Uri Feige, Oded Goldreich, Moni Naor, Weizmann

 4:55pm
  On Relationships between Statistical Zero-Knowledge Proofs
     Tatsuaki Okamoto,  NTT Labs.