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- On this occasion, it almost doubled its attendance, bringing together students from 12 countries.
From January 5 to 9, the 21st Summer School in Discrete Mathematics was held, an annual event that has been celebrated in our country since 2006 and has undergone significant evolution in recent years. It was recently moved to the Viña del Mar campus of Adolfo Ibáñez University, which allowed attendance to almost double.
In the words of Prof. Iván Rapaport, principal investigator at the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) at the University of Chile, “this move represented an opportunity to enhance its impact at the regional level.” This year, approximately 80 undergraduate students and nearly ten graduate students participated, coming from universities in Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Spain, the United States, France, Peru, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.
As in previous editions, the meeting was attended by three internationally renowned researchers. According to Professor Rapaport, “maintaining high academic standards has always been a central priority for the school.” Each course consisted of five 75-minute classes, with assignments for the students.
The first course, taught by Professor Shaddin Dughmi (University of Southern California), addressed issues of decision-making under uncertainty, from classic problems to online decisions on more complex combinatorial structures, particularly certain classes of matroids.
The second course, taught by Professor Jelani Nelson (University of California, Berkeley), focused on sketching and streaming algorithms, combining theoretical foundations with recent developments.
The third course, taught by Professor Zi-Xia Song (University of Central Florida), dealt with the famous Hadwiger Conjecture, a historical problem in graph theory that includes the Four Color Theorem as a special case. On this point, Professor Rapaport, also a professor at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Chile, emphasized that “direct contact with open problems is essential for awakening scientific vocations.”
Another innovation in recent years has been the inclusion of short presentations by students on their own research topics, which reflected the diversity of interests among participants and could inspire the content of future editions.
This event was funded by the Center for Mathematical Modeling through its ANID FB210005 Basal Project.
By Iván R. Tobar Bocaz, CMM Communications.
Posted on Jan 27, 2026 in News
