𝖬𝖺𝗁𝖽𝗂 𝖢𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖺𝗀𝗁𝖼𝗁𝗂

THE MOST important open question in list decoding of error-correcting codes, whether explicit Reed-Solomon codes are list decodable beyond Guruswami-Sudan's famous breakthrough is now resolved! Congrats to the team, including my amazing student Yeyuan Chen. #Proud eccc.weizmann.ac.il/report/2026/...

Nikhil Bansal and I wrote a book-length survey of algorithmic and geometric methods in discrepancy theory, and a draft of it is online arxiv.org/abs/2608.00140. This book has been years in the making, and I’m excited to share it. More 👇

For Shayan Oveis Gharan, research has always been a struggle: “It has a lot of ups and downs, mostly downs. You always think, ‘Can I ever come up with something that doesn’t fail?’” He’s now a IMU Abacus Medal winner. www.quantamagazine.org/shayan-oveis...

Huge congratulations to Shayan Oveis Gharan for receiving the 2026 Abacus Medal (formerly Nevanlinna Prize). The first given to an Iranian! mathunion.org/imu-awards/i...

Congratulations to my Ph.D. student Sam Boardman, co-advised with Prof. Martin Strauss, for successfully completing and defending his dissertation entitled "Combinatorial Optimization Problems Arising from Graph-Based Models." Congratulations, Dr. Boardman! It's been a fun few years seeing you grow!

Very proud of my awesome student Nikhil Shagrithaya @nikhilshagri.bsky.social for successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis! This is a culmination of great work on challenging core questions in coding theory. Nikhil's research has been published in top CS venues, including FOCS and STOC conferences.

"Acker lost to no small extent because the entire Board of Regents has been deeply unpopular on campus, so much so that the Faculty Senate took the unprecedented step of formally censuring the lot of them in the fall of 2024...."

So Australia is now revoking *existing* tourist visas from Iranian nationals, sending a strong message they're not welcome here. This isn't just insane and objectionable, but also shortsighted. I already have been contacted by academics from North America about our int'l image. Not in a good way.

Good choice! I wish they had also included Peter Shor in this year's award. Quantum computation and information wouldn't be nearly as popular or advanced as it is today without his amazing contributions.

If you are an elected official that opposes military strikes on Iran, the head of CBS News will clap back at you. Will be interesting to see if she does this for other objectors, or just Muslim politicians, but it does raise the question how much her views of the Middle East shape the news.

Related to this, Nature considers the University of Michigan the #4 in the US: www.nature.com/nature-index...

Very exciting: The IEEE ITW 2026 is happening in Arizona in November, after being held outside the US over the past two decades! This year's conference is organized under the phenomenal leadership of general co-chairs Oliver Kosut, Lalitha Sankar, and Bane Vasić. 2026.ieee-itw.org

Time ranks the University of Michigan #9 in the world and the #1 public university in the US! time.com/7358185/top-...

Purdue's actions are disgusting. Time to boycott until they explicitly announce a stop to this nonsense.

Quantum mechanics is controversial.

Congratulations to our colleague John Wright, who has received a 2026 Sloan Fellowship! chemistry.berkeley.edu/news/seven-u...

Henry Yuen went into computer science to design video games, but he ended up studying the theoretical foundations of quantum computing. "Looking back, I couldn't have predicted any of the twists and turns that my interests have taken," he said.

A whopping 13 papers by the @umich.edu CS theory group accepted to STOC 2026 (>6% of all papers)! Including 3 papers by my two amazing PhD students Nikhil Shagrithaya @nikhilshagri.bsky.social (looking for postdocs, hire him!) and Yeyuan Chen. Go Blue! acm-stoc.org/stoc2026/acc...

New SIGACT award expository work, created in memory of Luca Trevisan: "intended to promote and recognize high-impact work expositing ideas and results from the Theory of Computation." A wonderful initiative—consider nominating people! ⏰ Nomination deadline: April 10 sigact.org/prizes/trevi...

Virtually ALL tech companies have NO chat/phone customer support (or barely ANY customer support at all). This should be made illegal.

Looks like an incredible textbook. I've always admired Watson's precision and clarity of presentation.

Rasool Jalili, a former president of Sharif Univ, is now sanctioned by the EU for abusing his academic role "for serious human rights violations in Iran." Once again, he has tainted the reputation of Sharif & has effectively destroyed his own academic career. www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/pre...

The ISIT 2026 conference announces that papers with a co-author who resides in Iran can ask for a short extension of the submission deadline. Please spread the word and help your Iranian colleagues contact the organizers. www.itsoc.org/news/isit-20...

Thrilled and humbled to announce

In the latest In this episode of our Polylogues web series, Simons Institute Founding Associate Director Alistair Sinclair interviews newly appointed Institute Director Venkatesan Guruswami. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY37...

Finally a candidate for U-Mich Regent who fights for civil rights and isn’t in it just for power and financial advantage. Vote Amir Makled.

The info and slides of the 18 🎓 "Graduating Bits" participants are now available on the website! Look at them, hire them! focs.computer.org/2025/graduat...

Best category of FOCS awards 👌😅

Kicking off the first day of the main conference with proper caffeination! #FOCS2025

Absolutely disgusting and (currently) illegal move by Purdue University, banning ALL graduate students from China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea. Purdue faculty need to protest to stop this immediately. Fun fact: Purdue's President is Chinese. www.purdueexponent.org/campus/featu...

The inaugural Computational Complexity Conference Test of Time Award seeks nominations (deadline Monday, March 2, 2026). Help us select an awesome paper for this award! computationalcomplexity.org/tot/tot26.html

“This report underscore[s] how the Civil Rights Act of 1964—which passed in response to years of nonviolent civil disobedience against racial injustice—is being misused to squash political dissent & speech that advocates for the human rights of Palestinians.” — Veena Dubal, AAUP General Counsel

Avi Wigderson's Clay Math talk on the P vs NP problem, marking 25 years since the Millennium Prize Problems were formulated. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX9i...

🚨 I am co-chairing ALT 2026 this year with Matus Telgarsky. The submission server is open so please submit your best work! Deadline: Oct 2, 2025 AoE Confernece: Feb 23-26, 2026 in Toronto! Website: algorithmiclearningtheory.org/alt2026/

The best move in chess isn't a function of only the current position because whether or not you can castle, capture by en passant, or draw by repetition/50 moves depends on what happened in the past.

The announcement from the University of Michigan that they will no longer provide their transgender patients with all of the healthcare options available is shameful, dangerous, and potentially illegal. www.freep.com/story/news/h...

Seriously, why doesn’t this platform have a bookmark feature? What’s the big mystery?

Registration is open for CCC 2025 in Toronto. Early registration until July 25: computationalcomplexity.org/Archive/2025...

cant believe that this response from a sitting member of Congress from Florida, to one of his Dem colleagues, is real

Horrifying teports from Palestinians were confirmed by soldiers www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

This year TCS for All Inspiration talk will be given by Sofya Raskhodnikova, Boston University on June 27th at our STOC 2025 TCS for All Meeting. Join us. We are relocating the TCS for All Rising Star Workshop to FOCS 2025 this year. Stay tuned. SIGACT.org/tcsforall/ #stoc2025 @ccanonne.github.io

Happening now!

Grounds for impeachment but let’s continue doing nothing and see the world end.

Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started

Speaking to my parents in Iran right now, and could hear the bombs being dropped on them in the background. Hope that helps the armchair experts on the internet.

Spread the word: there is a new prize in Theoretical Computer Science in honor of Luca Trevisan-- cs.unibocconi.eu/call-nominat... (Intent-to-nominate letters due by July 31.)

"My name is Greta Thunberg and I am from Sweden. If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces, or forces that support Israel."

Disgusting abomination

As part of STOC 2025 we'll be hosting an online poster session at the conference (6/23, 6-7pm local time). Our hope is that people who cannot come in person to attend STOC can still join in the festivities for a while, either as presenters or participants. Details below: acm-stoc.org/stoc2025/cal...

Disastrous news for graduate education in the US.