COLLABORATION IN BASIC SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (COBASE)

Marek Chrobak traveled to the Czech Republic for two weeks in July 1999. His host during this stay was Jiri Sgall of the Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The institute has a web page which contains detailed information on all types of research being conducted there. The general purpose of this project was to initiate research collaboration between the two researchers in the area of algorithm design for online problems, including preparation of a joint research grant proposal for NSF. Chrobak and Sgall have research experience in the field of online competitive algorithms, although with somewhat different focus. Chrobak has worked mainly on server problems, while Sgall worked primarily with scheduling problems. They hoped that their combined expertise and different perspectives would lead to new insights and interesting results. While in Prague, working together, the researchers conducted research on (1) the analysis of HARMONIC, a server selection algorithm and (2) the weighted server problem. This research served as a solid starting point for the preparation of a grant proposal, which was expected to be submitted to NSF by the end of November 1999. In Prague, Chrobak had the opportunity to work with two other Czech scientists, Jan Krajicek and Pavel Pudlak. The three Czech researchers constitute one of the strongest and most active research groups in theory and computation in Eastern Europe. Overall, Chrobak feels this was a very fruitful collaboration. Already this team has nearly nine new projects they hope to work on in the future.