Related papers: On the tractability and approximability of non-sub…
In this paper, we consider the optimization problem Submodular Cover (SCP), which is to find a minimum cardinality subset of a finite universe $U$ such that the value of a submodular function $f$ is above an input threshold $\tau$. In…
One of the most useful measures of cluster quality is the modularity of a partition, which measures the difference between the number of the edges joining vertices from the same cluster and the expected number of such edges in a random…
We consider the problem of partitioning the node set of a graph into $k$ sets of given sizes in order to \emph{minimize the cut} obtained using (removing) the $k$-th set. If the resulting cut has value $0$, then we have obtained a vertex…
The max-cut problem is a classical graph theory problem which is NP-complete. The best polynomial time approximation scheme relies on \emph{semidefinite programming} (SDP). We study the conditions under which graphs of certain classes have…
The maximum modularity of a graph is a parameter widely used to describe the level of clustering or community structure in a network. Determining the maximum modularity of a graph is known to be NP-complete in general, and in practice a…
Given a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$, the dual hypergraph of $\mathcal{H}$ is the hypergraph of all minimal transversals of $\mathcal{H}$. The dual hypergraph is always Sperner, that is, no hyperedge contains another. A special case of Sperner…
We consider the Minimum-$(k,\rho)$-$\mathrm{Shortcut}$ problem ($\min(k,\rho)\text{-}\mathrm{Shortcut}$), where the goal is to find the smallest set of shortcut edges such that every vertex in a given graph can reach its $\rho$ closest…
We consider the problem of maximizing submodular functions; while this problem is known to be NP-hard, several numerically efficient local search techniques with approximation guarantees are available. In this paper, we propose a novel…
One of the most important and well-studied settings for network design is edge-connectivity requirements. This encompasses uniform demands such as the Minimum $k$-Edge-Connected Spanning Subgraph problem ($k$-ECSS), as well as nonuniform…
We consider the problem of partitioning the set of vertices of a given unit disk graph (UDG) into a minimum number of cliques. The problem is NP-hard and various constant factor approximations are known, with the current best ratio of 3.…
Submodular width is a central structural measure governing the complexity of conjunctive query evaluation. In this paper we recast submodular width in geometric terms. We how that submodular width can be approximated, up to a factor $3/2$,…
In the problem (Unweighted) Max-Cut we are given a graph $G = (V,E)$ and asked for a set $S \subseteq V$ such that the number of edges from $S$ to $V \setminus S$ is maximal. In this paper we consider an even harder problem: (Weighted)…
The Minimum Branch Vertices Spanning Tree problem aims to find a spanning tree $T$ in a given graph $G$ with the fewest branch vertices, defined as vertices with a degree three or more in $T$. This problem, known to be NP-hard, has…
A common interpretation of soft constraints penalizes the database for every violation of every constraint, where the penalty is the cost (weight) of the constraint. A computational challenge is that of finding an optimal subset: a…
In this thesis, we design algorithms for several NP-hard problems in both worst and beyond worst case settings. In the first part of the thesis, we apply the traditional worst case methodology and design approximation algorithms for the Hub…
Recently, many studies have been devoted to finding diverse solutions in classical combinatorial problems, such as Vertex Cover (Baste et al., IJCAI'20), Matching (Fomin et al., ISAAC'20) and Spanning Tree (Hanaka et al., AAAI'21). We…
A stable cutset is a set of vertices $S$ of a connected graph, that is pairwise non-adjacent and when deleting $S$, the graph becomes disconnected. Determining the existence of a stable cutset in a graph is known to be NP-complete. In this…
The degree centrality of a node, defined as the number of nodes adjacent to it, is often used as a measure of importance of a node to the structure of a network. This metric can be extended to paths in a network, where the degree centrality…
Identifying shortest paths between nodes in a network is a common graph analysis problem that is important for many applications involving routing of resources. An adversary that can manipulate the graph structure could alter traffic…
Given an edge-weighted directed graph $G=(V,E)$ on $n$ vertices and a set $T=\{t_1, t_2, \ldots, t_p\}$ of $p$ terminals, the objective of the \scss ($p$-SCSS) problem is to find an edge set $H\subseteq E$ of minimum weight such that $G[H]$…