Ivona Bezáková Associate Professor Computer Science Rochester Institute of Technology Awards and honors and year received (list--no more than *five* items): • Teaching awards (selection): o Institute-wide Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching, 2013 o Professor selected by the institute-wide top student: Norman A. Miles Award for Academic Excellence in Teaching, • 2013 Research awards (selection): o PI on NSF award, Division of Computing and Communication Foundations: "Counting and Sampling Cuts and Paths in Planar and Lattice Graphs" (CISE-CCF-AF program), 2013 o PI on NSF award, Division of Undergraduate Education: "Multiplayer Board Game Strategies in the Introductory CS Curriculum" (CISE-DUE-TUES program), 2011 Have you previously been involved in any CRA activities? If so, describe. No. List any other relevant experience and year(s) it occurred (list--no more than *five* items). • Outreach through mathematical and algorithmic programming contests for middle school students and beyond, 1993-present • Regional Contest Director for North East North America region of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (NENA ICPC), 2015, Chief Judge and the main problem designer for NENA ICPC, 2012-2015 • In charge of the problem-solving-oriented redesign of the introductory CS curriculum at RIT, 2007-2010 • Research with undergraduate students, 2006-present • Programming instructor at two magnet high schools, 1997-2000 Research interests: (list only) • Randomized and Approximation Algorithms (primarily for approximate counting and/or sampling of discrete random structures) • Markov Chain • Monte Carlo technique • Planar Graph Algorithms Personal Statement For over 20 years I have been actively involved in teaching, research collaborations, and mentoring of students ranging from middle school through graduate school. Seven of my recent publications are co-authored with undergraduate students. I have organized math and algorithmic contests since 1993 (I am one of the founders of the world-wide Internet Problem Solving Contest). I am the Program Director for the North-East North America region of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, and I have served as a problem designer, later as the Chief Judge, since 2006. I taught programming for three years at two magnet high schools. Brief Biography or CV (Attached)
´ kova ´ Ivona Beza Department of Computer Science Rochester Institute of Technology 102 Lomb Memorial Drive Rochester, NY 14623-5608
Office: Fax: E-mail:
585-475-4526 585-475-7100
[email protected]
Research Interests Randomized and Approximation Algorithms, Discrete Random Structures, Planar Graph Algorithms Education University of Chicago Winter 2002 – Spring 2006 Ph.D. Computer Science, June 2006 thesis title: Faster Markov Chain Monte Carlo Algorithms for the Permanent and Binary Contingency Tables. advisor: Eric Vigoda University of Chicago Summer 2000 – Fall 2002 M.S. Computer Science, December 2002 thesis title: The Poincar´e Constant of a Random Walk in High-Dimensional Convex Bodies. advisor: Eric Vigoda Comenius University, Slovakia Autumn 1995 – Spring 2000 “Magister”, Computer Science, June 2000 majors: theoretical computer science, computer graphics thesis title: Compact Representations of Graphs and Adjacency Testing. advisor: Branislav Rovan Awards: 2013-2014 Norman A. Miles Award for Academic Excellence in Teaching 2012-2013 Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching 2011-12 GCCIS Outstanding Educator of the Year Award Awards at ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest - represented University of Chicago in 2002, team of three placed 2nd in the Mid-Central USA region and 27th in the World Finals (3,082 teams competed worldwide) - represented Comenius University in 2000, 3rd place in the Central-European region Teaching Prize, University of Chicago, 2002 Outstanding First-Year Student Prize, Ph.D. program, University of Chicago, 2001 President’s Prize, Comenius University, 2000 Work Experience Rochester Institute of Technology, Dept. of Computer Science Associate professor (September 2012 – present) Assistant professor (September 2006 – August 2012)
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September 2006 – present
Organizer of Math and Algorithmic Contests - ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, The Northeast North America Regional Final - Program Director - Chief Judge - Internet Problem Solving Contest, http://ipsc.ksp.sk (world-wide, categories for high school students, and unrestricted) - Slovak National Olympiad in Informatics (for high school students) - Central European Olympiad in Informatics (CEOI) (for high school students) - Correspondence Seminar in Programming, http://www.ksp.sk (for high school students) - Correspondence Seminar in Mathematics KOMINAR (for grades 4-6) University of Oxford, Great Britain Visiting scientist
2006 – present 2015 – present 2012 – present 1999 – 2002 1995 – 2000 1997 – 1998 1995 – 2000 1993 – 1995 May 18-24, 2014
University of California, Berkeley August 2013 – May 2014 Visiting scientist at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing Visiting researcher
Summer 2005
Journal Publications Computing and Counting Longest Paths on Circular-Arc Graphs in Polynomial Time. George B. Mertzios and Ivona Bez´ akov´ a, Discrete Applied Mathematics, Elsevier. Volume 164, Pages 383-399, 2014. Negative Examples for Sequential Importance Sampling of Binary Contingency Tables, Ivona ˇ Bez´akov´ a, Alistair Sinclair, Daniel Stefankoviˇ c, and Eric Vigoda. Algorithmica 64(4): 606620, 2012. Counting and sampling minimum (s, t)-cuts in weighted planar graphs in polynomial time, Ivona Bez´ akov´ a and Adam J. Friedlander. Theoretical Computer Science (TCS), Elsevier. Volume 417, Pages 2-11, 2012. Special issue for MFCS 2010, invited. On the Diaconis-Gangolli Markov Chain for Sampling Contingency Tables with Cell-Bounded Entries, Ivona Bez´ akov´ a, Nayantara Bhatnagar, and Dana Randall. Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer. Volume 22, Pages 457-468, 2011. Special issue for COCOON 2009, invited. Path Lengths in Protein-Protein Interaction Networks and Biological Complexity, Ke Xu, Ivona Bez´ akov´ a, Leonid Bunimovich, and Soojin V. Yi. Proteomics, Volume 11, Issue 10, Pages 18571867, Wiley, May 2011. Accelerating Simulated Annealing Algorithm for the Permanent and Combinatorial Counting ˇ Problems, Ivona Bez´ akov´ a, Daniel Stefankoviˇ c, Vijay V. Vazirani, and Eric Vigoda. SIAM Journal of Computing (SICOMP), Volume 37, Issue 5, pages 1429-1454, 2008. Sampling Binary Contingency Tables, Ivona Bez´akov´a. Computing in Science & Engineering, Volume 10, Issue 2, pages 26-31, 2008. (Invited publication.) 2
Sampling Binary Contingency Tables with a Greedy Start, Ivona Bez´akov´a, Nayantara Bhatnagar, and Eric Vigoda. Random Structures and Algorithms (RSA), Volume 30, Issue 1-2, pages 168-205, Wiley, 2007. Allocating Indivisible Goods, Ivona Bez´akov´a and Varsha Dani. Invited contribution in ACM SIGecom Exchanges, Vol. 5.3, 2005. Extended version appears as a technical report TR2004-10, Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago. Conference Publications Minimum Planar Multi-sink Cuts with Connectivity Priors, Ivona Bezkov, Zachary Langley. Proceedings of the 39th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS), 2014: 94-105 Model AI Assignments 2014, Todd W. Neller, Laura E. Brown, Roger L. West, James E. Heliotis, Sean Strout, Ivona Bez´ akov´a, Bikramjit Banerjee, and Daniel Thompson. Proceedings of the 28th AAAI conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI, part of the Educational Advances in AI track), 2014: 3054-3056. On the Efficacy of Board Game Strategy Development as a First-Year CS Project, Ivona Bez´akov´ a, James E. Heliotis, and Sean Strout. Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE), 2014: 283-288. EDR: An Energy-Aware Runtime Load Distribution System for Data-Intensive Applications in the Cloud, Bo Li, Shuaiwen Song, Ivona Bez´akov´a, Kirk W. Cameron. Proceedings of IEEE Cluster 2013, 8 pages. Board Game Strategies in Introductory Computer Science, Ivona Bez´akov´a, James E. Heliotis, and Sean Strout. Proceedings of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE), 2013: 17-22. Student Development of Board Game Strategies in a Web-Based Graphical Infrastructure (poster), Adam Oest, Ivona Bez´ akov´a, James E. Heliotis, and Sean Strout. Proceedings of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE), 2013: 743. Contiguous minimum single-source-multi-sink cuts in weighted planar graphs, Ivona Bez´akov´ a and Zach Langley. Proceedings of the 18th International Computing and Combinatorics Conference (COCOON), 2012: 49-60. Programming board-game strategies in the introductory CS sequence (poster), Ivona Bez´akov´ a, James E. Heliotis, Sean Strout, Adam Oest, and Paul D. Solt. Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE), 2012: 669. Energy-Aware Replica Selection for Data-Intensive Services in Cloud, Bo Li, Shuaiwen Song, Ivona Bez´ akov´ a, Kirk W. Cameron. Proceedings of the 20th IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS), 2012: 504-506. Computing and Counting the Longest Paths on Circular-Arc Graphs in Polynomial Time, George B. Mertzios and Ivona Bez´akov´a. Proceedings of the 6th Latin-American Algorithms, Graphs, and Optimization Symposium (LAGOS), 2011: 148-153. Counting minimum (s, t)-cuts in weighted planar graphs in polynomial time, Ivona Bez´akov´ a and Adam J. Friedlander. Proceedings of the 35th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS), 2010: 126-137. 3
Sampling Edge Covers in 3-Regular Graphs, Ivona Bez´akov´a and William A. Rummler. Proceedings of the 34th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS), 2009: 137-148. On the Diaconis-Gangolli Markov Chain for Sampling Contingency Tables with Cell-Bounded Entries, Ivona Bez´ akov´ a, Nayantara Bhatnagar, and Dana Randall. Proceedings of the 15th International Computing and Combinatorics Conference (COCOON), 2009: 307-316. Negative Examples for Sequential Importance Sampling of Binary Contingency Tables, Ivona ˇ Bez´akov´ a, Alistair Sinclair, Daniel Stefankoviˇ c, and Eric Vigoda. Proceedings of the 14th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA), 2006: 136-147. Graph Models Selection using the Maximum Likelihood Principle, Ivona Bez´akov´a, Adam Kalai, and Rahul Santhanam. Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2006: 105-112. Accelerating Simulated Annealing Algorithm for the Permanent and Combinatorial Counting ˇ Problems, Ivona Bez´ akov´ a, Daniel Stefankoviˇ c, Vijay V. Vazirani, and Eric Vigoda. Proceedings of the 17th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), 2006: 900-907. Sampling Binary Contingency Tables with a Greedy Start, Ivona Bez´akov´a, Nayantara Bhatnagar, and Eric Vigoda. Proceedings of the 17th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), 2006: 414-423. Other Peer-reviewed Works On Beyond Sudoku: Pencil Puzzles For Introductory Computer Science, Zack Butler and Ivona Bez´ akov´ a. Workshop at the 46th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE), 2015. Programming Board Game Strategies in CS2, Ivona Bez´akov´a, James Heliotis, Sean Strout. Workshop at the Frontier in Education (FIE) conference, 2013. Board game strategies as an Introductory CS Course Project, James Heliotis, Sean Strout, Ivona Bez´ akov´ a. Tutorial at the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges - Northeastern Region (CCSCNE), 2014. Grants AF: Small: Counting and Sampling Cuts and Paths in Planar and Lattice Graphs, PI, NSF CISE (Computer & Information Science & Engineering) AF (Algorithmic Foundations), awarded in 2013. On Beyond Sudoku: Pencil Puzzles as an Engaging Problem Domain for Introductory Computer Science, co-PI (PI Zack Butler), NSF Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (TUES), awarded in 2013. Multiplayer Board Game Strategies in the Introductory CS Curriculum, PI (co-PIs James E. Heliotis and Sean Strout), NSF TUES, awarded in 2011.
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