Professor Standa Živný
Before coming to Oxford, I studied in my native Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Finland. After a DPhil from Keble College, I was a JRF in Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Oxford’s University College. I spent the first half of 2016 visiting the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at UC Berkeley. My research has been supported by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, an ERC Starting Grant, and an ERC Consolidator Grant.
My research is in the broad area of theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, where my work centres around the application of mathematics to the design and analysis of algorithms and understanding the inherent limits of efficient computation.
In the last few years, I have mostly focused on the mathematics of so-called promise constraint satisfaction problems. These are problems of the following type: Given a 3-colourable graph, is it possible to find a 6-colouring efficiently? My research investigates when this and similar problems can be solved efficiently, in particular by combinations of convex and linear Diophantine relaxations.
I have taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, with a focus on algorithms and combinatorial optimisation. I supervise graduate students in algorithms and complexity theory.
