PhD Projects Rahul Santhanam University of Edinburgh

My Research Area Computational complexity: Possibilities and limits of efficient computation Design efficient algorithms for computational problems Understand why some problems do not have efficient solutions

PhD Project 1: SAT Algorithms Boolean Satisfiability (SAT): Given a formula with Boolean variables, is there an assignment of Boolean values to variables satisfying it? Canonical NP-complete problem; no polynomial-time algorithms if NP ≠ P Very important in practical contexts, eg., verification, planning, automated reasoning

PhD Project 1: SAT Algorithms Boolean Satisfiability (SAT): Given a formula with Boolean variables, is there an assignment of Boolean values to variables satisfying it? If the formula has N variables and size M, there is trivial brute-force search algorithm running in time O(2N poly(M)) Question: How much better than brute-force search can we do?

PhD Project 2: Bounded Rationality Context: Decision theory, game theory A common assumption is that players are perfectly rational, i.e., play optimally For various reasons, eg., computational constraints, limited information, cognitive biases etc., players have bounded rationality Q: Come up with new models of bounded rationality and apply them to situations such as chess, cryptography, financial markets

Contact Info and Funding me at if you would like to find out more about these Funding available for Project 1 Also possibility of funding for Project 2, via sources listed at