1. PhD Projects Rahul Santhanam University of Edinburgh

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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?

5. 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

6. Contact Info and Funding E-mail me at rsanthan@inf.ed.ac.uk if you would like to find out more about these projectsrsanthan@inf.ed.ac.uk Funding available for Project 1 Also possibility of funding for Project 2, via sources listed at http://wcms.inf.ed.ac.uk/lfcs/graduate%20study