Research topics

• We study search and generation algorithms on combinatorial objects like graphs, incidence geometries en subsets of these objects with interesting combinatorial properties.

  Quite often these algorithms require a recursive traversal of a tree-like search space using various pruning heuristics. Specific pruning methods exploit the inherent symmetries of the objects (automorphisms, equivalences, unique labelings) or are based on mathematical properties that are specific to the problem at hand.

  On the one hand we try to design, improve and study these combinatorial algorithms, but on the other hand we also apply these algorithms to real mathematical problems, hoping to generate new mathematical results in combinatorial theory and combinatorial geometry in particular.

• We are also interested in other algorithmic aspects of graph theory. We have done research on optimal algoritms for data-exchange on networks of parallel processors, efficient reduction of cubical Yutsis-graphs and distance related properties of rotation graphs for binary coupling trees.

  This research domain has applications in representation theory, more specifically in finding optimal expressions for 3nj-coefficients, and also in mathematical biology, in the computation of similarity measures for dendrograms.