Computer Society and the Computer Society Kitchener-Waterloo Chapter Bring Together the Member Community Online to Discuss Big Data and Combinatorics

On March 24, 2020, Ilias Kotsireas, Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and Director of the Computer Algebra Research Group of Wilfrid Laurier (CARGO), brought together 84 members from around the world to discuss Big Data and Combinatorics in an online webinar. Kotsireas's presentation, provided an introduction to the subject of combinatorics and its application to the big data problem. Dr. Kotsireas described some challenging Big Data problems that arise in Combinatorics. In particular, these problems can be seen as vector versions of the k-SUM problem from Theoretical Computer Science. Also, he described various techniques for solving these problems, involving hash functions, parallel backtracking and other approaches. Scalability is an important desirable property that seems to be difficult to achieve in these problems. The webinar had a significant impact on the participants, particularly those looking for real-world applications including telecommunication protocols, coding theory and other engineering areas Dr. Kotsireas indicated that weighing matrices of various kinds could be used in quantum computing. He further noted, “Another major application, I think, is related to cryptography. You can design a cryptosystem based these kinds of hard combinatorial problems.” Future Online Webinars The worldwide spread of the Coronavirus has created a challenge for professionals to access the education they need to advance their careers. The Computer Society and Computer Society chapters are drawing on online webinar technologies to help our members meet this challenge. Dr. Kotsireas's webinar is only one of many that the Computer Society will be offering over the coming months including some on soft skills. We will be offering webinars and a web conference with the Distinguished Visitors Program and the Student and Young Professionals Committee. If you have any questions about our online techncal webinars, you can contact us at chapters@computer.org.