Contact information:
Email: virgi at mit dot edu
Phone: 617-715-5833
Office: 32-G640
Some useful links:
MIT EECS Department
MIT CSAIL
MIT Theory of Computation Group
CS Overflow
Computational Social Choice
MIT Accessibility Page
Steven and Renee Finn Career Development Professor
My research applies combinatorial and graph theoretic tools to various computational domains. My recent work has focused on the following domains:
- designing algorithms for shortest paths, pattern detection and other computational problems in graphs and matrices,
- reducing fundamental computational problems to one another in a fine-grained way, sometimes showing equivalences,
- studying how much graph distance information can be compressed, and
- computational issues in social choice: when and how can one efficiently manipulate elections, tournaments and competitions, how to measure the quality of a voting rule, etc.
Links to my publications:
Sorted according to year of publication
Sorted according to topic:
Activities:
I am a co-organizer of the TCS Women events at STOC, held in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. Next it'll take place at FOCS 2022! Do apply for TCS Women travel grant!
In May 2019 I co-organized the Fine-Grained Approximation Algorithms and Complexity Workshop (FG-APX 2019) at Bertinoro.
In October 2018 I co-organized the Rising Stars in EECS workshop at MIT.
Survey on Fine-Grained Complexity: [pdf] that appeared in the proceedings of the ICM 2018.
In November 2016, I co-organized a Dagstuhl workshop on "Hardness and Structure in P": [workshop website]. Here is the Open Problems pdf.
In June 2016, I co-organized a joint STOC-SOCG workshop on "Spanners: Graphs and Geometry": [workshop website]
In the Fall 2015, I co-organized a program at the Simons Institute on Fine-Grained Complexity and Algorithms.
At STOC'15 in Portland I co-organized a tutorial on conditional lower bounds for problems within polynomial time: Hardness for Easy Problems
Here is a survey I wrote back in September 2015 on Fine-grained complexity: [pdf]
Students:
I am currently advising these amazing Ph.D. students:
- Yael Kirkpatrick,
- Zixuan Xu,
- Surya Mathialagan (co-advised with Vinod Vaikuntanathan),
- Ce Jin (co-advised with Ryan Williams),
- Jenny Kaufmann (co-advised with Madhu Sudan),
- Shyan Akmal (co-advised with Ryan Williams), and
- Yinzhan Xu.
Graduated students:
Mina Dalirrooyfard obtained her Ph.D from MIT in Spring 2022. She is now a Vice President of Machine Learning Research at Morgan Stanley.
Nicole Wein obtained her Ph.D. from MIT in Summer 2021. She is now an assistant professor at U. Michigan. Previously she spent two years as a DIMACS postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University and was then a Fellow at the Simons Institute for a semester.
Rio Lavigne (co-advised with Vinod Vaikuntanathan) obtained her Ph.D. from MIT in Summer 2020. She is now at MIT Lincoln Labs.
Andrea Lincoln obtained her Ph.D. from MIT in Summer 2020, and then spent some time as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley. She is now an assistant professor at Boston University
Josh Alman (co-advised with Ryan Williams) obtained his Ph.D. from MIT in 2019. He is now an assistant professor of computer science at Columbia University.
Greg Bodwin received his Ph.D. from MIT in 2018. He is now an assistant professor at the U. Michigan CS Dept.
Amir Abboud graduated from Stanford in 2017 with his Ph.D. He is now a Senior Researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Previously he was part of the theory group at IBM Almaden.
Haden Lee graduated with a Ph.D. from Stanford in 2016 (co-advised by Ashish Goel and Yoav Shoham). He now works at LinkedIn. During 2019-2021 he was an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco.
Teaching:
At MIT:
In Fall 2022 I am co-teaching 6.1420 Fine-grained and fixed parameter algorithms and complexity (previously known as 6.s078 and 6.054)
In Spring 2022 I co-taught 6.046: Design and Analysis of Algorithms.
In Fall 2021 I taught 6.890: Graph and Matrix Algorithms.
In Spring 2021 I co-taught 6.046: Design and Analysis of Algorithms.
In Fall 2020 I co-taught 6.S078: Fine-grained Algorithms and Complexity.
In Spring 2020 I taught 6.890: Graph and Matrix Algorithms.
In Fall 2019 I co-taught 6.006: Introduction to algorithms.
In Spring 2019 I co-taught 6.006: Introduction to algorithms.
In Spring 2018 I co-taught 6.S078: Fine-grained Algorithms and Complexity.
In Fall 2017 I co-taught 6.046: Design and Analysis of Algorithms.
In Spring 2017 I taught 6.890: Graph and Matrix Algorithms.
At Stanford:
In Fall 2016 I taught CS 267, Graph Algorithms.
In the Spring 2016 quarter I taught CS 161, Introduction to Algorithms.
In the Winter 2016 quarter I taught CS 267, Graph Algorithms.
In the Fall 2015 quarter I taught CS 367, Algebraic Graph Algorithms.
In the Spring 2015 quarter I taught CS 161, Introduction to Algorithms.
In the Winter 2015 quarter I taught CS 267, Graph Algorithms.
In the Spring 2014 quarter I taught CS 367, Algebraic Graph Algorithms.
During the Winter 2014 quarter I taught CS 267, Graph Algorithms.
During the Spring 2013 quarter I co-taught CS 266: Parametrized algorithms and complexity.
Program Committee Work:
In the past, I have served on many program committees: FUN 2022, STOC 2021 (chair), SODA 2020, ITCS 2020, ICALP 2018, SOSA 2018, STACS 2018, IPEC 2017, AAMAS 2017, WADS 2017, ITCS 2017, SODA 2017, FUN 2016, HALG 2016, IJCAI 2016, ESA 2015, COMSOC 2014, STOC 2013, ICALP 2013, IJCAI 2013, FOCS 2013, COMSOC 2012, AAMAS 2012, AAAI 2012, SWAT 2012, and SODA 2013.
