Brandeis Combinatorics Seminar -  Spring 2026

The Brandeis Combinatorics Seminar is an introductory seminar for combinatorics.
The talks should be (at least partially) understandable to first year graduate students.

            The zoom link is  https://brandeis.zoom.us/j/98465451178 (only for talks marked as on Zoom). 

February 9:  (In Person)

Speaker: Neha Goregaokar (Brandeis)

Title:  Equitable coloring of random graphs

Abstract: This talk will be based on the paper Equitable colorings of random graphs by Michael Krivelevich and Balázs Patkós. The talk will cover equitable chromatic numbers and thresholds as well as some results about their asymptotic behavior.

March 2: (On Zoom)

Speaker: Ananth Ravi (TU Delft)

Title:  The chromatic number of finite projective spaces

Abstract: The chromatic number of the finite projective space PG(n−1,q), denoted χ_q(n), is the minimum number of colors needed to color its points so that no line is monochromatic. We establish a new recursive bound, and using this recursion, we obtain new upper bounds on χ_q(n) for all q.

For q = 2, we refine the recursion and prove that χ_2(n) ≤ ⌊2n/3⌋ + 1 for all n ≥ 2, and that this bound is tight for all n ≤ 7. This recovers all previously known cases for n ≤ 6 and resolves the first open case n = 7. 

We also make connections to the multicolor Ramsey numbers for triangles and multicolor vector-space Ramsey numbers.

This work is in collaboration with Anurag Bishnoi and Wouter Cames van Batenburg. Here is the arXiv link to the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01760.

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March 16: 

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March 23: 

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March 30: 

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April 13: (In person)

Speaker: Dale R. Worley

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April 20: 

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April 27: 

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Links to previous semesters: Fall2025, Spring2025 Fall2024, Spring2024, Fall2023, Spring2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2021, Spring 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Spring 2018, Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016, Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015, Fall 2014, Spring 2014, Fall 2013.