Alina Ene ([email protected])
Research
Interests
Approximation algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems, submodular function optimization, graph algorithms, large data analysis, theoretical machine learning.
Academic
Positions
Boston University, Boston, MA
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
9/2016 – present
Alan Turing Institute for Data Science, London, UK
Faculty Fellow
2/2016 – present
University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
10/2014 – 6/2016
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Postdoctoral Researcher, Center for Computational Intractability 8/2013 – 9/2014
Education
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
Ph.D., Computer Science
2008 – 2013
Thesis title: Approximation algorithms for submodular optimization and graph problems
Advisor: Chandra Chekuri
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
B.S.E magna cum laude, Computer Science
Advisor: Robert Tarjan
Experience
IBM Research Almaden
Research Visitor
Mentor: Jan Vondrak
Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago
Research Intern
Mentor: Julia Chuzhoy
2004 – 2008
Spring 2013, May-June 2011
Fall 2012, Summer 2011
IBM Research TJ Watson
Research Intern
Mentor: Vishwanath Nagarajan
Summer 2012
Google Inc.
Software Engineering Intern
Mentor: Martin Pal
Summer 2010
Hewlett-Packard Labs Research Intern
Mentor: Robert Schreiber
Teaching
University of Warwick, Computer Science Department
Lecturer for CS 254: Algorithmic Graph Theory
Lecturer for CS 136: Discrete Mathematics and its Applications I
Lecturer for CS 131: Mathematics for Computer Science II
Summer 2007
Term 2, 2016
Term 1, 2015
Term 2, 2015
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Computer Science Department
Teaching assistant for CS 573: Graduate Algorithms
Fall 2010
Teaching assistant for CS 473: Undergraduate Algorithms
Fall 2008
Fall 2009, Spring 2009,
Princeton University, Computer Science Department
Lab teaching assistant for COS 126/226/217, Introduction to Algorithms and Data
Structures and Programming
Spring 2008, Fall 2007
Publications
1. Constrained Submodular Maximization: Beyond 1/e (with Huy Le Nguyen). In
Proceedings of the 57th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
(FOCS), 2016.
2. A New Framework for Distributed Submodular Maximization (with Rafael Barbosa,
Huy Le Nguyen and Justin Ward). In Proceedings of the 57th Annual Symposium
on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 2016.
3. On Approximating the Maximum Independent Set of Rectangles (with Julia Chuzhoy).
In Proceedings of the 57th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
(FOCS), 2016.
4. Constant Congestion Routing of Symmetric Demands in Planar Directed Graphs (with
Chandra Chekuri and Marcin Pilipczuk). In Proceedings of the 43rd International
Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), 2016.
5. On Routing Disjoint Paths in Bounded Treewidth Graphs (with Matthias Mnich,
Marcin Pilipczuk and Andrej Risteski). In Proceedings of the 15th Scandinavian
Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory (SWAT), 2016.
6. Routing under Balance (with Gary Miller, Jakub Pachocki and Aaron Sidford). In
Proceedings of the 48th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), 2016.
7. Submodular Unsplittable Flow on Trees (with Anna Adamaszek, Parinya Chalermsook
and Andreas Wiese). In Proceedings of the 18th Conference on Integer Programming
and Combinatorial Optimization (IPCO), 2016.
8. Online Buy-at-Bulk Network Design (with Deeparnab Chakrabarty, Ravishankar
Krishnaswamy and Debmalya Panigrahi). In Proceedings of the 56th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 2015.
9. Random Coordinate Descent Methods for Minimizing Decomposable Submodular
Functions (with Huy Le Nguyen). In Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference
on Machine Learning (ICML), 2015.
10. The Power of Randomization: Distributed Submodular Maximization on Massive
Datasets (with Rafael Barbosa, Huy Le Nguyen and Justin Ward). In Proceedings
of the 32nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2015.
11. From Graph to Hypergraph Multiway Partition: Is the Single Threshold the Only
Route? (with Huy Le Nguyen). In Proceedings of the 22nd European Symposium
on Algorithms (ESA), 2014.
12. Hardness of Submodular Cost Allocation: Lattice Matching and a Simplex Coloring
Conjecture (with Jan Vondrak). In Proceedings of the 17th International Workshop on
Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (APPROX),
2014.
13. Improved Approximation Algorithms for Degree-bounded Network Design Problems
with Node Connectivity Requirements (with Ali Vakilian). In Proceedings of the 46th
ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), 2014.
14. The All-or-Nothing Flow Problem in Directed Graphs with Symmetric Demand Pairs
(with Chandra Chekuri). In Mathematical Programming Series B. Conference version
in Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Integer Programming and Combinatorial
Optimization (IPCO), 2014.
15. Poly-logarithmic Approximation for Maximum Node Disjoint Paths with Constant
Congestion (with Chandra Chekuri). In Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM-SIAM
Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), 2013.
16. Local Distribution and the Symmetry Gap: Approximability of Multiway Partitioning
Problems (with Jan Vondrak and Yi Wu). In Proceedings of the 24th Annual
ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), 2013.
17. Prize-collecting Survivable Network Design in Node-weighted Graphs (with Chandra
Chekuri and Ali Vakilian). In Proceedings of the 15th International Workshop on
Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (APPROX),
2012.
18. Node-weighted Network Design in Planar and Minor-closed Families of Graphs
(with Chandra Chekuri and Ali Vakilian). In Proceedings of the 39th International
Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), 2012.
19. Approximation Algorithms and Hardness of Integral Concurrent Flow (with Parinya
Chalermsook, Julia Chuzhoy, and Shi Li). In Proceedings of the 44th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), 2012.
20. Geometric Packing under Non-uniform Constraints (with Sariel Har-Peled and Benjamin Raichel). To appear in SIAM Journal of Computing (SICOMP). Preliminary
version in SoCG 2012.
21. Approximation Algorithms for Submodular Multiway Partition (with Chandra Chekuri).
In Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
(FOCS), 2011.
22. Fast Clustering using MapReduce (with Sungjin Im and Benjamin Moseley). In
Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge
discovery and data mining (KDD), 2011. Oral Presentation.
23. Submodular Cost Allocation Problem and Applications (with Chandra Chekuri). In
Proceedings of the 38th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and
Programming (ICALP), 2011.
24. Prize-collecting Steiner Problems on Planar Graphs (with Mohammad Hossein Bateni,
Chandra Chekuri, MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi, Nitish Korula, and Daniel Marx).
In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms
(SODA), 2011.
25. Unsplittable Flow in Paths and Trees, and Column-Restricted Packing Integer Programs (with Chandra Chekuri and Nitish Korula). In Proceedings of the 12th
International Workshop on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (APPROX), 2009.
26. Fast Exact and Heuristic Methods for Role Minimization Problems (with William
Horne, Nikola Milosavljevic, Prasad Rao, Robert Schreiber, Robert Tarjan). In
Proceedings of the 13th ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies
(SACMAT), 2008.
Manuscripts
1. A Reduction for Optimizing Lattice Submodular Functions with Diminishing Returns
(with Huy Le Nguyen). http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.08362. 2016.
2. Connected Domatic Packings in Node-capacitated Graphs (with Nitish Korula and
Ali Vakilian). http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4308. 2013.
3. Fast Clustering with Lower Bounds: No Customer too Far, No Shop too Small (with
Sariel Har-Peled and Benjamin Raichel). http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.7318. 2013.
Patents
R. Schreiber, A. Ene, N. Milosavljevic, R. Tarjan, M. Shah. Computer-Implemented
Method for Obtaining a Minimum Biclique Cover in a Bipartite Dataset. US Patent
App. 12/350,130.
Students
PhD students
Rafael da Ponte Barbosa (2014 – present)
MSc students
James Soffe (2014 – 2015), received the MSc degree with highest distinction; Joao
Marcal Ramos (2015 – 2016), Fabian Bode (2015 – 2016), Chu Chu (2015 – 2016)
Undergraduate research students
Sara Jenkins (2014 – 2015); Rachel Durrant (2015 – 2016)
Service
Program Committees
ICALP 2017, SODA 2015, WAOA 2014, APPROX 2014
Conference Reviewer
NIPS, FOCS, STOC, SODA, ITCS, ICALP, IPCO, APPROX, STACS, FSTTCS,
WAOA
Journal Reviewer
ACM Transactions on Algorithms, Discrete Applied Mathematics, SIAM Journal on
Discrete Mathematics, SIAM Journal on Computing, Mathematical Programming Series
A and B, Theory of Computing Systems
Grant Reviewer
The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Swiss
National Foundation (SNSF)
UIUC Graduate Admissions (FAA) committee
Awards
2011, 2012
• Chirag Foundation Graduate Fellowship in Computer Science, 2012.
• UIUC Outstanding Teaching Award, 2009, 2010.
• Elected to the Sigma Xi scientific research society, 2008
• Honorable Mention, CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Award, 2007.
• International Chemistry Olympiads, 2002 (Tuymaada, silver medal), 2003 (IChO,
bronze medal), 2004 (Mendeleev, silver medal).
• President of Romania’s Award for Academic Excellence, 2002, 2003, 2004.