Lenore J. Cowen



  Associate Professor
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD 21218
Office:   Whitehead 202-B
Phone:   (410)516-7043
Fax:   (410)516-7459
Email:   cowen@cs.jhu.edu

This page is no longer current. After 2.5 years of commuting between two cities, I have permanently relocated. My new webpage is here. Hopkins email addresses will still work for a while. My husband and I are enjoying the novel experience of living in the same place, still I will miss many of you very much.. and plan to visit often. Cheers, Lenore

updated c.v. (postscript)

research summary (postscript)


I am a member of the faculty of the Math Sciences Department at Johns Hopkins, with a joint appointment in Computer Science.

Johns Hopkins also has a regular Mathematics department , filled with Number Theorists and Topologists.

My research interests on the CS side include Algorithms (especially Randomized Algorithms and Approximation Algorithms), Theory of Distributed Computing, and a recent interest in Data Mining (Pattern Recognition, Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI), Interface between Computer Science and Statistics).

On the Mathematics side, my research interests include Probabilistic Combinatorics, Extremal Combinatorics, Graph Algorithms, Graph Theory, and the Curse of Dimensionality in Statistics.

For academic year 1999-2000 I am was visiting MIT Lab for Computer Science, Theory of Computation group as a Radcliffe Bunting Fellow. I will be in Boston through December 2000. I will be back teaching at Hopkins in Spring, 2001. In the meantime, Hopkins email addresses continue to work, and are the best way to get in touch with me.

Fall 1999, I was teaching Combinatorics and an advanced seminar in Approximation Algorithms . I was also on the program committee for STOC 99 I am on the SODA steering committee, and am always interested in feedback about the conference, particularly from the SIAM community.

This year I've been having fun putting the "Applied" in "Applied Math." I am involved in a project for Olfactory Classification. (See the Science News article). This involves collaboration with The Walt Lab. And I'm working on a project in Protein Folding with Bonnie Berger and the King Lab. Here's the homepage of the program we designed: BetaWrap

Below are some papers.

  • Papers in Algorithms
  • Papers in Graph Theory
  • Papers on The Curse of Dimensionality in Statistics

    Selected Publications

    PAPERS IN ALGORITHMS

  • new! L. Cowen, Compact Routing with Minimum Stretch SODA 99. Invited for special issue, Best Papers in SODA 99, Journal of Algorithms.

    B. Awerbuch, B. Berger, L. Cowen and D. Peleg, Near-Linear Cost Sequential and Distributed Constructions of Sparse Neighborhood Covers SIAM Journal of Computing. 28:1: 263-277, 1999. (preliminary version in FOCS).

  • B. Awerbuch, B. Berger, L. Cowen and D. Peleg Fast Distributed Network Decompositions and Covers. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 39:2: 105-114. 1996. (Preliminary version in PODC).

  • L. Cowen and R. Mathar The Offset Problem. Combinatorics, Probability and Compting 6: 159-164, 1997.

  • B. Berger and L. Cowen, Scheduling with Concurrency-Based Constraints. Journal of Algorithms 18, 1995, 98-123. (preliminary version in SODA).

  • B. Awerbuch, B. Berger, L. Cowen and D. Peleg, Low-Diameter Graph Decomposition is in NC . Random Structures and Algorithms, 5(3), 1994, 441-452.

  • B. Awerbuch, L. Cowen and M. Smith Efficient Asynchronous Distributed Symmetry-Breaking STOC 1994.

  • L. Cowen, A Linear Time Algorithm for Network Decomposition DIMACS TR-94-56. 1994.

    PAPERS IN GRAPH THEORY

  • new! C. Cheng and L. Cowen, On the Local Distinguishing Number of Cycles Discrete Mathematics, Vol 196: 1-3, 97-108, 1999.

  • L. Cowen, W. Goddard and E. Jesurum, Coloring with Defect . SODA 1997. Journal version entitled "Defective Coloring Revisited" in Journal of Graph Theory 24:3: 205-219, 1997.

  • L. Cowen, D. Kleitman, F. Lasaga and D. Sussman, Enumeration of Full Graphs: Onset of the Asymptotic Region . Studies in Applied Mathematics 36:339-350. 1996.

  • D. Kleitman, F. Lasaga, and L. Cowen, Asymptotic Enumeration of Full Graphs . Journal of Graph Theory 20: 59-69, 1995.

  • L. Cowen, R. Cowen, and D. Woodall, Defective Colorings of Graphs on Surfaces: Partitions into Subgraphs of Bounded Valency. Journal of Graph Theory 10: 187-195, 1986.

    CURSE OF DIMENSIONALITY

    This is a current project with Dr. Carey Priebe and Adam Cannon The goal is to use randomized algorithms to solve classification and clustering problems for very high-dimensional data.

  • new! A. Cannon and L. Cowen Approximation Algorithms for the Class Cover Problem To appear at the 6th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics, 2000.

  • L.J. Cowen and C.E. Priebe, Randomized non-linear projections uncover high-dimensional structure. Advances in Applied Math 19:319-331, 1997.

  • A. Cannon, L. Cowen and C.E. Priebe, Approximate Distance Classification, Proceedings of the 1998 Symposium on the Interface between Computer Science and Statistics.

  • C. E. Priebe and L.J. Cowen, Mine Detection Via Generalized Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney Classification. Proceedings of the SPIE 3392: 906-917, 1998.

    STRUCTURES

  • L. Cowen, J. Feigenbaum and S. Kannan, A Formal Framework for Evaluating Heuristic Programs Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence Vol 22, no. 3-4 (1998), pp. 193-206. (Preliminary version at ICALP 96)

    Ph.D. students:

    The following students have written their dissertations under or partially under my supervision.

  • Christine Cheng (defended 9/3/99)
  • Chris Wagner (co-advising with Mike Goodrich .) (defended 10/12/99)
  • Adam Cannon (defended 5/23/00)

    Useful Links

    GOOGLE! search is the best search engine on the web, by several orders of magnitude.

    Quickaid -- the best site for local airport information and ground transportation info.

    User Friendly

    High School MathCamps

    The American Mathematics Society is now giving out grants to high school math camps!! They are currently raising endowment to support it, they are having real mathematicians judging the programs, they are charging 0 overhead to administer the program, and basically, I can't think of a better "bang" for your buck than supporting this, so give them money!!

    As part of their effort, they are also (independent of this) providing a central website where you can read about all the math camps (whether they applied for an AMS grant or not) -- so if you know a bright high school student, point them at this Information about High School Math Camps Site (I myself an alum of the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Math program, and I recommend it very highly!!)

    This page once went black for 48 hours. Free Speech is a Good Idea.

    My personal homepage.. with wedding photos.

    TEMPORARY LINK

    TEMPORARY LINK for Chris

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