Derandomization

Program

Pseudorandomness & High-Dimensional Expansion

Location

Calvin Lab auditorium

Date

Monday, Oct. 26 – Friday, Oct. 30, 2026

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All talks listed in Pacific Time. Schedule subject to change.

8:30 – 9 a.m.

Coffee and Check In

9 – 10 a.m.

OpenAI's proof that BPL=L

William Hoza (The University of Chicago)

10 – 10:30 a.m.

Break

10:30 – 11:15 a.m.

OpenAI's proof that L = BPL (continued)

William Hoza (The University of Chicago)

11:15 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Pseudorandomness, symmetry, smoothing

Chin Ho Lee (North Carolina State University)

12 – 2 p.m.

Lunch (on your own)

2 – 3 p.m.

Spectral approximation of directed graphs and more

Salil Vadhan (Harvard University)

3 – 3:15 p.m.

Break

3:15 – 4:15 p.m.

Linear hashing and friends

Vinayak Kumar (UT Austin)

4:15 – 5 p.m.

Reception

8:30 – 9 a.m.

Coffee and Check In

9 – 10 a.m.

Derandomization to catalytic space

Edward Pyne (MIT)

10 – 10:30 a.m.

Break

10:30 – 11:15 a.m.

Compressed timestamps and efficient random walks in catalytic space

James Cook (Unaffiliated)

11:15 a.m. – 12 p.m.

New directions in catalytic derandomization

Aryan Agarwala (Max Planck Institute for Informatics)

12 – 2 p.m.

Lunch (on your own)

2 – 3 p.m.

Targeted samplers

Roei Tell (University of Toronto)

3 – 3:30 p.m.

TBD

TBD

3:30 – 4:30 p.m.

Hike

8:30 – 9 a.m.

Coffee and Check In

9 – 10 a.m.

A survey on PIT for read-once algebraic branching programs

Michael Forbes (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

10 – 10:30 a.m.

Break

10:30 – 11:15 a.m.

On derandomizing the line-point tester

Prahladh Harsha (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research)

11:15 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Simple pseudorandom constructions in algebra

Robert Andrews (Simon Fraser University)

12 – 2 p.m.

Lunch (on your own)

2 – 3 p.m.

The power of subspace designs: Applications in coding theory, pseudorandomness, and beyond

Venkat Guruswami (Simons Institute, UC Berkeley)

3 – 3:30 p.m.

Break

3:30 – 4:30 p.m.

Bipartite matching is in NC

Roshan Raj (Ohio State University)

8:30 – 9 a.m.

Coffee and Check In

9 – 10 a.m.

A survey on fast derandomization

Dana Moshkovitz (University of Texas at Austin)

10 – 10:30 a.m.

Break

10:30 – 11:15 a.m.

Pseudorandomness against AM circuits and new oracle separations

Andrew Huang (UC Berkeley)

11:15 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Trading time, space, and alternations: General plasticity for algorithms from hardness of range avoidance (and derandomization)

Zeyong Li (University of Toronto)

12 – 2 p.m.

Lunch (on your own)

2 – 3 p.m.

A survey on lower bounds from derandomization

Ryan Williams (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

3 – 3:30 p.m.

Break

3:30 – 4:30 p.m.

How Haar Is It to Look Random?

Makrand Sinha (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

8:30 – 9 a.m.

Coffee and Check In

9 – 10 a.m.

Extractors for samplable sources

Ronen Shaltiel (University of Haifa)

10 – 10:30 a.m.

Break

10:30 – 11:15 a.m.

How to construct random strings

Rahul Santhanam (University of Oxford)

11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Revisiting the xor lemma and exponential correlation bounds for polynomials

Emanuele Viola (Northeastern University)

12:15 – 2 p.m.

Lunch (on your own)

2 – 2:45 p.m.

Pseudorandom bits for low degree modular polynomials

Tejas Nareddy (Northeastern University)

2:45 – 3:30 p.m.

Hitting-set generators for low-degree F2-polynomials with almost optimal density

Tal Yankovich (UT Austin)

3:30 – 3:45 p.m.

Break

3:45 – 4:30 p.m.

The BRRY analysis of the INW generator is optimal

Yakov Shalunov (UChicago)