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Eigenfunctions Seminar

Title: Graphical designs
Speaker: Rekha Thomas (University of Washington, Seattle, USA)
Date: 01 August 2025
Time: 2–3:15 and 3:45–5 pm (with a 30 minute break in between)
Venue: LH-1, Mathematics Department

Graphical designs are subsets of vertices that can perfectly average sufficiently smooth functions on a graph; they are quadrature rules on graphs analogous to spherical designs. Graphical designs have multiple applications – to sampling and random walks for example, and connect to multiple areas of mathematics such as polyhedral (convex) geometry, combinatorics and representation theory. After introducing the basic definitions, I will explain recent results with Zawad Chowdury and Stefan Steinerberger that showcase the power of designs to find well-known combinatorial structures in highly structured graphs. Examples include orthogonal arrays in hypercube graphs, combinatorial block designs in the Johnson graph and t-wise permutations in the transposition graph on the symmetric group.


Contact: +91 (80) 2293 2711, +91 (80) 2293 2265 ;     E-mail: chair.math[at]iisc[dot]ac[dot]in
Last updated: 05 Dec 2025