[cmath] CANADIAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY'S 2007 DOCTORAL PRIZE WINNER

[Graham Wright]

CANADIAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY'S 2007 DOCTORAL PRIZE WINNER


The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) is pleased to award the 2007 
CMS Doctoral Prize to Dr. Lap Chi Lau. The award will be presented at 
the Society's Winter Meeting in London, Ontario (December 2007).

As a graduate student of Professor Michael Molloy, University of 
Toronto, Lap Chi Lau wrote a groundbreaking dissertation which attacks 
fundamental and difficult problems concerning connectivity in graphs. 
In particular, one of the most appealing results he proved was that 
for any set S of vertices and integer k in a graph G either there are 
k edge disjoint trees each of which contains all of S, or 26k edges 
hitting all such trees.  One novel feature of his work is the use of 
the heavy machinery of exact combinatorial optimization techniques to 
obtain approximation algorithms. His results will surely lead to 
further significant developments in this area.

Lap Chi Lau received his B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Chinese 
University of Hong Kong in 2000 and his M.Sc. from the University of 
Toronto in 2003.  He continued as a graduate student at the University 
of Toronto under the supervision of Michael Molloy and completed his 
Ph.D. in 2006.  He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Chinese 
University of Hong Kong.

For more information, contact:
Dr. Graham P. Wright
Canadian Mathematical Society Executive Director
director at cms.math.ca
(613) 562-5702

or

Dr. John Frederick Jardine
Chair, CMS Research Committee
Department of Mathematics
University of Western Ontario
chair-resc at cms.math.ca
(519) 661-3638