Social Media Days at UMass Boston

Hosted by Professor Werner Kunz, Social Media Days is envisioned to be a meeting place and networking hub for Boston businesses and organizations interested in Social Media. This daylong event combines presentations from high profile speakers with breakout discussions/small group workshops. Attendees can expect high quality and knowledgeable speakers and an increased amount of face to face interaction. Social Media Days strengthens the connection between UMass Boston and the local business community through an engaging day long event

Generalized packing designs

Generalized $t$-designs, which form a common generalization of objects such as $t$-designs, resolvable designs and orthogonal arrays, were defined by Cameron [P.J. Cameron, A generalisation of $t$-designs, \emph{Discrete Math.}\ {\bf 309} (2009), 4835--4842]. In this paper, we define a related class of combinatorial designs which simultaneously generalize packing designs and packing arrays. We describe the sometimes surprising connections which these generalized designs have with various known classes of combinatorial designs, including Howell designs, partial Latin squares and several classes of triple systems, and also concepts such as resolvability and block colouring of ordinary designs and packings, and orthogonal resolutions and colourings. Moreover, we derive bounds on the size of a generalized packing design and construct optimal generalized packings in certain cases. In particular, we provide methods for constructing maximum generalized packings with $t=2$ and block size $k=3$ or 4.Comment: 38 pages, 2 figures, 5 tables, 2 appendices. Presented at 23rd British Combinatorial Conference, July 201

A survey on constructive methods for the Oberwolfach problem and its variants

The generalized Oberwolfach problem asks for a decomposition of a graph $G$ into specified 2-regular spanning subgraphs $F_1,\ldots, F_k$, called factors. The classic Oberwolfach problem corresponds to the case when all of the factors are pairwise isomorphic, and $G$ is the complete graph of odd order or the complete graph of even order with the edges of a $1$-factor removed. When there are two possible factor types, it is called the Hamilton-Waterloo problem. In this paper we present a survey of constructive methods which have allowed recent progress in this area. Specifically, we consider blow-up type constructions, particularly as applied to the case when each factor consists of cycles of the same length. We consider the case when the factors are all bipartite (and hence consist of even cycles) and a method for using circulant graphs to find solutions. We also consider constructions which yield solutions with well-behaved automorphisms.Comment: To be published in the Fields Institute Communications book series. 23 pages, 2 figure

Existential Closure in Line Graphs

A graph $G$ is $n$-existentially closed if, for all disjoint sets of vertices $A$ and $B$ with $|A\cup B|=n$, there is a vertex $z$ not in $A\cup B$ adjacent to each vertex of $A$ and to no vertex of $B$. In this paper, we investigate $n$-existentially closed line graphs. In particular, we present necessary conditions for the existence of such graphs as well as constructions for finding infinite families of such graphs. We also prove that there are exactly two $2$-existentially closed planar line graphs. We then consider the existential closure of the line graphs of hypergraphs and present constructions for $2$-existentially closed line graphs of hypergraphs.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

The Edge-Connectivity of Vertex-Transitive Hypergraphs

A graph or hypergraph is said to be vertex-transitive if its automorphism group acts transitively upon its vertices. A classic theorem of Mader asserts that every connected vertex-transitive graph is maximally edge-connected. We generalise this result to hypergraphs and show that every connected linear uniform vertex-transitive hypergraph is maximally edge-connected. We also show that if we relax either the linear or uniform conditions in this generalisation, then we can construct examples of vertex-transitive hypergraphs which are not maximally edge-connected.Comment: 8 page