Robert Andrews
Photo by Dan Komoda / Institute for Advanced Study
Email: randrews at uwaterloo dot ca
Office: DC 2306L
I am a William T. Tutte Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, where I am hosted by Rafael Oliveira.
Previously, I was a postdoctoral member at the Institute for Advanced Study.
I received my Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I was fortunate to be advised by Michael A. Forbes.
I am broadly interested in computational complexity.
I particularly enjoy problems that have an algebraic flavor.
Here is a short talk, intended for a general mathematical audience, that describes some of my interests.
Research
-
Constant-Depth Arithmetic Circuits for Linear Algebra Problems
with Avi Wigderson
FOCS 2024
Invited to SICOMP special issue on FOCS 2024
[arXiv | ECCC | talk @ IAS]
-
On Matrix Multiplication and Polynomial Identity Testing
FOCS 2022; SIAM Journal on Computing 2024
Best Student Paper Award
Invited to SICOMP special issue on FOCS 2022
[arXiv | ECCC | FOCS | SICOMP | talk @ IAS]
-
Ideals, Determinants, and Straightening: Proving and Using Lower Bounds for Polynomial Ideals
with Michael A. Forbes
STOC 2022
Invited to Theory of Computing
[arXiv | ECCC | STOC]
-
Algebraic Hardness Versus Randomness in Low Characteristic
CCC 2020
[arXiv | ECCC | CCC]
Teaching
As a graduate student at UIUC, I worked as a teaching assistant for the following courses.
- Fall 2022
- CS 473: Algorithms
- Fall 2021†
- CS 374: Introduction to Algorithms & Models of Computation
- Fall 2020¶
- CS 473: Algorithms
- Spring 2019†
- CS 374: Introduction to Algorithms & Models of Computation
- Fall 2018†
- CS 374: Introduction to Algorithms & Models of Computation
- Spring 2018
- CS 579: Computational Complexity
- Fall 2017
- CS 475: Formal Models of Computation
†Included on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students.
¶Received the department’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant award.
Miscellaneous
-
Polynomial Ideals in Algebraic Complexity
Ph.D. dissertation
[UIUC library]
-
Need more RAM? Just invent time travel!
with Mitchell Jones and Patrick Lin
SIGBOVIK 2019
"Most Frighteningly like Real Research!" award
[SIGBOVIK proceedings]