Anke van Zuylen

Senior Lecturer
Computer Science

Biography

Anke van Zuylen is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science. Prior to joining Cornell, she was an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at William & Mary, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbruecken, Germany, and a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. She obtained a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Cornell University in 2008, an M.S. in Operations Research from Cornell in 2007, and an M.A. in Econometrics and Operations Research from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2000.

 

Research Interests

My research interests are in combinatorial optimization. I design and analyze algorithms for optimization problems arising in areas such as information science; network design, scheduling and logistics; computational biology.
For many problems of interest, finding optimal solutions is computationally intractable. My work specifically focuses on practical algorithms for approximately solving these problems, using techniques from discrete mathematics, such as graph theory, combinatorics and matroid theory; computer science, such as complexity analysis, data structures, and approximation algorithms; and operations research, such as linear programming and network flows.

Selected Publications

András Sebö, Anke van Zuylen: The Salesman’s Improved Paths through Forests. J. ACM 66(4): 28:1-28:16 (2019). Preliminary version appeared in FOCS 2016.
Matthias Poloczek, Georg Schnitger, David P. Williamson, Anke van Zuylen: Greedy Algorithms for the Maximum Satisfiability Problem: Simple Algorithms and Inapproximability Bounds. SIAM J. Comput. 46(3): 1029-1061 (2017).
Frans Schalekamp, Anke van Zuylen, Suzanne van der Ster: A Duality Based 2-Approximation Algorithm for Maximum Agreement Forest. ICALP 2016: 70:1-70:14
Frans Schalekamp, David P. Williamson, Anke van Zuylen: 2-Matchings, the Traveling Salesman Problem, and the Subtour LP: A Proof of the Boyd-Carr Conjecture. Math. Oper. Res. 39(2): 403-417 (2014). Preliminary version appeared in SODA 2012.
Anke van Zuylen, David P. Williamson: Deterministic Pivoting Algorithms for Constrained Ranking and Clustering Problems. Math. Oper. Res. 34(3): 594-620 (2009). Preliminary version appeared in SODA 2007.

Selected Awards and Honors

William & Mary Alumni Faculty Award 2018
Lise Meitner Award Fellowship 2010-2012
Honorable Mention in George Nicholson Student Paper Competition 2009
European Symposium on Algorithms Best Student Paper Award 2008
Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (Cornell Operations Research) 2008
VVS & OR Thesis Award 2001

Education

Ph.D. (Operations Research), Cornell University, 2008
M.S. (Operations Research), Cornell University, 2007
M.A. (Econometrics and Operations Research), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2000