PhD Proposal: Connectivity, Committees, and Quiet Planting: Algorithms and Hardness

Approximation algorithms and hardness proofs characterize the best approximation guarantees achievable in polynomial time for fundamental optimization problems. My research investigates these frontiers across network design, social choice theory, and satisfiability. Specifically, I explore approximation guarantees for variations of the Steiner Tree problem, analyze election outcomes under preference information, and develop techniques for generating hard instances to benchmark SAT solvers.