*Title: Approximation Algorithms for Two-dimensional Geometric Packing Problems *Abstract: The field of Geometric Packing problems has attracted the attention of many researchers in the late years. Generally speaking, in this setting we are given a region in the two-dimensional plane and a set of rectangles and the goal is to pack a subset of them inside the given region in such a way that they do not overlap and some given objective function is optimized. In this talk we will review our recent developments on two of these problems in the framework of Approximation Algorithms: Strip Packing and Geometric Knapsack. In the first problem, the goal is to pack all the rectangles into a strip of fixed width so as to minimize the final height of the packing, while in the second one the goal is to pack a subset of the rectangles of maximum profit into a rectangular region of fixed size. We will also discuss applications and open questions regarding the mentioned problems, the talk is meant to be accessible for non-experts. *Speaker: Waldo Gálvez studied Applied Math at University of Chile and recently got his PhD at IDSIA in the Algorithms and Complexity group. Starting in January 2020, Waldo will join the Algorithms and Complexity group at TU Munich as a postdoc. His main area of research is the design and analysis of approximation algorithms, specially for Packing and Network Design problems. *Date: Tuesday, 22nd of October 2019, 12:00-13:00 *Location: Manno, Galleria 1, 2nd floor, room G1-204 *Doodle registration: Pizza (or alternative food) and drinks will be offered at the end of the talk. If you plan to attend, please register in a timely fashion at the following link so that we will have no shortage of food: https://www.doodle.com/poll/pvqz8wvt6c3yvcei