Speaker: Fabrizio Grandoni Title: How to Pack your Rectangles? Abstract: Suppose that I give you a square and a collection of rectangles of different shapes. How many rectangles can you pack into the square (so that they do not overlap)? This and related problems are NP-hard. In this talk I will present approximation algorithms to efficiently pack a number of rectangles close to the optimum. The talk is meant to be accessible to non-experts. Bio: Fabrizio Grandoni is currently a Senior Researcher at IDSIA. Formerly he was a postdoc at the MPII, at the University of Rome Sapienza, and at TU Berlin. Before joining IDSIA, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata (where he also got his PhD). Grandoni's research interests focus on algorithms and complexity theory, and in particular on approximation algorithms. Date: 21st of March 2019, 12:00-13:00 Location: Manno, Galleria 1, 2nd floor, room G1-204 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://doodle.com/poll/cyqaynfww7hkidiv