Special Colloquium

Speaker: Carolyn Chun (US Naval Academy)

Title:  Inductive tools for graphs (and matroids)

Abstract:  In this talk, we consider inductive tools for graphs (and matroids) that preserve a kind of robustness, called connectivity.  In 1966, Tutte proved that every 3-connected graph (or matroid) other than a wheel (or whirl) has a single-edge deletion or contraction that is 3-connected.  Seymour extended this result in 1980 to show that, in addition to preserving 3-connectivity, we can preserve a given substructure, namely a 3-connected minor.  We present the long-running
project joint between the speaker, James Oxley, and Dillon Mayhew to obtain such results for graphs (and matroids) that are internally 4-connected.

Bio:  Carolyn Chun completed her PhD at Louisiana State University in 2009, advised by James Oxley.  She moved to New Zealand for three years to be a research postdoc at Victoria University of Wellington with Geoff Whittle.  She spent the following three years in London, as a research postdoc at Brunel University London with Steven Noble.  In
January 2016, Carolyn became an assistant professor in the math department at the US Naval Academy.  She loves graphs, matroids, delta-matroids, and traveling.