Ivona Bezáková Associate Professor

Ivona BezákováAssociate ProfessorComputer ScienceRochester Institute of TechnologyAwards and honors and year received (list--no more than *five* items): Teaching awards (selection):o Institute-wide Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching, 2013o Professor selected by the institute-wide top student: Norman A. Miles Award forAcademic Excellence in Teaching, 2013 Research awards (selection):o PI on NSF award, Division of Computing and Communication Foundations: "Countingand Sampling Cuts and Paths in Planar and Lattice Graphs" (CISE-CCF-AF program),2013o PI on NSF award, Division of Undergraduate Education: "Multiplayer Board GameStrategies in the Introductory CS Curriculum" (CISE-DUE-TUES program), 2011Have you previously been involved in any CRA activities? If so, describe.No.List any other relevant experience and year(s) it occurred (list--no more than *five* items). Outreach through mathematical and algorithmic programming contests for middle schoolstudents and beyond, 1993-present Regional Contest Director for North East North America region of the ACM InternationalCollegiate Programming Contest (NENA ICPC), 2015, Chief Judge and the main problemdesigner for NENA ICPC, 2012-2015 In charge of the problem-solving-oriented redesign of the introductory CS curriculum at RIT,2007-2010 Research with undergraduate students, 2006-present Programming instructor at two magnet high schools, 1997-2000Research interests: (list only) Randomized and Approximation Algorithms (primarily for approximate counting and/orsampling of discrete random structures) Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique Planar Graph AlgorithmsPersonal StatementFor over 20 years I have been actively involved in teaching, research collaborations, andmentoring of students ranging from middle school through graduate school. Seven of my recentpublications are co-authored with undergraduate students. I have organized math and algorithmiccontests since 1993 (I am one of the founders of the world-wide Internet Problem Solving Contest).I am the Program Director for the North-East North America region of the ACM InternationalCollegiate Programming Contest, and I have served as a problem designer, later as the ChiefJudge, since 2006. I taught programming for three years at two magnet high schools.Brief Biography or CV(Attached)

Ivona BezákováDepartment of Computer ScienceRochester Institute of Technology102 Lomb Memorial DriveRochester, NY 00ib@cs.rit.eduResearch InterestsRandomized and Approximation Algorithms, Discrete Random Structures, Planar GraphAlgorithmsEducationUniversity of ChicagoWinter 2002 – Spring 2006Ph.D. Computer Science, June 2006thesis title: Faster Markov Chain Monte Carlo Algorithms for the Permanent and BinaryContingency Tables.advisor: Eric VigodaUniversity of ChicagoSummer 2000 – Fall 2002M.S. Computer Science, December 2002thesis title: The Poincaré Constant of a Random Walk in High-Dimensional Convex Bodies.advisor: Eric VigodaComenius University, SlovakiaAutumn 1995 – Spring 2000“Magister”, Computer Science, June 2000majors: theoretical computer science, computer graphicsthesis title: Compact Representations of Graphs and Adjacency Testing.advisor: Branislav RovanAwards:2013-2014 Norman A. Miles Award for Academic Excellence in Teaching2012-2013 Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching2011-12 GCCIS Outstanding Educator of the Year AwardAwards at ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest- represented University of Chicago in 2002, team of three placed 2nd in the Mid-CentralUSA region and 27th in the World Finals (3,082 teams competed worldwide)- represented Comenius University in 2000, 3rd place in the Central-European regionTeaching Prize, University of Chicago, 2002Outstanding First-Year Student Prize, Ph.D. program, University of Chicago, 2001President’s Prize, Comenius University, 2000Work ExperienceRochester Institute of Technology, Dept. of Computer ScienceAssociate professor (September 2012 – present)Assistant professor (September 2006 – August 2012)1September 2006 – present

Organizer of Math and Algorithmic Contests- ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest,The Northeast North America Regional Final- Program Director- Chief Judge- Internet Problem Solving Contest, http://ipsc.ksp.sk(world-wide, categories for high school students, and unrestricted)- Slovak National Olympiad in Informatics(for high school students)- Central European Olympiad in Informatics (CEOI)(for high school students)- Correspondence Seminar in Programming, http://www.ksp.sk(for high school students)- Correspondence Seminar in Mathematics KOMINAR(for grades 4-6)University of Oxford, Great BritainVisiting scientist2006 – present2015 – present2012 – present1999 – 20021995 – 20001997 – 19981995 – 20001993 – 1995May 18-24, 2014University of California, BerkeleyAugust 2013 – May 2014Visiting scientist at the Simons Institute for the Theory of ComputingGeorgia Institute of Technology, College of ComputingVisiting researcherSummer 2005Journal PublicationsComputing and Counting Longest Paths on Circular-Arc Graphs in Polynomial Time. GeorgeB. Mertzios and Ivona Bezáková, Discrete Applied Mathematics, Elsevier. Volume 164, Pages383-399, 2014.Negative Examples for Sequential Importance Sampling of Binary Contingency Tables, IvonaBezáková, Alistair Sinclair, Daniel Štefankovič, and Eric Vigoda. Algorithmica 64(4): 606620, 2012.Counting and sampling minimum (s, t)-cuts in weighted planar graphs in polynomial time,Ivona Bezáková and Adam J. Friedlander. Theoretical Computer Science (TCS), Elsevier.Volume 417, Pages 2-11, 2012. Special issue for MFCS 2010, invited.On the Diaconis-Gangolli Markov Chain for Sampling Contingency Tables with Cell-BoundedEntries, Ivona Bezáková, Nayantara Bhatnagar, and Dana Randall. Journal of CombinatorialOptimization, Springer. Volume 22, Pages 457-468, 2011. Special issue for COCOON 2009,invited.Path Lengths in Protein-Protein Interaction Networks and Biological Complexity, Ke Xu,Ivona Bezáková, Leonid Bunimovich, and Soojin V. Yi. Proteomics, Volume 11, Issue 10,Pages 18571867, Wiley, May 2011.Accelerating Simulated Annealing Algorithm for the Permanent and Combinatorial CountingProblems, Ivona Bezáková, Daniel Štefankovič, Vijay V. Vazirani, and Eric Vigoda. SIAMJournal of Computing (SICOMP), Volume 37, Issue 5, pages 1429-1454, 2008.Sampling Binary Contingency Tables, Ivona Bezáková. Computing in Science & Engineering,Volume 10, Issue 2, pages 26-31, 2008. (Invited publication.)2

Sampling Binary Contingency Tables with a Greedy Start, Ivona Bezáková, Nayantara Bhatnagar, and Eric Vigoda. Random Structures and Algorithms (RSA), Volume 30, Issue 1-2,pages 168-205, Wiley, 2007.Allocating Indivisible Goods, Ivona Bezáková and Varsha Dani. Invited contribution in ACMSIGecom Exchanges, Vol. 5.3, 2005. Extended version appears as a technical report TR2004-10, Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago.Conference PublicationsMinimum Planar Multi-sink Cuts with Connectivity Priors, Ivona Bezkov, Zachary Langley.Proceedings of the 39th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of ComputerScience (MFCS), 2014: 94-105Model AI Assignments 2014, Todd W. Neller, Laura E. Brown, Roger L. West, James E.Heliotis, Sean Strout, Ivona Bezáková, Bikramjit Banerjee, and Daniel Thompson. Proceedings of the 28th AAAI conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI, part of the EducationalAdvances in AI track), 2014: 3054-3056.On the Efficacy of Board Game Strategy Development as a First-Year CS Project, IvonaBezáková, James E. Heliotis, and Sean Strout. Proceedings of the 45th ACM technicalsymposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE), 2014: 283-288.EDR: An Energy-Aware Runtime Load Distribution System for Data-Intensive Applicationsin the Cloud, Bo Li, Shuaiwen Song, Ivona Bezáková, Kirk W. Cameron. Proceedings ofIEEE Cluster 2013, 8 pages.Board Game Strategies in Introductory Computer Science, Ivona Bezáková, James E. Heliotis,and Sean Strout. Proceedings of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer scienceeducation (SIGCSE), 2013: 17-22.Student Development of Board Game Strategies in a Web-Based Graphical Infrastructure(poster), Adam Oest, Ivona Bezáková, James E. Heliotis, and Sean Strout. Proceedings ofthe 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE), 2013: 743.Contiguous minimum single-source-multi-sink cuts in weighted planar graphs, Ivona Bezákováand Zach Langley. Proceedings of the 18th International Computing and CombinatoricsConference (COCOON), 2012: 49-60.Programming board-game strategies in the introductory CS sequence (poster), Ivona Bezáková,James E. Heliotis, Sean Strout, Adam Oest, and Paul D. Solt. Proceedings of the 43rd ACMtechnical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE), 2012: 669.Energy-Aware Replica Selection for Data-Intensive Services in Cloud, Bo Li, Shuaiwen Song,Ivona Bezáková, Kirk W. Cameron. Proceedings of the 20th IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems(MASCOTS), 2012: 504-506.Computing and Counting the Longest Paths on Circular-Arc Graphs in Polynomial Time,George B. Mertzios and Ivona Bezáková. Proceedings of the 6th Latin-American Algorithms,Graphs, and Optimization Symposium (LAGOS), 2011: 148-153.Counting minimum (s, t)-cuts in weighted planar graphs in polynomial time, Ivona Bezákováand Adam J. Friedlander. Proceedings of the 35th International Symposium on MathematicalFoundations of Computer Science (MFCS), 2010: 126-137.3