Photo

Konstantin Makarychev

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center  
P.O. Box 218
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~kmakaryc/

Education

2003 – 2007

Department of Computer Science, Princeton University

 

Advisor:  Moses Charikar

 

Ph.D. in Computer Science


1996 – 2001

Department of Mechanics and Mathematics, Moscow State University

 

M.S. in Pure and Applied Mathematics

 

Diploma with Honors; GPA 5.0/5.0

 

Advisors:  Alexander Shen and  Nikolai Vereshchagin


1992 – 1996

Moscow Math High School #57

Employment

07/2007 - present

IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, NY

 

Researcher


06/2006 – 09/2006

IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, NY

 

Intern, Theory of Computation Group

 

Mentor: Maxim Sviridenko


06/2005 – 09/2005

Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA

 

Intern, Theory Group

 

Mentor: Assaf Naor


01/2002 – 08/2003

Siebel Systems, San Mateo, CA

 

Software Engineer, Core Engineering

 

Teaching

Spring 2006

Teaching Assistant for COS 345: The Efficient Universe (Princeton)

Fall 2004

Teaching Assistant for COS 341: Discrete Mathematics (Princeton)

  

1996 – 1998,
2000 – 2001

Moscow School #57, Moscow University and MCCME,
math classes for gifted high school students

Awards and Honors

2006 – 2007

IBM Ph.D. Fellowship

2003 – 2007

Gordon Wu Fellowship

2003

Siebel Engineering Outstanding Contributor Award

1996 – 1997

George Soros Fellowship

1996

Russian Mathematical Olympiad – Silver Medal

Programming Skills

Languages: C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, SQL

Publications

On Sparse Rectangular Representations of Matrix Data,
Howard Karloff, Flip Korn, Konstantin Makarychev, Yuval Rabani
manuscript
 
Indexing Genomic Sequences on the IBM Blue Gene,
Amol Ghoting and Konstantin Makarychev
To appear in SC 2009
ACM Gordon Bell Prize Finalist
 
Serial and Parallel Methods for I/O Efficient Suffix Tree Construction,
Amol Ghoting and Konstantin Makarychev
SIGMOD 2009, pp. 827-840
Invited to ACM Transactions on Database Systems
 
How to Play Unique Games on Expanders,
Konstantin Makarychev and Yury Makarychev
ECCC Technical Report TR09-021
 
On Hardness of Pricing Items for Single-Minded Bidders,
Rohit Khandekar Tracy Kimbrel, Konstantin Makarychev, Maxim Sviridenko,
To appear in APPROX 2009
 
Integrality Gaps for Sherali-Adams Relaxations,
Moses Charikar, Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev,
STOC 2009, pp. 283-292
 
Online Make-to-Order Joint Replenishment Model: Primal Dual Competitive Algorithms,
Niv Buchbinder, Tracy Kimbrel, Retsef Levi, Konstantin Makarychev, Maxim Sviridenko,
SODA 2008, pp. 952 - 961
 
Local Global Tradeoffs in Metric Embeddings,
Moses Charikar, Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev,
FOCS 2007, pp. 713-723;
Full version to appear in the special issue of SIAM Journal on Computing (SICOMP)
 
On the Advantage over Random for Maximum Acyclic Subgraph,
Moses Charikar, Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev,
FOCS 2007, pp. 625-633
 
Near-Optimal Algorithms for Maximum Constraint Satisfaction Problems,
In this paper we study two Maximum Constraint Satisfaction Problems: MAX 2SAT and MAX k-CSP.

For MAX 2SAT, we present an approximation algorithm that given a (1-ε) satisfiable instance finds an assignment of variables satisfying a 1-O(ε) fraction of all constraints. This result is optimal assuming the Unique Games Conjecture. The best previously known result, due to Zwick, was 1-O(ε1/3)

For MAX k-CSP, we present a ck/2k approximation algorithm (where c > 0.44 is an absolute constant). This result improves the previously best known algorithm by Hast, which has an approximation guarantee of   Ω(k/(2k log k)). Our approximation guarantee matches the upper bound of Samorodnitsky and Trevisan up to a constant factor (their result assumes the Unique Games Conjecture).

Moses Charikar, Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev,
SODA 2007, pp. 62-68;
Special issue of ACM Transactions on Algorithms, vol. 5, no. 3, article 32, July 2009
 
A Divide and Conquer Algorithm for d-Dimensional Linear Arrangement,
Moses Charikar, Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev,
SODA 2007
 
How to Play Unique Games Using Embeddings,
In this paper we present a new approximation algorithm for Unique Games. For a Unique Game with n vertices and k states, if a (1-ε) fraction of all constraints is satisfiable, the algorithm finds an assignment satisfying a

1-O(ε √ (log n log k))

fraction of all constraints. To this end, we introduce new embedding techniques for rounding semidefinite relaxations of problems with large domain size.
Eden Chlamtac, Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev,
FOCS 2006, pp. 687-696
 
Near-Optimal Algorithms for Unique Games,
We present approximation algorithms for the Unique Game Problem. For instances with domain size k where the optimal solution satisfies (1 - ε) fraction of all constraints, our algorithms satisfy roughly k-½ ε and 1 - O((ε log k)½) fraction of all constraints. Our results are near optimal if the Unique Games Conjecture is true.
Moses Charikar, Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev,
STOC 2006, pp. 205-214
 
Directed Metrics and Directed Graph Partitioning Problems,
In this paper we initiate a study of metric embeddings for directed metrics and their applications to directed partitioning problems. We prove low and upper bounds for the distortion of such embeddings.
Moses Charikar, Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev,
SODA 2006, pp. 51-60
 
O(sqrt{log n}) approximation algorithms for Min UnCut, Min 2CNF Deletion, and directed cut problems,
We give O(√log n)-approximation algorithms for the Min UnCut, Min 2CNF Deletion, Directed Balanced Separator, and Directed Sparsest Cut problems. The previously best known algorithms give an O(log n)-approximation for Min UnCut, Directed Balanced Separator, Directed Sparsest Cut, and an O(log n log log n)-approximation for Min 2CNF Deletion. We also show that the integrality gap of an SDP relaxation of the Minimum Multicut problem is Ω(log n).
Amit Agarwal, Moses Charikar, Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev,
STOC 2005, pp. 573-581
 
Quadratic Forms on Graphs,
We introduce a new graph parameter, called the Grothendieck constant of a graph. This parameter is a generalization of the classical Grothendieck constant; and it is equal to an integrality gap of a certain SDP problem, which has various algorithmic applications. Our results improve a recent result of Kashin and Szarek on Gram matrices of uniformly bounded functions, and settle a problem of Megretski and of Charikar and Wirth.
Noga Alon, Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev, Assaf Naor
STOC 2005, pp. 486-493;
Inventiones Mathematicae, vol. 163, no. 3, pp. 499-522, March 2006
 
Conditionally Independent Random Variables,
In this paper we investigate the notion of conditional independence and prove several information inequalities for conditionally independent random variables.
Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev
Technical Report arXiv:cs.IT/0510029
 
A new class of non Shannon type inequalities for entropies,
In this paper we prove a countable set of non-Shannon-type linear information inequalities for entropies of discrete random variables, i.e., information inequalities which cannot be reduced to the "basic" inequality I(X : Y | Z) > 0. Our results generalize the inequalities of Zhang and Yeung who found the first examples of non-Shannon-type information inequalities.
Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev, Andrei Romashchenko, Nikolai Vereshchagin
Communications in Information and Systems, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 147-166, December 2002
 
The Importance of Being Formal,
Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev
The Mathematical Intelligencer, vol. 23 no. 1, 2001
 
Proof of Pak's conjecture on tilings by T-tetrominoes (in Russian),
Konstantin Makarychev, Yury Makarychev
manuscript
 

Service

Program Committee member for STOC 2008

Refereeing for Algorithmica, Discrete Optimization, Information Processing Letters, Journal of Global Optimization, Mathematics of Operations Research, SIAM Journal on Computing, SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science, STACS 2003, STACS 2006, ESA 2006, FOCS 2007, STOC 2008, FOCS 2008, PODC 2008, CSR 2008, FOCS 2008, STOC 2009, FOCS 2009, SODA 2010

References available upon request