New projects acquired in June
In June, the Department of Technology at UP IAM acquired a project under the HORIZON RIA - Research and Innovation Action programme, which will begin in September 2024. The Departments of Mathematics at UP IAM and UP Famnit have once again been successful in the Public Call for (co)financing scientific research cooperation between the Republic of Slovenia and the United States of America for the years 2024 – 2026 by the Slovenian Public Agency for Scientific Research and Innovation Activities (ARIS).
At UP IAM, we have aaquired the project WoodStock - Empowering climate-smart, circular, and zero-waste use of underutilized wood from the forest and building stock in the construction sector to support the New European Bauhaus, led at UP by prof. dr. Andreja Kutnar. The project is financed in the period 1.9.2024 - 31.8.2026 within the HORIZON RIA programme, and isvodilni partner je University of Ghent.
WoodStock is a multifaceted project aimed at promoting climate-smart wooden construction practices in line with the New European Bauhaus (NEB) initiative. The primary focus is on quantifying and mapping wood resources, including underutilized streams, using a new methodology for tier 3 harvested wood products and dynamic material flow analysis modeling to gain insights into wood utilization potential, climate mitigation impacts, and resource availability. This also includes a robust dynamic Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to evaluate the environmental, social, and economic impacts associated with various resource streams and scenarios. WoodStock will leverage collective expertise to develop zero-waste and circular buildings, harnessing the power of digital twins, assessing aspects of human health and well-being through co-creation activities with a multitude of actors following NEB principles and values, in 6 living labs (LL) across 6 different European regions.
At UP IAM, we have acquired the project "Selected topics on graphs, hypergraphs, and Boolean functions," led by Prof. Dr. Martin Milanič in collaboration with Rutgers University.
The project focuses on two main lines of research connecting graphs and hypergraphs, and partly also Boolean functions. The first line of research is related to investigations of 3-uniform hypergraphs. The starting point is the well-known open problem regarding the existence of a ‘purely combinatorial’ polynomial-time algorithm for recognizing threshold hypergraphs (or, equivalently, threshold monotone Boolean functions given by their complete DNF).
The second line of research deals with a concept in graph theory called clique dually conformal graphs. This concept is closely related to dually conformal hypergraphs, a notion introduced in a previous bilateral project collaboration between the two project teams. Motivated by these initial observations of the class of CDC graphs, the project goal in this part is to investigate further structural and algorithmic properties of CDC graphs, and characterize them in special cases.
At UP FAMNIT, they have acquired the project "Impartial Chess on Young Diagrams," led by Dr. Peter Muršič in collaboration with Rhodes College.
Within the project framework the team will investigate an Impartial game connecting the game of Chess and Young diagrams. Impartial games can be precisely described by stating which joint moves are possible. Indeed, two players play, where all moves are shared between them, and thus, it does not matter who starts. They alternate in moving until no more moves are possible. According to convention, the last move brings victory.
A Young diagram is a graphical representation of an integer partition, which is a decreasing sequence of natural numbers. The diagram resembles a chessboard with several pieces removed from the bottom right corner. The main line of research is related to the continuation of existing research published in [Gottlieb2023] and [Gottlieb2024].
UP FAMNIT also acquired the project "Studying 2-Y-homogeneous bipartite graphs and their connections with Terwilliger algebras and combinatorial designs," led by Dr. Blas Fernandez collaboration with College of Science and Engineering, Seattle University.
The characterization or systematic classification of bipartite graphs that are (almost) 2-Y-homogeneous presents an extremely challenging task. In general, this problem has proven to be highly difficult and complex, so most research focuses on specific families of graphs, particularly on bipartite distance-regular graphs and distance-biregular graphs.
The approach is based on existing literature and addresses challenges within the framework of distance-polynomial regular graphs. The purpose of the project is to investigate 2-Y-homogeneous properties of distance-polynomial regular graphs and classify all 2-Y-homogeneous distance-biregular graphs. In addition to the main objectives, our research has the potential to yield significant results extending beyond the realm of the discipline and impacting the broader community.