Contact: rtweber2 [at] cs [dot] washington [dot] edu
I'm an assistant teaching professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington.
I earned my Ph.D. in UW CSE's Theory Group; I was advised by Shayan Oveis Gharan and Anna Karlin
I spend most of my time teaching a wide array of theory and theory-adjacent CSE courses. I try to make theoretical CS accessible, interesting, and useful for all of my students.
When I still do theory research, I work broadly in algorithm design for graph problems and combinatorial questions.
Publications and Pre-prints
A Simply Exponential Upper Bound on the Maximum Number of Stable Matchings
With Anna Karlin and Shayan Oveis Gharan
STOC 2018
Arxiv version STOC version
STOC talk video
STOC slides (pdf)
Embedded-width: A variant of treewidth for plane graphs
With Glencora Borradaile, Jeff Erickson, and Hung Le
Arxiv version
Talk Notes
Every week the theory group has a talk where a group member describes a (hopefully) cute and interesting result over lunch. Notes from some of my talks are below. Trying to fit the contents of these notes into the 30 minute time slot is still an open problem.
Designing Better (Sports) Tournaments
Stable Matchings With Couples
Perfect Graphs Part 1: The Weak Perfect Graph Theorem
Teaching
In Summer 2019, I was the instructor for CSE 373 (Data Structures and Algorithms for Non-majors)
In Summer 2018, I was the instructor for CSE 332 (Data Structures and Parallelism).
I've been a TA for the following courses:
at Washington
CSE 431 Theory of Computation, Autumn 2019
CSE 446 Machine Learning, Spring 2019
CSE 373 (Non-major) Data Structures, Spring 2018, Autumn 2018, and Winter 2019
CSE 421 (Undergraduate) Algorithms, Winter 2018
CSE 521 (Graduate) Algorithms, Winter 2017
CSE 417 (Non Major) Algorithms, Winter 2016
CSE 311 Foundations of Computing I, Autumn 2015
At Illinois
CS 374 Algorithms and Models of Computation, Spring 2015
CS 173 Discrete Mathematics, Spring 2013-Fall 2014 (4 semesters)
CS 125 Intro to Computer Science, Spring 2012-Fall 2012 (2 semesters)
Fun
PoCSci Talks
Every year, UW CSE Ph.D. students hold PoCSci (a conference on "research" that is Potentially Computer Science) and HotPoCSci (a workshop on hot topics in PoCSci). These are absolutely, totally 100% serious conferences, with definitely-real and possibly-reviewed research. They are definitely not just joke talks about grad school life given at the usual happy hour time. Slides and notes from my talks are below:
HotPoCSci 2018: A New Branch of Graph Theory
Winner of Best Presentation
written with help from John Thickstun
Slides (PPTX) Script (PDF)
An examination of graph theory naming conventions and powerpoint transitions
HotPocSci 2019: A Workshop Proposal
co-written and co-presented with Jennifer Brennan
Slides (PPTX) Script (PDF)
A call for improvements to the current method of eating leftover lunches.
PocSci 2019: A New Course Offering
Winner of Best Presentation
Slides (PPTX) Script (PDF)
An idea for improving grad student quality of life.
I recently started a blog. So far I just use it to try to convince everyone the probability of getting a perfect March Madness bracket is much much better than 1 in 9 quintillion.
When I'm not teaching computer science or staring at a whiteboard, I'm usually playing intramural softball or watching UW sports.
