Professor of informatics awarded prestigious international applied mathematics prize
Professor Fredrik Manne will receive this year鈥檚 George P贸lya Prize in Applied Combinatorics.
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The prize, established in 1969, is only awarded every four years for 鈥渁 notable application of听combinatorial theory.鈥�
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In 2021 the prize goes to Professor Fredrik Manne along with his two international colleagues听Assefaw Gebremedhin from Washington State University and and Alex Pothen from Purdue听University.
They were chosen specifically for their work听听鈥淲hat Color is Your Jacobian? Graph听Coloring for听Computing Derivatives,鈥� which appeared in SIAM Review in 2005.
This article describes efficient algorithms to solve several variant coloring problems听and then applies听them to compute Jacobian and Hessian matrices 鈥� matrices of听derivatives听that are central in many fields of science听and engineering, as听well as a听powerful back-end tool in machine learning. The paper was written when Gebremedhin was a PhD student at The University of Bergen, supervised by Manne.
As well as his accomplishments within his field of research, Manne is also a popular lecturer,听and has previously been awarded the prize for best teacher as well as the title of听Excellent Teaching Practitioner听at 听the听Faculty of Mathematics听and听Natural Sciences at the University of Bergen. He is currently Head of Teaching at the Department of Informatics.