Congratulation to Prof. Lap Chi Lau of being the “first” computer scientist to receive the CMS (Canadian Mathematical Society) Doctoral Prize. The CMS Doctoral Prize was inaugurated since 1997 to recognize outstanding performance by a doctoral student who graduated from a Canadian University.
Prof. Lau wrote a groundbreaking dissertation, “Approximate min-max theorems for graph connectivity problems”, which attacks fundamental and difficult problems concerning connectivity in graphs. In particular, one of the most appealing results he proved was that for any set S of vertices and integer k in a graph G either there are k edge disjoint trees each of which contains all of S, or 26k edges hitting all such trees. One novel feature of his work is the use of the heavy machinery of exact combinatorial optimization techniques to obtain approximation algorithms. His results will surely lead to further significant developments in this area.
Prof. Lau is the first computer science student to receive this award. The citation of his thesis can be found here in pdf format with picture: http://www.math.ca/Prizes/citations/doc2007.pdf, or in html format: http://www.math.ca/MediaReleases/2007/lau-e.html#dp.