Physics graduate student Melinda Varga has been accepted into the 2013 Complex Systems Summer School at the Santa Fe Institute. She was selected for her academic credentials, research and interdisciplinary interests. Selection for the school is highly selective as there is only one spot for every six applicants. The annual program will take place from June 3-28 and consists of lectures, laboratories, and discussions sessions focusing on ideas, tools, and current topics in complex systems research in mathematical, physical, living, and social systems. Students also complete team projects related to topics discussed during the program
Varga is advised by Zoltán Toroczkai, professor of physics and concurrent professor of computer science engineering, and is working on the Boolean Satisfiability problem (an NP complete decision problem) using an analog, i.e., physics-based algorithm. Her goal is to develop a description of constraint satisfaction hardness using the methods of dynamical systems and chaos theory.