December 14-17, 2025

Sydney, Australia

Program Schedule

All the times are in AEDT (UTC +11). Additional (social) activities are or will be listed on the corresponding page: fun runs, walks, etc. A mobile-friendly schedule site is available 🔗 at this address.

Day 1: Sunday, December 14, 2025

The planned events on Day 1 include Workshops and a Welcome Reception. 

 

Workshop Session A
(Blackwattle 1)

Workshop Session B
(Blackwattle 2)

Workshop Session C
(Blackwattle 3)

8:30–9:00

Welcome tea and registration ☕

 9:00–10:00Breaking and Making Quantum Speedups
(organized by Siddhartha Jain, Seyoon Ragavan, Alexander Schmidhuber, and Noah Shutty)
(organized by Piotr Indyk, Rajesh Jayaram, and Ravi Krishnaswamy)
(organized by Ian Mertz and Ted Pyne )
10:00–10:30

Break ☕

 10:30–12:00Breaking and Making Quantum Speedups
(organized by Siddhartha Jain, Seyoon Ragavan, Alexander Schmidhuber, and Noah Shutty)
(organized by Piotr Indyk, Rajesh Jayaram, and Ravi Krishnaswamy)
(organized by Ian Mertz and Ted Pyne )
12:001:30

Lunch (provided) 🍽️

1:30–3:00Breaking and Making Quantum Speedups
(organized by Siddhartha Jain, Seyoon Ragavan, Alexander Schmidhuber, and Noah Shutty)
(organized by Piotr Indyk, Rajesh Jayaram, and Ravi Krishnaswamy)
(organized by Santosh S. Vempala)
3:00–3:30

Break

 3:30–4:30Breaking and Making Quantum Speedups
(organized by Siddhartha Jain, Seyoon Ragavan, Alexander Schmidhuber, and Noah Shutty)
(organized by Piotr Indyk, Rajesh Jayaram, and Ravi Krishnaswamy)
(organized by Santosh S. Vempala)
4:30–4:45

Break

4:45–5:30

Graduating bits 🎓

5:30–6:00
Welcome to Country
A Welcome to Country is a cultural practice performed by a Traditional Owner of the local region to welcome visitors to their Traditional Country.
6:008:00

Welcome Reception 🥂

Day 2: Monday, December 15, 2025

 9:00–10:30

Session 1A
(Blackwattle 1)

Session chair: Yuval Rabani

Session 1B
(Blackwattle 2)

Session chair: Josh Alman

Session 1C
(Blackwattle 3)

Session chair: Robin Kothari

 Online Edge Coloring: Sharp Thresholds
Authors: J. Blikstad, O. Svensson, R. Vintan, D. Wajc
Integer multiplication is at least as hard as matrix transposition
Authors: D. Harvey, J. van der Hoeven
Group Order is in QCMA
Authors: F. Le Gall, H. Nishimura, D. Thakkar
 Edge-weighted Matching in the Dark
Authors: Z. Huang, E. Sun, X. Wu, J. Zhao
Computing the Polytope Diameter is Even Harder than NP-hard (Already for Perfect Matchings)
Authors: L. Wulf
Exponential improvements to the average-case hardness of BosonSampling
Authors: A. Bouland, S. Datta, B. Fefferman, F. Hernandez
 Integral Online Algorithms for Set Cover and Load Balancing with Convex Objectives
Authors: T. Kesselheim, M. Molinaro, K. Patton, S. Singla
Asymptotically Optimal Inapproximability of E$k$-SAT Reconfiguration
Authors: S. Hirahara, N. Ohsaka
RE-completeness of entangled constraint satisfaction problems
Authors: E. Culf, K. Mastel
 Optimal 4-Approximation for the Correlated Pandora’s Problem
Authors: N. Bansal, Z. Huang, Z. Zhu
Ineffectiveness for Search and Undecidability of PCSP Meta-Problems
Authors: A. Larrauri
Gap-preserving reductions and RE-completeness of Independent Set Games
Authors: L. Mančinska, P. Spaas, T. Spirig, M. Vernooij
 A Little Clairvoyance Is All You Need
Authors: A. Gupta, H. Kaplan, A. Lindermayr, J. Schlöter, S. Yingchareonthawornchai
Inapproximability of Finding Sparse Vectors in Codes, Subspaces, and Lattices
Authors: V. Bhattiprolu, V. Guruswami, E. Lee, X. Ren
Incompressibility and spectral gaps of random circuits
Authors: C. Chen, J. Haah, J. Haferkamp, Y. Liu, T. Metger, X. Tan
10:30–10:50

Break ☕

10:50–12:02

Session 2A
(Blackwattle 1)

Session chair: Yang Liu

Session 2B
(Blackwattle 2)

Session chair: Sepehr Assadi

Session 2C
(Blackwattle 3)

Session chair: Ran Canetti

 Weighted k-Path and Other Problems in Almost O*(2^k) Deterministic Time via Dynamic Representative Sets
Author: J. Nederlof
Factorization Norms and an Inverse Theorem for MaxCut
Authors: I. Balla, L. Hambardzumyan, I. Tomon
The Sponge is Quantum Indifferentiable
Authors: G. Alagic, J. Carolan, C. Majenz, S. Tokat
 Improved 2-Approximate Shortest Paths for close vertex pairs
Author: M. Gupta
More efficient sifting for grid norms, and applications to multiparty communication complexity
Authors: Z. Kelley, X. Lyu
Parallel Repetition for Post-Quantum Arguments
Authors: A. Huang, Y. Kalai
 Paths and Intersections: Exact Emulators for Planar Graphs
Authors: G. Li, Z. Tan, T. Zhang
Sign-Rank of k-Hamming Distance is Constant
Authors: M. Göös, N. Harms, V. Imbach, D. Sokolov
On the Impossibility of SNARGs with Short CRS (or: Revisiting Gentry-Wichs Barrier in the Non-adaptive Setting)
Authors: L. Chen, Z. Jin
 Distance Approximating Minors for Planar and Minor-Free Graphs
Authors: H. Chang, J. Conroy
Direct Product Theorems for Randomized Query Complexity
Authors: S. Ben-David, E. Blais
On Succinct Obfuscation via Propositional Logic (or: How to use pv-IO)
Authors: A. Jain, Z. Jin, S. Mathialagan, O. Paneth
12:021:30

Lunch (provided) 🍽️

1:30–2:30

Plenary 1

Shafi Goldwasser, MIT and Berkeley
“Recent Results In ML Safety using a Complexity/Cryptography Perspective”

2:30–3:00

Break

3:00–4:12

Session 3A
(Blackwattle 1)

Session chair: Sepehr Assadi

Session 3B
(Blackwattle 2)

Session chair: Michael A. Forbes

Session 3C
(Blackwattle 3)

Session chair: Ronen Shaltiel

 An Improved Greedy Approximation for (Metric) $k$-Means
Authors: M. Charikar, V. Cohen-Addad, R. Gao, F. Grandoni, E. Lee, E. van Wijland
Deterministic factorization of constant-depth algebraic circuits in subexponential time
Authors: S. Bhattacharjee, M. Kumar, V. Ramanathan, R. Saptharishi, S. Saraf
Cryptography meets worst-case complexity: Optimal security and more from iO and worst-case assumptions
Authors: R. Ilango, A. Lombardi
 Stochastic Knapsack without Relaxing the Capacity
Authors: A. De, S. Khanna, N. White
Rank Bounds and PIT for $\Sigma^3 \Pi \Sigma \Pi^d$ circuits via a non-linear Edelstein-Kelly theorem
Authors: A. Garg, R. Oliveira, A. Sengupta
Solving Linear Inequalities over Convex Sets & its Applications to Cryptography and Hydrodynamics
Authors: S. Basu, H. Khorasgani, H. Maji, H. Nguyen
 Adaptivity Gaps for Stochastic Probing with Subadditive Functions
Authors: J. Li, Y. Liu, Y. Zhang
Kronecker Powers, Orthogonal Vectors, and the Asymptotic Spectrum
Authors: J. Alman, B. Li
Binary Codes for Computationally Bounded Errors Under Standard Crypto Assumptions
Authors: G. Lu, J. Silbak, D. Wichs
 Stochastic scheduling with Bernoulli-type jobs through policy stratification
Authors: A. Antoniadis, R. Hoeksma, K. Schewior, M. Uetz
Complexity theory of orbit closure intersection for tensors: reductions, completeness, and graph isomorphism hardness
Authors: V. Lysikov, M. Walter
Succinct Homomorphic MACs from Groups and Applications
Authors: Y. Ishai, H. Li, H. Lin
4:12–4:30

Break

4:30–5:24

Session 4A
(Blackwattle 1)

Session chair: Yang Liu

Session 4B
(Blackwattle 2)

Session chair: Sumegha Garg

Session 4C
(Blackwattle 3)

Session chair: Robin Kothari

 Faster Mixing of the Jerrum-Sinclair Chain
Authors: X. Chen, W. Feng, Z. Ju, T. Miao, Y. Yin, X. Zhang
Bipartite Matching is in Catalytic Logspace
Authors: A. Agarwala, I. Mertz
A distillation–teleportation protocol for fault-tolerant QRAM
Authors: A. Dalzell, C. Hann, A. Gilyén, S. McArdle, G. Salton, Q. Nguyen, A. Kubica, F. Brandao
 Rapid Mixing on Random Regular Graphs beyond Uniqueness
Authors: X. Chen, Z. Chen, Z. Chen, Y. Yin, X. Zhang
Collapsing Catalytic Classes
Authors: M. Koucky, I. Mertz, E. Pyne, S. Sami
Adversarially robust quantum state learning and testing
Authors: M. Aliakbarpour, V. Braverman, N. Chia, Y. Liu
 Deterministic counting from coupling independence
Authors: X. Chen, W. Feng, H. Guo, X. Zhang, Z. Zou
Shuffling Cards When You Are of Very Little Brain: Low Memory Generation of Permutations
Authors: M. Naor, B. Menuhin
Learning quantum Gibbs states locally and efficiently
Authors: C. Chen, A. Anshu, Q. Nguyen
5:24–6:00

Break

6:007:30

Business meeting 📊

Day 3: Tuesday, December 16, 2025

 9:00–10:30

Session 5A
(Blackwattle 1)

Session chair: Sanjeev Khanna

Session 5B
(Blackwattle 2)

Session chair: Madhur Tulsiani

Session 5C
(Blackwattle 3)

Session chair: Xi Chen

 

Near-Optimal Fault-Tolerant Strong Connectivity Preservers

Authors: G. Hoppenworth, T. Saranurak, B. Wang

Random Reed-Solomon Codes and Random Linear Codes are Locally Equivalent

Authors: M. Levi, J. Mosheiff, N. Shagrithaya

An Improved Bound for the Beck-Fiala Conjecture
Authors: N. Bansal, H. Jiang
 

Deterministic Almost-Linear-Time Gomory-Hu Trees

Authors: A. Abboud, R. Kyng, J. Li, D. Panigrahi, M. Probst, T. Saranurak, W. Yuan, W. Yuan

Maximally Extendable Product Codes are Good Coboundary Expanders

Authors: G. Kalachev, P. Panteleev

A Dense Neighborhood Lemma: Applications of Partial Concept Classes to Domination and Chromatic Number
Authors: R. Bourneuf, P. Charbit, S. Thomasse
 

Combinatorial Maximum Flow via Weighted Push-Relabel on Shortcut Graphs

Authors: A. Bernstein, J. Blikstad, J. Li, T. Saranurak, T. Tu

Near-Asymptotically-Good Quantum Codes with Transversal CCZ Gates and Sublinear-Weight Parity-Checks

Authors: L. Golowich, V. Guruswami

Strong Sparsification for 1-in-3-SAT via Polynomial Freiman-Ruzsa
Authors: B. Bedert, T. Nakajima, K. Okrasa, S. Zivny
 

Generalized Flow in Nearly-linear Time on Moderately Dense Graphs

Authors: S. Jiang, M. Kapralov, L. Er Lu, A. Sidford

A k^{q/q-2} Lower Bound for Odd Query Locally Decodable Codes from Bipartite Kikuchi Graphs

Authors: O. Janzer, P. Manohar

Cycle-factors of regular graphs via entropy
Authors: E. Hurley, A. Girao, L. Michel, N. Draganic, A. Müyesser, M. Christoph
 

Almost Tight Additive Guarantees for $k$-Edge-Connectivity

Authors: N. Kumar, C. Swamy

Improved Lower Bounds for all Odd-Query Locally Decodable Codes

Authors: A. Basu, J. Hsieh, P. Kothari, A. Lin

Polynomial Bounds for the Graph Minor Structure Theorem
Authors: M. Gorsky, M. Seweryn, S. Wiederrecht
10:30–10:50

Break ☕

10:50–12:02

Session 6A
(Blackwattle 1)

Session chair: Michael Kapralov

Session 6B
(Blackwattle 2)

Session chair: Pravesh Kothari

Session 6C
(Blackwattle 3)

Session chair: Kevin Tian

 

The Power of Recursive Embeddings for $\ell_p$ Metrics

Authors: R. Krauthgamer, N. Petruschka, S. Sapir

Undirected Multicast Network Coding Gaps via Locally Decodable Codes

Authors: Z. He, M. Braverman

How Global Calibration Strengthens Multiaccuracy
Authors: S. Casacuberta, P. Gopalan, V. Kanade, O. Reingold
 

Embeddings into Similarity Measures for Nearest Neighbor Search

Authors: A. Andoni, N. Nosatzki

Constant Rate Codes for Adaptive Broadcasts Do Not Exist

Authors: K. Efremenko, G. Kol, D. Paramonov, R. Saxena

High dimensional online calibration in polynomial time
Authors: B. Peng
 

Average-Distortion Sketching

Authors: Y. Bao, A. Baweja, N. Menand, E. Waingarten, N. White, T. Zhang

List Decoding Expander-Based Codes up to Capacity in Near-Linear Time

Authors: S. Srivastava, M. Tulsiani

Near-Optimal Algorithms for Omniprediction
Authors: P. Okoroafor, B. Kleinberg, M. Kim
 

Query-Efficient Fixpoints of $\ell_p$-Contractions

Authors: S. Haslebacher, J. Lill, P. Schnider, S. Weber

Robust Local Testability of Tensor Products of Constant-Rate Algebraic Geometry Codes

Authors: S. Garg, A. Sengupta

Density Measures for Language Generation
Authors: J. Kleinberg, F. Wei
12:021:30

Lunch (provided) 🍽️

1:30–2:30

Plenary 2

Sebastien Bubeck, OpenAI (remote)
“Recent advances in LLMs for Mathematics”

2:30–3:10

Break

3:10–4:22

Session 7A
(Blackwattle 1)

Session chair: Robert Krauthgamer

Session 7B
(Blackwattle 2)

Session chair: Sumegha Garg

Session 7C
(Blackwattle 3)

Session chair: Rocco Servedio

 

Approximating High-Dimensional Earth Mover’s Distance as Fast as Closest Pair

Authors: L. Beretta, V. Cohen-Addad, R. Jayaram, E. Waingarten

Fingerprint Filters are Optimal

Authors: W. Kuszmaul, J. Liang, R. Zhou

Overcomplete Tensor Decomposition via Koszul-Young Flattenings
Authors: P. Kothari, A. Moitra, A. Wein
 

Root Ridge Leverage Score Sampling for $\ell_p$ Subspace Approximation

Authors: D. Woodruff, T. Yasuda

Static Retrieval Revisited: To Optimality and Beyond

Authors: Y. Hu, W. Kuszmaul, J. Liang, H. Yu, J. Zhang, R. Zhou

Implicit High-Order Moment Tensor Estimation and Learning Latent Variable Models
Authors: I. Diakonikolas, D. Kane
 

Perfect L_p Sampling with Polylogarithmic Update Time

Authors: W. Swartworth, D. Woodruff, S. Zhou

Stronger Cell Probe Lower Bounds via Local PRGs

Authors: O. Korten, T. Pitassi, R. Impagliazzo

Robust Learning of Multi-index Models via Iterative Subspace Approximation
Authors: I. Diakonikolas, G. Iakovidis, D. Kane, N. Zarifis
 

ℓ2/ℓ2 Sparse Recovery via Weighted Hypergraph Peeling

Authors: N. Fischer, V. Nakos

Dynamic Dyck and Tree Edit Distance: Decompositions and Reductions to String Edit Distance
Authors: D. Das, J. Gilbert, T. Kociumaka, M. Hajiaghayi, B. Saha

Solving Zero-Sum Games with Fewer Matrix-Vector Products
Authors: I. Karmarkar, L. O’Carroll, A. Sidford
4:22–4:40

Break

4:40–5:34

Session 8A
(Blackwattle 1)

Session chair: Thatchaphol Saranurak

Session 8B
(Blackwattle 2)

Session chair: Salil Vadhan

Session 8C
(Blackwattle 3)

Session chair: David Woodruff

 

Fast Algorithms for Graph Arboricity and Related Problems

Authors: R. Cen, H. Fleischmann, G. Li, J. Li, D. Panigrahi

Ramanujan bigraphs and applications

Authors: S. Evra, B. Feigon, O. Parzanchevski, K. Maurischat

Faster exact learning of k-term DNFs with membership and equivalence queries
Authors: J. Alman, S. Nadimpalli, S. Patel, R. Servedio
 

Dynamic Treewidth in Logarithmic Time

Author: T. Korhonen

Extractors for Samplable Distributions with Polynomially Small Min-Entropy

Authors: R. Shaltiel

Computational-Statistical Tradeoffs from NP-hardness
Authors: G. Blanc, C. Koch, C. Strassle, L. Tan
 

Random-Shift Revisited: Tight Approximations for Tree Embeddings and ℓ1-Oblivious Routings

Authors: M. Probst, R. Kyng, T. Rieder

Finding Colorings in One-Sided Expanders

Authors: R. Buhai, Y. Hua, D. Steurer, A. Vári-Kakas

Theoretical limitations of multi-layer Transformer
Authors: L. Chen, B. Peng, H. Wu
5:24–6:00

Break

6:009:00

Banquet @ Squire Landing 🍴🍷

Day 4: Wednesday, December 17, 2025

 9:00–10:30

Session 9A
(Blackwattle 1)

Session chair: Artur Czumaj

Session 9B
(Blackwattle 2)

Session chair: Michal Koucký

Session 9C
(Blackwattle 3)

Session chair: Santosh Vempala

 Towards True Work-Efficiency in Parallel Derandomization: MIS, Maximal Matching, and Hitting Set
Authors: M. Ghaffari, C. Grunau
On Inverse Theorems and Combinatorial Lines
Authors: A. Bhangale, S. Khot, Y. Liu, D. Minzer
Characterization of Priority-Neutral Matching Lattices
Authors: C. Thomas
 Parallel $(1+\epsilon)$-Approximate Multi-Commodity Mincost Flow in Almost Optimal Depth and Work
Authors: B. Haeupler, Y. Jiang, Y. Long, T. Saranurak, S. Wang
NP-hardness of the Minimum Circuit Size Problem from Well-Studied Assumptions
Authors: S. Hirahara, R. Ilango
Truthful and Almost Envy-Free Mechanism of Allocating Indivisible Goods: the Power of Randomness
Authors: X. Bu, B. Tao
 On the Parallel Complexity of Finding a Matroid Basis
Authors: S. Khanna, A. Putterman, J. Song
The Proof Analysis Problem
Authors: N. Arteche, A. Atserias, S. de Rezende, E. Khaniki
Beyond Regularity: Simple versus Optimal Mechanisms, Revisited
Authors: Y. Feng, Y. Jin
 Constant Approximation of Arboricity in Near-Optimal Sublinear Time
Authors: J. Dai, M. Ghaffari, J. Portmann
High-to-Low Dimensional PPA-completeness: Borsuk-Ulam, Tucker, Consensus Halving, and Ham Sandwich
Authors: R. Gao, A. Hollender, A. Rubinstein
Polynomial-Time Approximation Schemes via Utility Alignment: Unit-Demand Pricing and More
Authors: R. Bowers, M. Garbea, E. Pountourakis, S. Taggart
 Lower Bounds for Non-adaptive Local Computation Algorithms
Authors: A. Azarmehr, S. Behnezhad, A. Ghafari, M. Sudan
Optimal Trickle-Down Theorems for Path Complexes via C-Lorentzian Polynomials with Applications to Sampling and Log-Concave Sequences
Authors: J. Leake, K. Lindberg, S. Gharan
Nearly Tight Regret Bounds for Profit Maximization in Bilateral Trade
Authors: S. Di Gregorio, P. Duetting, F. Fusco, C. Schwiegelshohn
10:30–10:50

Break ☕

10:50–12:02

Session 10A
(Blackwattle 1)

Session chair: Aaron Sidford

Session 10B
(Blackwattle 2)

Session chair: Clément Canonne

Session 10C
(Blackwattle 3)

Session chair: Michael A. Forbes

 Radial Isotropic Position via an Implicit Newton’s Method
Authors: A. Jambulapati, J. Li, K. Tian
Distributed Triangle Detection is Hard in Few Rounds
Authors: S. Assadi, J. Sundaresan
On optimal distinguishers for Planted Clique
Authors: A. Nagda, P. Raghavendra
 Faster logconcave sampling from a cold start in high dimension
Authors: Y. Kook, S. Vempala
Round Elimination via Self-Reduction: Closing Gaps for Distributed Maximal Matching
Authors: S. Khoury, A. Schild
Tight Low Degree Hardness for Optimizing Pure Spherical Spin Glasses
Authors: M. Sellke
 Optimal Smoothed Analysis of the Simplex Method
Authors: E. Bach, S. Huiberts
Multi-Pass Streaming Lower Bounds for Approximating Max-Cut
Authors: Y. Fei, D. Minzer, S. Wang
The Quasi-Polynomial Low-Degree Conjecture is False
Authors: R. Buhai, J. Hsieh, A. Jain, P. Kothari
 Handling LP-Rounding for Hierarchical Clustering and Fitting Distances by Ultrametrics
Authors: H. An, M. Kao, C. Lee, M. Lee
A Polynomial Space Lower Bound for Diameter Estimation in Dynamic Streams
Authors: S. Khanna, A. Padaki, K. Singal, E. Waingarten
PTF Testing Lower Bounds for Non-Gaussian Component Analysis
Authors: I. Diakonikolas, D. Kane, S. Liu, T. Pittas
12:021:30

Lunch (provided) 🍽️

1:30–2:24

Session 11A
(Blackwattle 1)

Session chair: Eric Blais

Session 11B
(Blackwattle 2)

Session chair: Troy Lee

Session 11C
(Blackwattle 3)

Session chair: Bernhard Haeupler

 Near-Optimal Property Testers for Pattern Matching
Authors: C. Jin, T. Kociumaka
Efficiently Batching Unambiguous Interactive Proofs
Authors: B. Berger, R. Goyal, M. Hong, Y. Kalai
Truly Subquadratic Time Algorithms for Diameter and Related Problems in Graphs of Bounded VC-dimension
Authors: T. Chan, H. Chang, J. Gao, S. Kisfaludi-Bak, H. Le, D. Zheng
 Tight Pair Query Lower Bounds for Matching and Earth Mover’s Distance
Authors: A. Azarmehr, S. Behnezhad, M. Roghani, A. Rubinstein
Improved Round-by-round Soundness IOPs via Reed-Muller Codes
Authors: D. Minzer, K. Zheng
Shortest Paths on Convex Polyhedral Surfaces
Authors: H. Wang
 Instance-Optimal Uniformity Testing and Tracking
Authors: G. Blanc, C. Canonne, E. Waingarten
Proving Natural Distribution Properties is Harder than Testing Them
Authors: T. Herman, G. Rothblum

Pattern Matching under Weighted Edit Distance

Authors: P. Charalampopoulos, T. Kociumaka, P. Wellnitz

2:24–2:55

Break ☕

2:55–4:25

🏆 Session 12

Session chair: Rotem Oshman

 Godel in Cryptography: Effectively Zero Knowledge Proofs for NP with No Interaction, No Setup, and Perfect Soundness
Author: R. Ilango
 Obfuscation of Unitary Quantum Programs
Authors: M-Y. Huang, E-C. Tang
 Explicit Lossless Vertex Expanders
Authors: J-T. Hsieh, A. Lubotzky, S. Mohanty, A. Reiner, R. Y. Zhang
4:25–4:50

Break

4:50–5:50

🏆 Session 13

Session chair: Ran Raz

 Quasipolynomial bounds for the corners theorem
Authors: M. Jaber, Y. P. Liu, S. Lovett, A. Ostuni, M. Sawhney
 Breaking a Long-Standing Barrier: 2-ε Approximation for Steiner Forest
Authors: A. Ahmadi, I. Gholami, M. Hajiaghayi, P. Jabbarzade, M. Mahdavi