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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/H026835/1
Title: Descriptive Complexity with Algebraic Operators
Principal Investigator: Dawar, Professor A
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Computer Science and Technology
Organisation: University of Cambridge
Scheme: Standard Research
Starts: 01 April 2010 Ends: 31 March 2014 Value (£): 424,833
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Fundamentals of Computing
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
15 Dec 2009 ICT Prioritisation Panel (Dec 09) Deferred
02 Feb 2010 ICT Prioritisation Panel (Feb 10) Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
The study of computational complexity is concerned with understanding what makes certain computational tasks inherently difficult to solve. In this context, problems that can be solved by means of algorithms that take a number of steps bounded by a polynomial are considered to be feasible, or efficiently solvable. A long standing research concern in the field of descriptive complexity has been to give a complete classification of those problems that are feasible. Such a complete classification would take the form of a formal language (or a logic) in which one could define all the feasible problems, but no others. It has been known for some time that languages based on induction and counting are not sufficient for this purpose and it has recently been discovered that adding certain operators based on linear algebra can extend the power of such languages. Our research aims at building on this breakthrough by understanding the power of these extended languages. To do this we will develop new methods to analyse the expressive power and use this to determine whether or not the newly defined languages do capture the power of feasible computation.We will also investigate whether these languages capture feasible computation in interesting special cases.
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Organisation Website: http://www.cam.ac.uk