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August 25, 2010

Speaker: Dr. Mohammad Kaykobad, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology

Title: Majority Spanning Trees and Cotrees and their Applications

Abstract: A new class of spanning  trees, called Majority Spanning trees, and Majority Cotrees have been defined and their existence in digraphs, with non-negative weights on edges, have been established. The applications of Majority Spanning Trees to Minimum Connection Time Problem and Optimal Ranking of a Round Robin Tournament have been shown.  

Biography: Dr Kaykobad, born on 1 May 1954 at Jabra, Manikganj, had his early education in Baniajuri/ Manikganj Government High School and Devendra College. He received MS (Hons.) in Engineering from OMEI, now Odessa Maritime University, in 1979. In 1982 he received an MEng Degree from AIT, Thailand. He completed his PhD in 1986 from the Flinders University of South Australia. Dr Kaykobad is a Fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences, and a member of its Executive Council.

Dr Kaykobad worked at Institute of Computer Science, AERE before joining CSE Department, BUET in 1991. He has been a Professor there since 1997. He served as its Head during 1996-1999.

He has published research papers in Physical Review, International Journals of Computer Mathematics, Computers & Operations Research, Computers & Mathematics with Applications, Linear Algebra & Its Applications, Information Processing Letters, Information Processing and Management and Computers & Graphics. Dr. Kaykobad has published about 40 papers in various international journals. He has authored, coauthored or edited 13 books. Many of these books are for inspiring young students develop either programming or mathematics skill or for developing patriotism.

Dr Kaykobad was the Organizing Chair of the first International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (ICCIT) held in Bangladesh. He has guided more than a dozen undergraduate students whose works were published in journals of international repute. Dr Kaykobad is a frequent column writer in National Dailies authoring over 200 articles. He has been one of the pioneers in introducing Mathematics Olympiad and Olympiad in Informatics in Bangladesh, both of which have become very popular academic events for students and teachers of schools and colleges and for general mass. He was the observer and leader of Bangladesh team to IOI respectively in 2004 and 2005. He led/was associated with BUET teams to the World Finals of ACM ICPC for thirteen years in a row with the best result coming in year 2000 when BUET team occupied 11th position among 60 teams selected from 1968 teams of 1041 universities of 69 countries on 6 continents leaving behind teams from all famous US universities.

Dr Kaykobad was a Visiting Professor at the CSE Department, the Chinese University of Hong Kong during 2000 and 2001. He also held the prestigious IT Scholar Visiting Professorship award at Kyung Hee University, Korea. He was recognized as the Outstanding Coach in the 26th World Finals of ACM ICPC in 2002. Dr Kaykobad was a visiting Professor with Dr Manzur Murshed at Monash University and at Australian National University with ARC Federation Fellow Professor RP Brent. He was recognized as the best IT teacher in 2000 by Bangladesh Computer Samitee. In 2005 the President of the country presented him with a Gold Medal awarded Bangladesh Computer Society for his contribution to computer programming culture in the country. In 2006 the Prime Minister of the country presented him with the Gold Medal for physical sciences in the senior group awarded by the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.

Dr Kaykobad served as director of both Dhaka and Chittagong Stock Exchanges, and has long been associated with computerization efforts of various institutions of national importance. However, his principal focus is education, and is a strong believer that a developing nation can survive and flourish in the 21st century only through ensuring world class education.

Dr Kaykobad has widely travelled across Europe, Asia, Australia and North America and visited many prestigious institutions all over the world like MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, KAIST, IITK and Labs like IBM TJ Watson.