Professor Mark Jerrum

Profile

Mark Jerrum’s research interests lie in combinatorics, computational complexity and stochastic processes. All of these ingredients come together in the study of randomised algorithms: computational procedures that exploit the surprising power of making random choices. A strong theme in this work is the analysis of the mixing time of combinatorially or geometrically defined Markov chains. More generally, he works on the computational complexity of counting problems, including weighted counting problems, as exemplified by partition functions and generating functions. Statistical physics, constraint satisfaction and graph polynomials provide a rich source of motivating examples.

He was module organiser for MTH784P Optimisation for Business Processes in 2022–23, and will be module organiser for MTH4213 Numbers, Sets and Functions (single honours) in 2023–24.

Undergraduate Teaching

MTH4213 Numbers, Sets and Functions (single honours)

Research

Examples of research funding:

EPSRC research grant Sampling in Hereditary Classes, EP/S016694/1.  Start date 01/01/2019, end date 31/07/2023.  £78K.

Grants