Curriculum Vitae for Boaz Tsaban

 

Basic information. Born in Israel 6 February 1973; citizen of Israel (I.D. 02509157-0); Married + 3.

 

Current position. A post-doctoral student at Einstein Institute of Mathematics, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; supervisor: Professor Saharon Shelah.

 

Contact details. E-mail: tsaban@math.huji.ac.il ; regular mail: 4 Bialik St., Givat-Shmuel 54011, Israel.

 

Academic studies. Completed B.Sc. 1994 (Mathematics extended), M.Sc. 1997 (Mathematics, supervised by Martin Goldstern and Hillel Furstenberg), and Ph.D. 2003 (Mathematics, supervised by Hillel Furstenberg), all at Bar-Ilan University, with distinction. The doctoral dissertation won the 2003 Nessyahu Prize for the best Ph.D. in mathematics in Israel.

 

Teaching. Taught various courses at all academic levels, in universities and colleges.

 

Solved open problems and conjectures of: Menger (1925), Hurewicz (1927), Preneel (1994), Steprans (1996), Miller-Just-Scheepers-Szepticky (1996), Scheepers (1999), Kocinac-Scheepers (2000),  Tkacenko-Hernandez (2000), Bukovski-Reclaw-Repicky (2001), Kocinac-Scheepers (2002), Fremlin (2002), Naor-Reingold (2002).

 

Collaborators. Austria: Heike Mildenberger. Poland: Tomasz Weiss. Israel: David Garber, Hillel Furstenberg, Adi Shamir, Saharon Shelah, Mina Teicher, Uzi Vishne. USA: Tomek Bartoszynski, Charles Holland, Marion Scheepers.

 

Seminar and conferences talks. Lectured in more than 20 seminars, workshops and conferences, including: BGU Symposium in mathematics (Israel, 2001), Coverings, selections, and games in topology (Italy, 2002), Israel Mathematical Union (Israel, 2003), The Barcelona Conference on Set Theory (Spain, 2003).

 

Research interests

 

Infinite-combinatorial topology: This is a new branch with old roots in the field of set-theoretic topology. We use tools from infinite combinatorics to study classical and new problems in topology, usually when the problems involve a diagonalization principle in an explicit or implicit manner. We use this approach in a systematic manner and obtain an aesthetically pleasing theory, which is then used to solve problems in the field in an elegant manner. The approach is often to develop “dictionaries” translating topological properties into combinatorial ones, and then applying the known methods of infinite combinatorics. The major tools are from set theory (in particular, we use the method of forcing), measure and category theory, general topology, and infinite game theory.

            In addition to solving several open problems in the field and settling several conjectures (see above), we have also carried several rather complete classification projects of some of the prototypes of properties in the field, and introduced several new notions to the field.

 

Topological algebra: We applied the above-mentioned framework to solve a problem of Tkacenko and Hernandez on a generalization of sigma-compact groups defined in terms of a diagonalization procedure.

            We also studied parametric equations in lattice-ordered groups from a computational point of view.

 

Pseudo-randomness: We made several contributions to this field, dealing with huge (but finite) randomly-looking objects, including: New, provably secure modes of operations, word-oriented linear generators with maximal period, fast-forward pseudorandom permutations.

 

Algebraic geometry and combinatorial group theory: We found a method which yields a probabilistic solution to a given system of equations in “random” subgroups of the braid group. This undecideable problem implies many of the difficult problems in the field, like the conjugacy problem, and the group membership problem.

 

Books. I wrote the books for some of the large courses at Bar-Ilan University: Linear Algebra, Infinitesimal Calculus, Set Theory, and Mathematical Logic.

 

Refereeing. I have refereed papers for the following journals: Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, Jounal of Number Theory, Note di Matematica, Information Processing Letters, IEEE Transactions on Information Security, Proceedings of the LATIN 2004 Conference on Theoretical Computer Sciences.

 

Reviewing. I review papers for Mathematical Reviews and for Zentralblatt Math.

 

Editing. I edit (voluntarily) the SPM Bulletin, a (monthly to quarterly) bulletin devoted to selection principles and diagonalization arguments in mathematics.

 

Publications. Following are my published works and works in press.

1                     Special classes of strongly null sets: A journy into the continuum, M.Sc. Thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 1997.

2                    On the Rabbinical approximation of л (with David Garber), Historia Mathematica 25 (1998), 75-84.

3                    A topological interpretation of t, Real Analysis Exchange 25  (1999), 391-404.

4                    A mechanical derivation of the area of a sphere (with  David  Garber), The American Mathematical Monthly 108 (2001), 10-15.

5                    Guaranteeing the diversity of number generators (with Adi Shamir), Information and Computation 170 (2001), 1-14.

6                    A diagonalization property between Hurewicz and Menger, Real Analysis Exchange 207 (2001/02), 757-763.

7                   The combinatorics of Borel covers (with Marion Scheepers), Topology and its Applications 121 (2002), 357--382.

8                   Efficient linear feedback shift registers with maximal period (with Uzi Vishne), Finite Fields and their Applications 8 (2002), 256-267.[1]

9                    Infinite Combinatorial Topology, Doctoral Dissertation, Bar-Ilan University, 2003.

10                Bernoulli numbers and the probability of a birthday surprise, Discrete Applied Mathematics 127 (2003), 657-663.[2]

11                Permutation graphs, fast forward permutations, and sampling the cycle structure of a permutation, Journal of Algorithms 47 (2003), 104-121.[3]

12                Critical cardinalities and additivity properties of combinatorial notions of smallness (with Saharon Shelah), Journal of Applied Analysis 9 (2003), 149-162.

13                Additivity properties of topological diagonalizations (with Tomek Bartoszynski and Saharon Shelah), Journal of Symbolic Logic 68 (2003), 1254-1260.

14                The minimal cardinality where the Reznichenko property fails, Israel Journal of Mathematics 140 (2004), 367-374.

15                The combinatorics of splittability, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, to appear.

16               Hereditary topological diagonalizations and the Menger-Hurewicz Conjectures (with Tomek Bartoszynski), Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, to appear.

17                Selection principles and the minimal tower problem, Note di Matematica, to appear.

18                Topological diagonalizations and Hausdorff dimension (with Tomasz Weiss), Note di Matematica, to appear.

19               Selection principles in Mathematics: A milestone of open problems, Note di Matematica, to appear.

20               o-bounded groups and other topological groups with strong combinatorial properties, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, to appear.

21                The Hurewicz covering property and slaloms in the Baire space, Fundamenta Mathematicae, to appear.

22                The conjugacy problem and related problems in lattice-ordered groups (with W. Charles Holland), International Journal of Algebra and Computation, to appear.

 

Citing papers. Most of my works are cited in published papers and works in progress by other authors. Following are some examples.

 

[An]

Vladimir Anashin, Pseudorandom number generation by p-adic ergodic transformations, preprint.

[An2]

Pseudorandom Number Generation by p-adic Ergodic Transformations: An Addendum, preprint.

[Ba]

Taras Banakh, Cardinal characteristics of the ideal of Haar null sets, Commentationes Mathematicae Universotatis Carolinae, to appear.

[BNS]

Taras Banakh, Peter Nickolas, and Manuel Sanchis, Filter games and pathological subgroups of a countable product of lines, Australian Journal of Mathematics, to appear.

[BZ]

Taras Banakh and Lubomyr Zdomsky, Games on multicovered spaces and their applications in topological algebra, preprint.

[BVPCS]

Martin Boesgaard, Mette Vesterager, Thomas Pedersen, Jesper Christiansen, Ove Scavenius, Rabbit: A New High-Performance Stream Cipher, FSE 2003, 307-329.

[Bu]

Lev Bukovski, Hurewicz properties, not distinguishing convergence properties, and sequence selection properties, Topology and its Applications, to appear.

[DP]

Michael Dewar and Daniel Penario, Linear transformation shift registers, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, to appear.

[EJ]

Todd Eisworth and Winfried Just, NCF and the combinatorics of open covers, Fundamenta Mathematicae, to appear.

[GGN]

Oded Goldreich, Shafi Goldwasser and Asaf Nussboim, On the implementation of huge random objects, preprint.

[Je]

Jesse Jenkins, CipherStream Protocol – how CoolRunner-II CPLDs protect FPGA IP, Xilinx White Pages 197 (2003), 1-14.

[Mi]

Arnold W. Miller, A nonhereditary Borel-cover g-set, Real Analysis Exchange, to appear.

[NR]

Moni Naor and Omer Reingold, Constructing Pseudo-Random Permutations with a Prescribed Structure, Journal of Cryptology 15 (2002), 97-102.

[Sa]

Masami Sakai, The weak Fréchet-Urysohn property in function spaces, preprint.

[SBPCR]

Ove Scavenius, Martin Boesgaard, Thomas Pedersen, Jesper Christiansen, and Vincent Rijmen, Periodic Properties of Counter Assisted Stream Ciphers, to appear  in the Proceedings of the RSA Conference 2004.

[Sc]

Marion Scheepers, Selection principles and covering properties in topology, Note di Matematica, to appear.

[Tha]

R. Thangadurai, Adams theorem on Bernoulli numbers revisited, Journal of Number Theory 106 (2004), 169-177.

 

Our paper:

Cited in:

3

[Sc], [Mi]

5

[NR], [Je], [BVPCS], [SBPCR], [An], [An2]

6

[Sc], [EJ]

7

[Bu], [Sc], [Mi]

8

[DP], [SBPCR]

10

[Tha]

11

[GGN]

12

[Mi], [Sc]

14

[Sa]

16

[Sc], [EJ], [Sa]

13, 15, 16, 17

[Sc]

19

[Sa]

20

[Ba], [BNS], [BZ]

 



[1] Among Elsevier’s 25 Top Downloads for January-April 2003.

[2] Among Elsevier’s 25 Top Downloads for January-April 2003.

[3] Among Elsevier’s 25 Top Downloads for January-December 2003.