CV Asaf (updated in March 2022).
I’ll update it from time to time (probably only before/after grant applications…). If you are really curious to see my updated CV, please send me an email.
In general, I graduated from Tel Aviv University in 2013, where I completed my PhD under the guidance of Prof. Michael Krivelevich . As a postdoc I spent 1.5 years at ETH, Zurich in the lovely group of Prof. Angelika Steger, 1.5 years at Yale University as a Gibbs Assistant Professor, and 3 years at MIT as an instructor. Afterwards, in 2019, I joined UC, Irvine as an Assistant Professor and this is where I currently am.
My main area of research is probabilistic and extremal combinatorics and I mainly like thinking about problems in:
- “Combinatorial linear algebra” — which for me it means: counting matrices/ solutions to linear equations under some restrictions.
- “Combinatorial number theory” — problems of the following spirit: “what is the size of the largest subset of 1,…,n without having two elements with their difference being a perfect square?” (so far I have no successes, but I keep trying!).
- “Vector balancing problems” — improve the Beck-Fiala theorem (the best known bound is due to Boris Bukh and can be found here).
- Turan-type problems — find graphs that avoid a complete bipartite graph K_{t,t} and with as many edges as possible.
- Ramsey-type problems — show that there are $k$-colorings of $K_n$ without a monochromatic copies of some specific graph.
Recently, I became quite obsessed with learning more and masterizing in Quantum Computation and Information. I still don’t have any interesting news in this area but I’m trying hard!