Shuo Pang: Homepage

Hi, I am a lecturer in computer science at the University of Bristol. I work in computational complexity and discrete math, with a focus on lower bounds in proof complexity.

An example question I like exploring: given a graph \(G\) with no proper vertex 3-coloring, does this fact admit proofs of length at most \(|G|^{10}\)? For an arbitrary such \(G\), intuition might suggest that some form of brute-force search over exponentially many potential colorings is inevitable and the answer should be no. Yet a rigorous argument remains beyond reach.

A more realistic goal is to show that short proofs do not exist in certain formal deductive systems. Many such systems capture the “methods of reasoning” behind popular algorithms, so lower bounds here are relevant to computer science. The techniques developed to establish them are distinctive but connected to many areas of math and TCS. See more

Research Papers

• •Truly supercritical trade-offs for resolution, cutting planes, monotone circuits, and Weisfeiler-Leman
  Joint with Susanna De Rezende, Noah Fleming, Duri Janett, and Jakob Nordström
• •Sum-of-Squares lower bound for non-Gaussian component analysis
  Joint with Ilias Diakonikolas, Sushrut Karmalkar, and Aaron Potechin
• •Graph colouring is hard on average for polynomial calculus and Nullstellensatz
  Joint with Jonas Conneryd, Susanna De Rezende, Jakob Nordström, and Kilian Risse
• •SoS lower bound for exact planted clique
• •On CDCL-based proof systems with the ordered decision strategy
  Joint with Nathan Mull and Alexander Razborov (In journal version "\(i>= j+2\) and" on page 1396 line 4 is a typo to be removed.)
  
• •Large clique is hard on average for resolution

CV