# BARC talk by Debarati Das

Thursday, November 29th, Debarati Das, PhD student at Charles University, Prague, will give a talk in BARC "Approximating Edit Distance Within Constant Factor in Truly Sub-Quadratic Time"

## Title

Approximating Edit Distance Within Constant Factor in Truly Sub-Quadratic Time

## Abstract

Edit distance is a measure of similarity of two strings based on the minimum number of character insertions, deletions, and substitutions required to transform one string into the other. The edit distance can be computed exactly using a dynamic programming algorithm that runs in quadratic time. Andoni, Krauthgamer and Onak (2010) gave a nearly linear time algorithm that approximates edit distance within approximation factor $\text{poly}(\log n)$. In this talk, I will describe an algorithm with running time $\tildeO(n^{2-2/7})$ that approximates the edit distance within a constant factor.
This is a joint work with Diptarka Chakraborty, Elazar Goldenberg, Michal Koucky, Michael Saks

## Bio

Debarati Das is a final year PhD. student at the Computer Science Institute of Charles University, Prague. Prior to this she completed her M.Tech. from IIT Kanpur  in 2014. Her primary research interest includes lower bounds, data structures, graph algorithms, streaming algorithms and fine grained complexity. She is currently working on problems related to edit distance.