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The ISCO 2026 will be preceded by a Spring School on May 4 and May 5, 2026, providing an excellent educational opportunity for the graduated students and researchers interested in combinatorial optimization. Lectures will be delivered by experts in the field, making significant contributions to the academic careers of participants.

Topics: Packing and Covering

Lecturers: Gerard Cornuéjols and Ahmad Abdi

Each expert will teach 8 hours in one day.

Packing and covering problems are at the heart of combinatorial optimization. In a series of six 2-hour lectures and two 2-hour exercise sessions, we introduce objects sitting at the heart of many min-max theorems in combinatorial optimization, namely, totally unimodular and balanced matrices, perfect graphs, and ideal clutters. We also present recent advances in the area that have brought us closer to settling important conjectures in the area. These include the first constant-factor relaxation of Woodall's conjecture, a polyhedral proof Lovasz' matching lattice theorem, and exponential lower bounds for cube-ideal set-systems, amongst others. In addition to covering classical topics in packing and covering, a key goal of the summer school is to discuss new perspectives and to present new open problems for PhD students to work on.