The research team "Discrete Mathematics" has been working since 2022 under the supervision of Monika Pilśniak (previously Mariusz Woźniak) and consists of 12 members of our department: a full professor, five associate professors and six assistant professors and assistants. Each of them earned their degrees while working at AGH. In addition, nine PhD students are currently studying here.
The department's scientific activities focus on fundamental research on graph theory and related issues in discrete mathematics (see Topics). Since the graph is a basic and widely used mathematical model for a wide class of problems and phenomena in the real world, graph theory finds a number of practical applications, including in computer science, electronics, chemistry, logistics, operations research, etc. and even in biology and sociology.
Members of the Chair have managed several grants from the KBN, NCN and personal exchange programmes with France ('Polonium') and Austria.
What distinguishes our department at the faculty is an intense scientific collaboration among its members and in various configurations. This is illustrated by the graph of cooperation.
Every Tuesday, members of the department (and other researchers) meet for a Discrete Mathematics seminar, where the latest scientific results of the speakers are presented. The number of meetings in this form has now reached almost 600, and the history of the seminar is older than that of the Faculty of Applied Mathematics itself, dating back to 1969, when it was initiated by Zdzisław Skupień. An important aspect of the department's scientific life is its frequent participation in international scientific conferences, where the staff of our department are also invited to give plenary lectures (see invitations). KMD also organizes such events (see conferences).
A characteristic feature of KMD is the high internationalisation of research. Cooperation with mathematicians from foreign universities has resulted in dozens of joint publications in prestigious journals in discrete mathematics. These include mostly universities in Bordeaux and Orsay (France), Duluth, Auburn and Hamilton (USA), Leoben and Graz (Austria), Kosice (Slovakia), Johannesburg (South Africa), Freiberg (Germany), Hamilton (Canada), Maribor and Koper (Slovenia), Ostrava (Czech Republic), Messina (Italy), Mashhad (Iran) and Istanbul (Turkey).
For many years, we ran a preprints site in cooperation with KMD UJ, but now that role has been taken over by arXiv.