CSE Profile: Carl Sturtivant

Carl Sturtivant
Teaching Faculty

(612) 625-2384
Office: EE/CS 6-197

Interests

Algebraic and Finite Field Circuits, Algebraic analogues of Boolean circuit complexity, One-Way-Functions, Finite Field Arithmetic versus Bit Operations, Permanent versus Determinant, Quantum Circuits, Probability as Scientific Reasoning, MaxEnt (maximum entropy) and Symmetry based Probability Assignments.

Education

PhD 1983, Computer Science at Edinburgh University, Scotland.

Diploma (MS) 1980, Computer Science at Churchill College, Cambridge University, England

BA 1979, MA 1982, Theoretical Physics at Churchill College, Cambridge University, England

I teach mainly discrete mathematics, algorithms & data structures, automata theory, computability, complexity theory at both undergraduate and graduate levels, and also internet & network programming as well as beginning programming in various languages. I also supervise some independent study and undergraduate projects. Additionally I coach the intercollegiate programming contest teams for the regional (and occasionally international final) contest.

Here are some of the classes I teach from time-to-time. For more details see my personal home page linked to below. On the strength of teaching these classes I have been repeatedly voted Best Computer Science Professor by Institute of Technology students.

CSci 1103 Introduction to Programming in Java
CSci 1113 Introduction to C/C++ Programming
CSci 1901 Structure of Computer Programming I
CSci 1902 Structure of Computer Programming II
CSci 2011 Discrete Structures of Computer Science
CSci 4011 Formal Languages and Automata Theory
CSci 4041 Algorithms and Data Structures
CSci 4131 Internet Programming
CSci 4211 Introduction to Computer Networks
CSci 5403 Computational Complexity
CSci 5421 Advanced Algorithms and Data Structures

Here are some selected publications. For more details about the content of these, see my personal home page linked below.

Finite Field Arithmetic versus Bit Operations:
(Note that [1] predates [2] despite the publication dates.)

[1] Sturtivant & Frandsen, The Computational Efficacy of Finite Field Arithmetic, Theoretical Computer Science 112, 1993.

[2] Boyar, Frandsen & Sturtivant, An Arithmetic Model of Computation Equivalent to Threshold Circuits, Theoretical Computer Science 93, 1992.


Permanent versus Determinant:

[3] Sturtivant, Generalized Symmetries of Polynomials in Algebraic Complexity, 23rd Proceedings of the IEEE conference on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 1982, winner of the Machtey Prize.

[4] Sturtivant, Are There Elimination Algorithms for the Permanent?, Linear and Multilinear Algebra, 33, 1993.


One-Way Functions:

[5] Sturtivant & Zhang (Zhi-Li), Efficiently Inverting Bijections Given by Straight Line Programs, 30th Proceedings of the IEEE conference on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 1990.

Personal Home Page