March 10, 2007
Dr. Zhibo Chen, Professor of Mathematics at Penn State University Greater Allegheny Campus, has returned from sabbatical. Chen spent fall 2006 and part of the summer conducting collaborative research on graph theory with colleagues at Xiamen University in China.
Sharing a common research interest in combinatorics and graph theory with applications in chemistry with Professor Fuji Zhang at Xiamen, Dr. Chen spent his time at the University with Professor Zhang and his active research group within the Mathematics and Science College. Motivated by a 1994 result of Graham et.al. about spanning trees of the graphs with an antipodal isomorphism, Dr. Chen introduced the concept of $k$-pairable graphs and extended the result of Graham et. al. to this much larger class of graphs. Dr. Chen's paper on this subject was published in the journal Discrete Mathematic s and has been one of the most downloaded papers from the website of the publisher ELSEVIER.
Dr. Chen's sabbatical at Xiamen was prompted by an invitation from his colleague, Professor Zhang, who encouraged the interactive collaboration between Dr. Chen and his group of researchers at the University. It was hoped that the collaboration would be fruitful in getting deeper results of k-pairable graphs and applying them to further the study on bipartite planar graphs including hexagonal systems, which have applications in theoretical chemistry.
While in China, Dr. Chen was invited to present his research results at two conferences, The Second China Conference of Combinatorics and Graph Ttheory in Tianjin, China (August, 2006) and The International Conference of Applied Graph Theory and Combinatorics in Xiamen, China (December, 2006).
During his sabbatical, Chen was also invited to lecture at the Center of Combinatorics at Nankai University in Tianjin, China. During his time at the Center, he presented three research lectures for researchers and graduate students. Topics of the lectures were: Commutativity of Subdividing and Line-digraphing, Path of Growth of a Superstar, and On k-pairable graphs, which can be seen on the webpage of the Center:
http://www.combinatorics.cn/activities/2006-lecture.html#
Chen has two research papers submitted as a result of his collaborative research and two additional papers in progress.
Sharing a common research interest in combinatorics and graph theory with applications in chemistry with Professor Fuji Zhang at Xiamen, Dr. Chen spent his time at the University with Professor Zhang and his active research group within the Mathematics and Science College. Motivated by a 1994 result of Graham et.al. about spanning trees of the graphs with an antipodal isomorphism, Dr. Chen introduced the concept of $k$-pairable graphs and extended the result of Graham et. al. to this much larger class of graphs. Dr. Chen's paper on this subject was published in the journal Discrete Mathematic s and has been one of the most downloaded papers from the website of the publisher ELSEVIER.
Dr. Chen's sabbatical at Xiamen was prompted by an invitation from his colleague, Professor Zhang, who encouraged the interactive collaboration between Dr. Chen and his group of researchers at the University. It was hoped that the collaboration would be fruitful in getting deeper results of k-pairable graphs and applying them to further the study on bipartite planar graphs including hexagonal systems, which have applications in theoretical chemistry.
While in China, Dr. Chen was invited to present his research results at two conferences, The Second China Conference of Combinatorics and Graph Ttheory in Tianjin, China (August, 2006) and The International Conference of Applied Graph Theory and Combinatorics in Xiamen, China (December, 2006).
During his sabbatical, Chen was also invited to lecture at the Center of Combinatorics at Nankai University in Tianjin, China. During his time at the Center, he presented three research lectures for researchers and graduate students. Topics of the lectures were: Commutativity of Subdividing and Line-digraphing, Path of Growth of a Superstar, and On k-pairable graphs, which can be seen on the webpage of the Center:
http://www.combinatorics.cn/activities/2006-lecture.html#
Chen has two research papers submitted as a result of his collaborative research and two additional papers in progress.