Computational Coordinatization of Semigroups - 10 years in the making

Speaker: Attila Egri-Nagy

Affiliation: University of Western Sydney

Time: Monday 15/10/2012 from 14:00 to 15:00

Venue: Access Grid UWS. Presented from Parramatta (EB.1.32), accessible from Campbelltown (26.1.50) and Penrith (Y239).

Abstract: The algebraic hierarchical decomposition of transformation semigroups (Krohn-Rhodes Theory) plays the same role in automata theory as the prime factorization in number theory. The decompositions provide an easy way to grasp the structure of an automaton, therefore they are useful whenever automata models are applied. Calculating the decomposition is computationally intensive, but our software package SgpDec for the GAP computer algebra system is now a mature piece of software and it can calculate decompositions far beyond the capabilities of pen and paper calculations. In this talk we review the basic notions of algebraic automata theory, demonstrate the capabiliites of SgpDec and describe some biological applications and we also discuss how different algebraic decompositions represent different strategies of solving the Rubik's Cube.

Biography: Attila Egri-Nagy is a postdoctoral research fellow of CRM working on the applications of abstract algebra in biological problems.