‘IMPA Tech will add a lot to Brazil’, says Kedson Silva
At a seminar on Tuesday (26), the researcher presented his work on graph theory
“IMPA Tech is an environment in which students can grow and add a lot to Brazil through research.” This is the assessment of Kedson Alves Silva, PhD in computing from UFF (Fluminense Federal University), who spoke at the seminar “An investigation into Clique Cover in L-EPG representations”, held on Tuesday (26) at the undergraduate program.
According to the researcher, the experience of presenting academic results to students reinforces the potential of IMPA Tech’s training and research environment. “I see that we have very committed students here. So it’s a pleasure to be here and share a little bit of my study, saying that some of them can also overcome results,” said Kedson.
The seminar addressed the classic “Clique Cover” problem from graph theory, investigated in L-EPG representations – a class of intersection graphs related to paths in grids. In the paper, Kedson presented results on the computational complexity of the problem, showing that although it is NP-complete in L-EPG representations, it can be handled efficiently in some specific scenarios, including parameterized approaches and approximation algorithms.
The research discusses EPGs (Edge Intersection Graphs of Paths on a Grid), in which vertices are represented by paths on a grid and adjacencies occur when these paths share edges. Within this class, L-EPGs stand out for restricting paths to simple shapes, such as “L”, horizontal or vertical lines.
Among the students present, the topic aroused interest especially because of the connection between mathematics and computing. Student Huann Vicente, from IMPA Tech’s Computing class of 2025, said that he had already had contact with graph concepts even before graduating.
“When I started my career in programming in 2022, I had more contact with web languages and realized that many applications use graphs. There’s an image model called SVG, widely used in data science, which works with these concepts. So it’s something that’s already part of my universe,” he explained.
An enthusiast in the field, Huann said he attended the seminar to deepen his knowledge of the subject. “I found a very nice correlation between computing, computer graphics and mathematics,” said the 22-year-old student, who also has a technical degree in systems development.
