Sofya Raskhodnikova

Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, School of EECS, Pennsylvania State University

My research interests include sublinear-time algorithms (in particular, property testing), private data analysis, approximation algorithms, randomized algorithms and complexity theory. I am a member of the theory group. I got my PhD from MIT in 2003. From the fall of 2003 to 2006, I worked at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics. In 2013--2014, I was on sabbatical leave at Boston University for a special Privacy Year and also participated in the Privacy Tools project at Harvard University in Spring 2014.

If you are interested in joining our CSE graduate program, please look at http://www.eecs.psu.edu/students/graduate/EECS-Graduate-Prospective.aspx for information on admission and a description of the program. Research assistantships are available for strong candidates interested in working in algorithms and theory. Make sure to indicate "algorithms" or "theoretical computer science" or the name of a faculty member you are interested in working with if you want our group to consider you. Our department receives many applications, and I cannot review all of them personally.

Courses

Publications

Professional activities

How to Pronounce My Name

Courses

CSE 597 Approximation Algorithms, Spring 2017
CSE 565 Algorithm Design and Analysis, Fall 2007, 2011, 2016
CMPSC 464 Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Fall 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012, Spring 2016.
CSE 597A Sublinear Algorithms, Fall 2015
CMPSC 360 Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science, Spring 2015.
CSE 598B Theory Seminar (can be repeated for credit), Fall 2007 and 2009, Spring 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2016.
CSE 598A Sublinear Algorithms, Spring 2012
CSE 598A Algorithmic Aspects of Data Privacy, Spring 2010
CSE 598B Theory of Computation, Spring 2008
CSE 465 Data Structures and Algorithms, Spring 2007
Sublinear Algorithms Course, Weizmann Institute, Spring 2005. (The web page has been disactivated.)

Professional activities

Faculty at math and CS summer camps for kids

C.A.M.P., 2017.
Epsilon camp, 2016.

Co-organizer of

Sublinear 2016 workshop at Johns Hopkins University, January 7-9, 2016.
Sublinear Algorithms 2014 at Bertinoro.
Charles River Privacy Day, November 15, 2013.
Charles River Workshop on Private Analysis of Social Networks, May 19, 2014.

Co-organizer of Mike Fest, a Symposium on Theoretical Computer Science on the occasion of Michael Sipser's 60th Birthday, October 26, 2014.

Area editor for Encyclopedia of Algorithms, 2nd Edition

Guest editor for Theory of Computing (an open access journal) for the Special Issue on APPROX-RANDOM 2013.

Program committee chair for

RANDOM 2013 (August 21-23 2013, UC Berkeley, California)

Program committee member for

FOCS 2017 (October 15–17, 2017, Berkeley, California)
STOC 2016 (June 19-21, 2016, Cambridge, MA)
FOCS 2012 (October 20-23, 2012, New Brunswick, New Jersey)
SWAT 2012 (July 4-6, 2012, Helsinki, Finland)
FOCS 2010 (October 23-26, 2010, Las Vegas, Nevada)
RANDOM 2010 (September 1-3, 2010, Barcelona)
SODA 2010 (January 17-19, 2010, Austin,Texas)
RANDOM 2007 (August 20-22, 2007, Princeton University)

Lecturer for 2011 Program for Women and Mathematics (Institute for Advanced Study), a course on sublinear algorithms
Slides: Lecture 1, Lecture 2, Lecture 3, Lecture 4

Current NSF-Funded Projects

Current Ph.D. Students

Meiram Murzabulatov (looking for a postdoc position for 2017-2018)
Nithin Varma
Ramesh Krishnan S. Pallavoor
Roksana Baleshzar

Alumni

Madhav Jha (M.S. '10, Ph.D. '13, first position after graduation: postdoc at Sandia National Labs)
Grigory Yaroslavtsev (Ph.D. '14, first position after graduation: postdoc at Brown University, now an Assistant Professor at Indiana University)
Kashyap Dixit (Ph.D. '15, co-advised with Martin Fürer)

Edward Lu (B.S. Honor's Thesis `13)
Ishan Behoora, research intern, Spring '10
Olena Melnychenko, research assistant, B.S. '09

Honors and Awards

Selected as Computer Engineering faculty marshal by Matthew Kiprovski, Computer Engineering student marshal, 2016.
Selected as Computer Science faculty marshal by Thomas Conkling, Computer Science student marshal, 2010 (Centre Daily Times article about Tom)
CSE Department Teaching Award, 2010
NSF CAREER Award, 2009
Ruth and Joel Spira Excellence in Teaching Award, 2007
Lady Davis Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2003
Award for Excellent Work at RSA, 1999
NY Governor's Citation for Academic Excellence, 1994
1st place in Belorussian Republican Math Olympiad, 1992

Publications

(presented in reverse chronological order of their initial publication)

Parameterized Property Testing of Functions, Ramesh Krishnan S. Pallavoor, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Nithin Varma. Proceedings of the 8th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS) conference, 2017.
Lipschitz Extensions for Node-Private Graph Statistics and the Generalized Exponential Mechanism, Sofya Raskhodnikova and Adam Smith. Proceedings of the 57th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 495-504, 2016.
The Power and Limitations of Uniform Samples in Testing Properties of Figures, Piotr Berman, Meiram Murzabulatov, Sofya Raskhodnikova. Proceedings of the 36th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS), 45:1-45:14, 2016.
Erasure-Resilient Property Testing, Kashyap Dixit, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Abhradeep Thakurta, Nithin Varma. Proceedings of the 43rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP), 91:1-91:15, 2016.
Tolerant Testers of Image Properties, Piotr Berman, Meiram Murzabulatov, Sofya Raskhodnikova. Proceedings of the 43rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP), 90:1-90:14, 2016.
Testing Convexity of Figures Under the Uniform Distribution, Piotr Berman, Meiram Murzabulatov, Sofya Raskhodnikova. Proceedings of the 32nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG), 17:1-17:15, 2016.
Preliminary full version.
Testing if an Array Is Sorted, Sofya Raskhodnikova. Encyclopedia of Algorithms, 2015. Springer link
Differentially Private Analysis of Graphs, Sofya Raskhodnikova and Adam Smith. Encyclopedia of Algorithms, 2015. Springer link
Linearity and Group Homomorphism Testing / Testing Hadamard Codes, Sofya Raskhodnikova and Ronitt Rubinfeld. Encyclopedia of Algorithms, 2015. Springer link
On the Readability of Overlap Digraphs, Rayan Chikhi, Paul Medvedev, Martin Milanic, Sofya Raskhodnikova. Descrete Applied Mathematics. To appear.
Preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of Combinatorial Pattern Matching--26th Annual Symposium (CPM), 124-137, 2015.
L_p-testing, Piotr Berman, Sofya Raskhodnikova and Grigory Yaroslavtsev. Proceedings of 46th ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC), 164-173, 2014.
Lower Bounds for Testing Properties of Functions on Hypergrid Domains, Eric Blais, Sofya Raskhodnikova and Grigory Yaroslavtsev. Proceedings of the 29th IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity (CCC), 309-320, 2014.
Preliminary version appeared in ECCC, TR13-036, 2013.
Analyzing Graphs with Node Differential Privacy, Shiva Kasiviswanathan, Kobbi Nissim, Sofya Raskhodnikova and Adam Smith. Proceedings of the 10th Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC), 457-476, 2013.
Slides
Testing the Lipschitz Property over Product Distributions with Applications to Data Privacy, Kashyap Dixit, Madhav Jha, Sofya Raskhodnikova and Abhradeep Thakurta. Proceedings of the 10th Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC), 418-436, 2013.
Learning Pseudo-Boolean k-DNF and Submodular Functions, Sofya Raskhodnikova and Grigory Yaroslavtsev. Proceedings of the 24th ACM-SIAM SODA, 1356-1368, 2013.
Testing Lipschitz Functions on Hypergrid Domains, Pranjal Awasthi, Madhav Jha, Marco Molinaro, Sofya Raskhodnikova. Algorithmica 74(3): 1055-1081, 2016.
Preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of the 15th RANDOM, Springer-Verlag, 387-398, 2012.
Limitations of Local Filters of Lipschitz and Monotone Functions, Pranjal Awasthi, Madhav Jha, Marco Molinaro, Sofya Raskhodnikova. ACM Transactions on Computation Theory, 7(1): 2:1-2:16, 2014.
Preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of the 15th RANDOM, Springer-Verlag, 374-386, 2012.
Testing and Reconstruction of Lipschitz Functions with Applications to Data Privacy, Madhav Jha and Sofya Raskhodnikova. SIAM Journal on Computing, 42(2), 700-731, 2013.
Preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of the 52nd Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 433-442, 2011.
Slides
Private Analysis of Graph Structure, Vishesh Karwa, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Adam Smith, Grigory Yaroslavtsev. Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), 1146-1157, 2011.
Approximation Algorithms for Spanner Problems and Directed Steiner Forest, Piotr Berman, Arnab Bhattacharyya, Konstantin Makarychev, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Grigory Yaroslavtsev. Information and Computation, 222, 93-107, 2013. (ICALP 2011 special issue).
Preliminary version entitled "Improved Approximation for the Directed Spanner Problem" appeared in Proceedings of the 38th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), 1-12, 2011.
Steiner Transitive-Closure Spanners of Low-Dimensional Posets, Piotr Berman, Arnab Bhattacharyya, Elena Grigorescu, Sofya Raskhodnikova, David Woodruff, Grigory Yaroslavtsev. Combinatorica 34(3): 255-277 (2014)
Preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of the 38th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), 760-772, 2011.
Transitive-Closure Spanners: a Survey, Sofya Raskhodnikova. In O. Goldreich, editor, Property Testing, LNCS 6390, LNCS State-of-the-Art Surveys, Springer, Heidelberg, 167-196, 2010.
Slides
Finding Sparser Directed Spanners, Piotr Berman, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Ge Ruan. Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS), 424-435, 2010.
Lower Bounds for Local Monotonicity Reconstruction from Transitive-Closure Spanners, Arnab Bhattacharyya, Elena Grigorescu, Madhav Jha, Kyomin Jung, Sofya Raskhodnikova, David Woodruff. SIAM J. Discrete Math., 26(2), 618-646, 2012.
Preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of the 14th RANDOM, Springer-Verlag, 448-461, 2010.
Approximation Algorithms for Min-Max Generalization Problems, Piotr Berman and Sofya Raskhodnikova. ACM Transactions on Algorithms, 11(1): 5:1-5:23, 2014.
Preliminary version in Proceedings of the 13th APPROX, Springer-Verlag, 53-66, 2010.
Slides
Transitive-Closure Spanners of the Hypercube and the Hypergrid, Arnab Bhattacharyya, Elena Grigorescu, Kyomin Jung, Sofya Raskhodnikova, David Woodruff, Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity, TR09-046, 2009.
Transitive-Closure Spanners, Arnab Bhattacharyya, Elena Grigorescu, Kyomin Jung, Sofya Raskhodnikova, David Woodruff, SIAM Journal on Computing, 41(6), pp. 1380-1425, 2012.
Preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of the 20th ACM-SIAM SODA, 531-540, 2009.
Slides
What Can We Learn Privately? Shiva Kasiviswanathan, Homin Lee, Kobbi Nissim, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Adam Smith. SIAM Journal on Computing, 40(3), pp. 793-826, 2011 (FOCS 2008 special issue).
Preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of the 49th IEEE FOCS, 531-540, 2008.
Strong Lower Bounds for Approximating Distribution Support Size and the Distinct Elements Problem, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Dana Ron, Amir Shpilka, Adam Smith, SIAM Journal on Computing, 39(3):813-842, 2009.
Preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of the 48th IEEE FOCS, 559-569, 2007.
Smooth sensitivity and sampling in private data analysis, Kobbi Nissim, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Adam Smith, Proceedings of the 39th ACM STOC, 75-84, 2007.
Slides
Sublinear Algorithms for Approximating String Compressibility, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Dana Ron, Ronitt Rubinfeld, Adam Smith, Algorithmica, Volume 65, Issue 3, pp 685-709, 2013.
Preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of the 11th RANDOM, Springer-Verlag, 609-623, 2007.
Slides
A Note on Adaptivity in Testing Properties of Bounded Degree Graphs, Sofya Raskhodnikova and Adam Smith, Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity, TR06-089, 2006. (PDF)
Some 3CNF Properties are Hard to Test, Eli Ben-Sasson, Prahladh Harsha, Sofya Raskhodnikova, SIAM Journal on Computing, 35(1):1-21, 2005. (PDF).
Preliminary version (PDF) appeared in Proceedings of the 35th ACM STOC, 345-354, 2003.
Slides
Property Testing: Theory and Applications, PhD Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2003. (PDF)
Approximate Testing of Visual Properties, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Proceedings of the 7th RANDOM, Springer-Verlag, 370-381, 2003. (PDF)
Slides
A Sublinear Algorithm for Weakly Approximating Edit Distance, Tugkan Batu, Funda Ergun, Joe Kilian, Avner Magen, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Ronitt Rubinfeld, and Rahul Sami, Proceedings of the 35th ACM STOC, 316-324, 2003. (PDF)
Lower Bounds for Embedding of Edit Distance into Normed Spaces, Alexandr Andoni, Michael Deza, Anupam Gupta, Piotr Indyk, and Sofya Raskhodnikova, Proceedings of the 14th ACM-SIAM SODA, 523-526, 2003. (PDF)
Monotonicity Testing Over General Poset Domains, Eldar Fischer, Eric Lehman, Ilan Newman, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Ronitt Rubinfeld, and Alex Samorodnitsky, Proceedings of the 34th ACM STOC, 474-483, 2002. (PDF)
Improved Testing Algorithms for Monotonicity, Yevgeniy Dodis, Oded Goldreich, Eric Lehman, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Dana Ron, and Alex Samorodnitsky, Proceedings of the 3rd RANDOM conference, 97-108, 1999. (PDF)
Slides
Monotonicity Testing, Master's Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1999. (PDF)

Contact Information

Email: first-name "at" cse.psu.edu
Office telephone: +1-814-863-0608

Department of Computer Science and Engineering
The Pennsylvania State University
343F Information Sciences and Technology Building
University Park, PA 16803

How To Pronounce My Name

Sofya: There are two syllables.
- The first one sounds like Soft without the last sound.
- The second, ya, sounds like German "yes".
The stress is on the first syllable. Sophia is not a correct pronounciation of my name. (There are both versions in Russian, Sofya and Sophia, but my name is not Sophia.)
Raskhodnikova: The only tricky part is that the first "k" is silent.
- Ras
- hod (stressed, the first sound as in "hat")
- ni
- ka (unstressed o is pronounced as a in Russian)
- va