Fred Roberts, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of Mathematics
Director of DIMACS, Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science

Director of DyDAn, Homeland Security Center for Dynamic Data Analysis
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Fred S. Roberts received his A.B. in mathematics from Dartmouth College in 1964 and his M.S. and Ph.D. in mathematics from Stanford University in 1967 and 1968. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the professional staff of the RAND Corporation in 1968. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1971-72, and then joined the faculty at Rutgers University, where he is currently a Professor of Mathematics and a Fellow of RUTCOR, the Rutgers Center for Operations Research. At Rutgers, he is a member of five graduate faculties, in Mathematics, Operations Research, Computational Molecular Biology, BioMaPS (Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program at the Interface between the Biological, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences) and Education. He has held visiting positions at Cornell University, AT&T Bell Laboratories and Northeastern University. At Rutgers, he has chaired the Applied Mathematics Committee and has been Director of the Rutgers Center for Operations Research. In January 1996, he was name the Director of DIMACS, the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science. DIMACS, with administrative offices at Rutgers, was founded as a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center and is a joint project of AT&T Labs - Research, Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies, Telcordia Technologies, NEC Research, Princeton University, and Rutgers, with partners at Avaya Labs, HP Labs, IBM Research, and Microsoft Research.

Selected Publications:

Roberts, F.S. and Sheng, L. (2000), Phylogeny numbers for graphs with two triangles, Disc. Appl. Math., 103, 91-207.

Fang, W., Ma, A., and Roberts, F.S., (2001), A measure of discrepancy of multiple sequences, Information Science, 137, 75-102.

McMorris, F.R., Roberts, F.S., and Wang, C. (2001), The center function on trees, Networks, 38, 84-87.

Mahadev, N.V.R., and Roberts, F.S. (2003), Consensus list colorings of graphs and physical mapping of DNA, DIMACS Series, Vol. 11, American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 83-95.

Janowitz, M., LaPointe, F-J., McMorris, F.R., Mirkin, B., and Roberts, F.S.(eds.) (2003), Bioconsensus, DIMACS Series, American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI.

Roberts, F.S. (2003), “Challenges for discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science in the defense against bioterrorism,” in C. Castillo-Chavez and H.T. Banks (eds.), Mathematical and Modeling Approaches in Homeland Security, SIAM Frontiers in Applied Mathematics Series, 1-34.

Roberts, F.S. and Tesman, B. (2004), Applied Combinatorics, Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Reprinted, 2008, Taylor and Francis.

Roberts, F.S. (2004), “Computational and mathematical epidemiology,” Science: Next Wave. (Also Science, 303 (2004), 717.)

Roberts, F.S., Morris, R.W., Bean, C.A., Farber, G.K., Gallahan, D., Hight-Walker, A.R., Liu, Y. Lyster, P.M., Peng, G.C.Y., Twery, M., and Whitmarsh, J. (2005), Digital biology: An emerging and promising discipline, Trends in Biotechnology, 23, 113-117.

Roberts, F.S., and Kantor, B.P. (2007), Monitoring message streams: Algorithmic methods for automatic processing of messages, Journal of the Intelligence Community Research and Development.

Roberts, F.S., Anand, S., Madigan, D., Mammone, R., and Pathak, S. (2006), "Experimental analysis of sequential decision making algorithms for port of entry inspection procedures,” in S. Mehrotra, D. Zeng, H. Chen, B. Thuraisingham, and F-X Wang (eds.), Intelligence and Security Informatics, Proceedings of ISI-2006, Lecture Notes in Computer Science #3975, Springer-Verlag, New York, 2006, 319-330.

Roberts, F.S., Lioy, P.J., McCluskey, B., Lioy, M.J.,  Cross, A., Clarke, L., Stanton, L.L., Tepfenhart, W., and Ferrara E. (2006), TOPOFF 3 comments and recommendations by members of New Jersey Universities Consortium for Homeland Security Research, Journal of Emergency Management, 4, 41-51.

Roberts, F.S., Madigan, D., and Mittal, S. (2007), “Sequential decision making algorithms for port of entry inspection: Overcoming computational challenges,” in G. Muresan, T. Altiok, B. Melamed, and D. Zeng (eds.), Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI-2007), IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ, 1-7.

Roberts, F.S. and Roberts, D.L. (2008), Locating sensors in paths and cycles: The case of 2-identifying codes, European Journal of Combinatorics, 29, 72-82.

Roberts, F.S. (2008), Computer science and decision theory, Annals of Operations Research, 163, 209-253.

Roberts, F.S. (2008), Decision making using multi-attributed alternatives: Raiffa's contributions in the context of 21st century decision problems, J. of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, 14, 161-168.

Roberts, F.S., "An application of Stahl's conjecture about the k-tuple chromatic numbers of Kneser graphs,” in The Mathematics of Preference, Choice, and Order: Essays in Honor of Peter C. Fishburn, to appear.

Roberts, F.S. and Dreyer, Jr., P.A., Irreversible k-threshold processes: Graph-theoretical threshold models of the spread of disease and of opinion, Discrete Applied Mathematics, to appear.