Ararat Harutyunyan, PhD (’11)

Working under Canada Research Chair, Dr. Bojan Mohar, Harutyunyan turned a PhD in discrete mathematics into a career in Graph Theory research.

Ararat Harutyunyan did his PhD in discrete mathematics, focusing his research on Graph Theory. He studied under the supervision of Dr. Bojan Mohar, a Canada Research Chair in the field. “My thesis was in the area of graph colouring. This is related to colouring maps and also has applications in scheduling problems and telecommunications, though my own work was more theoretical,” he says.

Harutyunyan considers the Discrete Mathematics group at SFU one of the strongest in North America. “There are a lot of very strong researchers in this particular area, which is younger than most others. A lot of other universities have faculty whose research interest lie in more traditional areas of mathematics. SFU is a young university and it’s a great place for people who want to specialize in discrete mathematics,” he says.

Currently an Assistant Professor at the Université Paris-Dauphine in France, Harutyunyan spends his time doing research and teaching. He continues to work on Graph Theory but is exploring other research areas as well. “I’ve delved a bit more deeply into algorithms and I’m interested in how we can bring tools from other areas of math into discrete mathematics,” he says.