Research Interests
Computational complexity theory, and in particular algebraic complexity, algorithms for algebraic problems, error correcting codes and pseudorandomness.
Publications
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Manuscript
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Manuscript
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ITCS 2024
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ITCS 2024
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STOC 2023
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SIGACT News Complexity Column, December 2021 (publisher's version)
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Quantum 2022 (Preliminary versions in ITCS 2022 and QIP 2022)
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Computational Complexity, 2022 (Preliminary version in CCC 2021)(video from CCC)
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ACM TOCT, 2022 (Preliminary version in ITCS 2021)(video from ITCS)
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Computational Complexity, 2022 (An earlier version, titled "A Quadratic Lower bound for Algebraic Branching Programs", appeared in CCC 2020)
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Computational Complexity, 2021 (Preliminary version in CCC 2020)(video from CCC)
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Combinatorica, 2020 (Preliminary version in CCC 2018)
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ACM TOCT, 2020
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Theory of Computing, 2018 (Preliminary version in STOC 2017)
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ACM TOCT, 2018 (Preliminary version in CCC 2016)
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IEEE TIT, 2017 (Preliminary version in STOC 2016)
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Computational Complexity, 2016 (Preliminary version in CCC 2015)(slides)
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Computational Complexity, 2017 (Preliminary version in ITCS 2014)(video and slides of a lecture given at the Simons Institute, and another set of video and slides of a related lecture)
Teaching
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Advanced AlgorithmsSpring 2023
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Computability and ComplexityWinter 2022-2023
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Data StructuresSpring 2022
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Algebraic Computation and AlgorithmsWinter 2021-2022Lecture notes (in Hebrew, probably contain some errors!)
Professional Service
- Program Committees: STOC 2023
- Editor for the SICOMP Special Issue for STOC 2023
- Editor for the complexity column of SIGACT News
Academic Background
- (2020-2021) postdoc at the UT Austin CS department, hosted by Dana Moshkovitz and David Zuckerman
- (2018-2020) CMI postdoc at Caltech, hosted by Chris Umans
- (2014-2018) Ph.D. student at the Theory of Computation group at Tel Aviv University, advised by Amir Shpilka.
Name guide: My first name is Ben Lee and my last name is Volk. But it's OK, nobody gets it right the first time. If you call me Ben, I will answer without correcting you and not make a big deal out of it. If you spell it as Ben Lee Volk in your *.bib file (with this exact order and capitalization), BibTeX will correctly infer the first and last names. To read a whole lot more about how BibTeX processes names, see this paper, which is also likely to fulfill your lifelong dream of reading a document that contains the phrase "First von Last".