The Workshop on Structure in Graphs and Matroids (SiGMa 2017) just wrapped up a few weeks ago in Waterloo.  This was a continuation of similar workshops organized by Bert Gerards in 2008, 2010, and 2012 and by Stefan van Zwam and Rudi Pendavingh in 2014 and 2016.

I would like to thank Jim Geelen, Peter Nelson, Luke Postle, and Stefan van Zwam (the organizers of this year’s workshop) who did an excellent job in choosing the program and making sure everything ran smoothly.  They even helped fellow Matroid Union blogger Nathan Bowler overcome Canadian Visa issues in time to give his (very nice) plenary talk (thanks also go to Alan).

This year the workshop was held in commemoration of William T. Tutte, who would have turned 100 this year.  See here for a short biography of Professor Tutte.  Some matroid theorists may not be aware of Tutte’s extremely important contributions as a code breaker at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.  The C&O Department at Waterloo has also been hosting a Distinguished Lecture Series in honour of Tutte this summer.  Click on this link for the list of speakers and to watch the videos on YouTube. SiGMa 2017 also featured a rare conference dinner speech by Jim Geelen on Tutte’s work.

In case you were not able to attend, all the talks from SiGMa 2017 were recorded and are now viewable on the C&O Department’s YouTube Channel.  The overall quality of talks was very high.  I won’t bias you with all of my personal favourites, but for example, all the plenaries and Paul Seymour were excellent.