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The ACO Center is an interdisciplinary research center dedicated to computational approaches which are set to revolutionize the sciences and engineering over the course of this century,  just as mathematics did in the last.  The original aim of the center was to exploit the natural synergies among  theoretical computer scientists from the CS Department, probability and combinatorics researchers from the Math Department, and optimization researchers from the Business School. The Center has already grown to include economists, game theorists and electrical engineers, making its affiliated faculty  highly diverse. The Center is currently housed in the School of Information and Computer Science (ICS).

The long term goal of the Center is to evolve into an interdisciplinary PhD program encompassing the discrete math/algorithms aspects of disciplines mentioned above. The program is expected to be in place by Fall 2024. We envision that this program will help eliminate bureaucratic walls between the member areas, so that it will be easy to jointly supervise PhD theses, offer courses across units, start innovative and impactful interdisciplinary projects, and foster a climate in which ideas and information are easily shared. Our goal is to make this a center of excellence at UCI in the near future.