Michael (Mik) Zlatin's Homepage

Michael (Mik) Zlatin

I am currently a Postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science, supported by the Faculty Postdoctoral Excellence fellowship. In Fall 2025, I will be an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Pomona College.

I obtained my Ph.D. in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. I was fortunate to be advised by Gérard Cornuéjols.

Address:
Tepper School of Business
Carnegie Mellon University
Email: mzlatin@andrew.cmu.edu
Google Scholar

Research papers
- The Online Submodular Assignment Problem (pdf)
  Daniel Hathcock, Billy Jin, Kalen Patton, Sherry Sarkar, and Michael Zlatin. FOCS 2024.
- Approximation Algorithms for Steiner Connectivity Augmentation (pdf)
  Daniel Hathcock and Michael Zlatin. ESA 2024. Best Student-Paper Award.
- Approximation Algorithms for Steiner Tree Augmentation Problems (pdf)
  R. Ravi, Weizhong Zhang, and Michael Zlatin. SODA 2023.
- On packing dijoins in digraphs and weighted digraphs (pdf)
  Ahmad Abdi, Gérard Cornuéjols, and Michael Zlatin. SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics 2022.
- On small-depth tree augmentations (pdf)
  Ojas Parekh, R. Ravi, and Michael Zlatin. Operations Research Letters 2022.
- Unique rectification in d-complete posets: towards the K-theory of Kac-Moody flag varieties (pdf)
  Rahul Ilango, Oliver Pechenik, and Michael Zlatin. Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 2018.
My dissertation
- Polyhedral and Algorithmic Methods in Network Connectivity (pdf)
  Gerald L. Thompson Doctoral Dissertation Award in Management Science.
Teaching
- Instructor - Optimization for Business, CMU, Summer 2023 (undergraduate)
- Teaching Assistant - Optimization for Business, CMU, Spring 2021 and Spring 2022 (undergraduate)
- Teaching Assistant - Analytical Performance Modeling and Queueing Theory, CMU, Fall 2021 (graduate)
- Teaching Assistant - Integer Programming, CMU, Spring 2021 (graduate)
- Teaching Assistant - Design and Analysis of Data Structures and Algorithms, Rutgers University, Spring 2019 (graduate)
Activities
- CMU INFORMS Student Chapter President (2021 - 2022), Advisory Board Member (2022 - 2024)
- Co-chair of the YinzOR Student Conference (2021), Marketing Chair (2022), Speaker Committee Co-chair (2023)
Puzzle Collection:
- The 15 box puzzle (pdf, hints)
- The king's court (pdf, hints)
- Minting a coin (pdf, hints)
- Test your probabilistic intuition (pdf)
- Gaussian record holders (pdf)
  Please don't hesitate to email me with interesting puzzles!
Podcast Coverage:
- A pair of intelligences discuss my paper on small-depth tree augmentations: