2025 Herzberg Lecture

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 from 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm

• In-person event
• HS 1301, Health Sciences Building, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

• Contact
• Rima Mattar, rimamattar@cunet.carleton.ca

Join us for the 2025 Herzberg Lecture, where Dr. Prosenjit Bose from Carleton’s School of Computer Science will explore a fascinating question:
“Is There Structure Hidden in the Chaos of a Bunch of Dots?”

Imagine a bunch of dots on a map marking the location of clinics, cell towers, or fire stations. Which homes should each clinic serve? Where should we place the next cell tower to close coverage gaps? Where should a fire station go to serve the most people or shorten response times?

At this year’s Herzberg Lecture, Dr. Bose will explore two geometric concepts, Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulations, which reveal hidden structure in a bunch of scattered dots and help provide answers to questions like these.

These concepts have many applications, such as in city planning, computer graphics, chemistry, and biology. In this talk, Dr. Bose will introduce these two concepts, reveal some of their key properties and highlight a few applications.

The Herzberg Lecture is held annually in honour of Gerhard Herzberg, former Chancellor of Carleton University and recipient of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The series highlights the connection between science and society, exploring ideas that shape our understanding of the world.

This event is free and open to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and members of the public.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Prosenjit Bose is a Chancellor’s Professor in the School of Computer Science and the Associate Vice-President (Research). His research area is computational geometry, which focuses on designing and analyzing algorithms and data structures for problems involving geometric data. His research has applications in robotics, computer graphics, computer vision, and geographic information systems, among others.