Noah Weninger

About me

In Fall 2026, I will start a postdoctoral position at Universität Trier in Germany, supervised by Prof. Dr. Martin Schmidt on the project SymBi: Exploiting Symmetries for Faster Bilevel Optimization Algorithms. I recently finished my Ph.D. in Combinatorics and Optimization at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Ricardo Fukasawa. Prior to that, I obtained my M.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, under the supervision of Dr. Bruce Shepherd. On the side, I make open source software for digitally processing audio and generating algorithmic music and visuals under the alias byte.observer. When not in front of a computer or whiteboard, I can usually be found rock climbing, foraging for mushrooms, cycling, snowboarding, hiking, or cooking.

Academic profiles: google scholar | github
Other profiles: bandcamp | soundcloud | youtube | shadertoy | pouet | demozoo | inaturalist | kattis problems

Education

• Ph.D. in Combinatorics and Optimization at the University of Waterloo.
  Funded by QEII-GSST (May 2022 - April 2023) and NSERC CGS-D (May 2023 - April 2026).
• M.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia.
  Funded by NSERC CGS-M (2019-2021)
• B.Sc. Honors in Computing Science at the University of Alberta (2014-2019)

Papers

• 2026: Combinatorial Relaxations and Algorithms for Interdiction Problems (Ph.D. Thesis).
  Noah Weninger.
  thesis
  
  
• 2026: A Simple (2+ε)-Approximation for Knapsack Interdiction.
  Noah Weninger.
  preprint
  
  
• 2024: Interdiction of Minimum Spanning Trees and Other Matroid Bases.
  Noah Weninger and Ricardo Fukasawa.
  Awarded Most Popular Poster and Honorable Mention for Best Poster at Mixed Integer Programming Workshop 2024.
  Full version published in Mathematical Programming Series A (Aug 19, 2025).
  journal article | preprint | code
  
  
• 2023: A Knapsack Intersection Hierarchy.
  Adam Jozefiak, F. Bruce Shepherd, and Noah Weninger.
  Full version published in Operations Research Letters.
  journal article | preprint
  
  
• 2022: A Fast Combinatorial Algorithm for the Bilevel Knapsack Problem with Interdiction Constraints.
  Noah Weninger and Ricardo Fukasawa.
  Awarded Best Poster and Most Popular Poster at Mixed Integer Programming Workshop 2023.
  In Proceedings of IPCO 2023; full version published in Mathematical Programming Series B (Aug 22, 2024).
  journal article (full length) | conference version (short) | preprint | pdf | code
  
  
• 2021: Approximate Extended Formulations for Multidimensional Knapsack and the Unsplittable Flow Problem on Trees (M.Sc. Thesis).
  Noah Weninger.
  thesis
  
  
• 2017: Exploring Positional Linear Go.
  Noah Weninger and Ryan Hayward.
  15th International Conference on Advances in Computer Games.
  conference paper | pdf | code
  
  

Competitive programming problems

After competing for many years, I was given the opportunity (thanks Zac!) to create original problems for a programming contest. Since then I've set problems for many contests. Most of my problems are available on Open Kattis, where anyone can try them out.

• "Candy Store", "Triangle Trees", and "Rerouting Rapids" from the 2024 UAPC
• "Very Important Edge" from the 2023 North American Qualifier (NAQ)
• "LCM Thief" from the 2023 CCPC
• "Precarious Stacks" from the 2023 UAPC
• "Long Walk", "Maximum Fix", and "Undead or Alive" from the 2022 ACPC
• Problems on the 2021 and 2022 Iverson Exams
• "Similar Spacing" and "Travelling Caterpillar" from the 2022 UAPC
• "Zoom", "Successful Zoom", "Solution Pollution", and "Tree Canopy Graphs" from the 2022 CCPC
• "Wonky Pizza", "Beep Code", "Compression", and "Swapping Places" from the 2021 ACPC
• "The Council" and "Which Bits?" from the 2021 CCPC
• "Monochromatic Minesweeper" and "Wrapping Trees" from the 2020 ACPC
• "Product Inspector" and "Lockpick" from the 2019 UAPC

I've also acted as a judge (i.e., helping out but without proposing any problems myself) in the 2022 and 2023 ICPC Rocky Mountain Regional Contest.