Title: Submodular functions and energy efficient task scheduling Speaker: Brandon McPhail, UMass Amherst Abstract: Submodularity expresses the intuitive notion of diminishing returns. Finding exact or approximate solutions to optimization problems often becomes easier when the objective function is submodular. In this talk, I'll discuss submodularity and its relevance to some energy efficient scheduling algorithms. I'll be presenting work by Demaine and Zadimoghaddam, "Scheduling to minimize power consumption using submodular functions" from the most recent SPAA.