THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES DEPARTMENT OF PURE MATHEMATICS _________________DEPARTMENTAL SEMINAR __________________ Speaker: Prof Jerzy Jaworski (Heriot-Watt) Title: Random Intersection Graphs Date: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 Time: 2:00 pm Venue: RC-4082, The Red Centre, UNSW Summary. In Erdos-Renyi random graphs, we are given n vertices and flip coins to see where the edges go - the appearance of one edge is independent of any other. Such a model is useful when the relations between objects are independent of one another. In this talk, we explore a model of random graphs in which the vertices are the focus. We independelty assign to each vertex a random set and then assess the adjacency of two vertices by comparing their assigned sets. To do this, we use the concept of an intersection graph. In the last few years random intersection graphs enjoy extensive attention both from theoretical and application point of view. We shall briefly sketch recent developments in this area.