Computing and combinatorics

The abstract and papers in this volume were presented at the Eighth Annual International Computing and Combinatorics Conference (COCOON 2002), held on August 15-17 in Singapore. The topics cover various aspects of theoretical computer science and combinatorics related to computing. Submissionstotheconferencethisyearwereconductedelectronically. The60 papers were selected for presentation from a total of 106 submitted papers from Australia (6), Canada (3), China (6), Germany (9), India (5), Japan (11), Korea (10), Singapore (5), Taiwan (8), United States (29), and 11 other countries and regions (14). The papers were evaluated by an international program comm- tee consisting of Mikhail Atallah, Jik Chang, Tim Ting Chen, Siu-Wing Cheng, Omer Egecioglu, Fan Chung Graham, Susanne Hambrusch, Sorin Istrail, S- path Kannan, Ming-Yang Kao, Shlomo Moran, Koji Nakano, Takao Nishizeki, Steve Olariu, Gheorghe Paun, Pandu Rangan, Sartaj Sahni, Arto Salomaa, Igor Shparlinski, Janos Simon, Paul Spirakis, Chung Piaw Teo, Jan van Leeuwen, Paul Vitanyi, Peter Widmayer, and Hsu-Chun Yen. It is expected that most of the accepted papers will appear in a more complete form in scienti?c journals. In addition to the contributed papers, three invited lectures were presented by Eugene W. Myers, Sartaj Sahni, and Arto Salomaa. We wish to thank all who have made this meeting possible: the authors for submitting papers, the program committee members and external referees (listed in the proceedings) for their excellent work, and the three invited spe- ers.