Abstract:
Combinatorics on words (68R15 in the Math Reviews classification) is a relatively new research topic in discrete mathematics. It studies finite or infinite sequences of symbols taken from a finite set, that is, finite or infinite words. The problems might be combinatorial, algebraic or algorithmic. Characteristic to the field is that its problems originate from very different topics, like crystallography, DNA sequencing or theoretical computer science.

The goal of this talk is to present several results, even some highlights of the theory, point out connections to other scientific topics, and also state a few challenging open problems of the field.