best resource[s] to stay updated on algorithms

Question

At University I follow 3 course about algorithms. As more and more university give to Internet program and slides about his courses.

What are the best resources
- university courses put on web
- academic journal on algorithms
- professor
- algorithms specialist
- etc, etc ..

to be update in algorithms fields ?

For example if I know the most important person in algorithms field are X professor at Y university.

I can follow the suggested book/reference for his/her university courses and get updated on advance in algorithms.

Someone have some suggestion to follow advance in algorithms fields ?

Answer 1

A good start is to look at all the conferences in the field of algorithms and read the proceedings. By the time you reach the current editions you'll typically have a good grasp of what's going on. Look at the typical conference ranking list and start at the top-ranked conferences under "Algorithms and Theory".

Answer 2

This is a bit more general: there is a MIT podcast on itunes about algorithm and data structure, which is sometimes very useful to refresh some basics.

If you are interested in network analysis then you might be interested in following Jon Kleinberg: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/

Answer 3

There are some generic algorithms that get covered by most CS students (binary search, convex hull, Dijkstra's and the solutions to typical challenge scenarios like traveling salesman) but beyond that, you'll find that algorithms are typically specialized to whatever area they were generated for.

So if you want massive database search algorithms, you have to look in a different place than you would find AI algorithms for instance. My best advice would be to contact some experts in the specific fields you're interested in and find out what resources they use.