9404113 Yao This award gives partial support for a postdoctoral researcher to work in the theory group at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Postdoctoral researchers would collaborate closely with the principal investigators, freely choosing and mixing topics from current theory group projects and their own areas of interest. The two largest projects are mesh generation and approximate searching. Mesh generation requires the partitioning of a complicated geometric domain into a complex of small simple cells. Approximate searching requires the efficient retrieval of data objects close to a given query point in a high- dimensional space (either combinatorial or geometric). Each of these major projects covers a number of specific algorithmic questions. ***