Rate My Professor Ljubomir Perkovic

Ljubomir Perkovic is a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Computing at DePaul University’s Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media. He joined the faculty in September 2000 following his Ph.D. in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Perkovic's research interests include computational geometry, graph theory and algorithms, distributed computing, computer science education, computational thinking, parameterized algorithms, graph theory topics such as spanners, edge coloring, and tree decompositions, as well as wireless ad hoc networks. He has served in key leadership roles, including Director of the School of Computing from 2022 to 2025. For two decades, Perkovic has coached the DePaul University programming teams, fostering excellence in competitive programming.

Between 2008 and 2011, Perkovic was a co-principal investigator on an NSF-funded project to integrate computational thinking across DePaul’s Liberal Studies curriculum. He held a Fulbright Research Award in the 2011/2012 academic year, enabling his research in computational geometry during a visit to the University of Bordeaux. Perkovic authored the textbook Introduction to Computing Using Python: An Application Development Focus, published by Wiley in 2012 and revised in 2015. His key publications encompass “A Framework for Computational Thinking Across the Curriculum” (2010), “Computational Thinking Across the Curriculum: A Conceptual Framework” (2010), “Improved Parameterized Algorithms for Planar Dominating Set” (2002), “An Improved Algorithm for Finding Tree Decompositions of Small Width” (2000), “Plane Spanners of Maximum Degree Six” (2010), “Edge Coloring Regular Graphs of High Degree” (1997), “Bounding the Firing Synchronization Problem on a Ring” (2004), “On Geometric Spanners of Euclidean and Unit Disk Graphs” (2008), and “A Mildly Exponential Time Algorithm for Approximating the Number of Solutions to a Multidimensional Knapsack Problem” (1993). These contributions highlight his impact in theoretical computer science areas.