Title: Nearly Tight Low Stretch Spanning Trees Speaker: Ofer Neiman, NYU Abstract: We prove that any graph G on n vertices has a distribution over its spanning trees such that for any edge (u,v) the expected stretch E_T[d_T(u,v)] is bounded by \tilde{O}(\log n). Our result is obtained via a new approach of building ``highways'' between portals and a new strong diameter probabilistic decomposition theorem. Joint work with Ittai Abraham and Yair Bartal