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This is joint work with V. Dujmović, G. Joret, B. Walczak, and D.R. Wood.
(1) What is the minimum number of edges in a graph containing all $n$-vertex planar graphs as subgraphs? The best known bound is $O(n^{3/2})$, due to Babai, Chung, Erdös, Graham, and Spencer (1982).
(2) What is the minimum number of *vertices* in a graph containing all $n$-vertex planar graphs as *induced* subgraphs? Here Bonamy, Gavoille, and Pilipczuk (2019) recently established a $O(n^{4/3})$ bound.
We show that a bound of $n^{1+o(1)}$ can be achieved for these two problems. Joint work with Vida Dujmović, Louis Esperet, Cyril Gavoille, Piotr Micek, and Pat Morin.
A vertex coloring $\phi$ of a graph $G$ is an $\ell$-ranking of $G$ if for every connected subgraph $H$ of $G$ of diameter at most $\ell$ there is exactly one vertex of maximum color used by $\phi$ on $H$.
We are going to use the product structure theorem to deliver the best-known bounds
on these parameters for planar graphs.