@InProceedings{lima_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2022.69, author = {Lima, Paloma T. and dos Santos, Vinicius F. and Sau, Ignasi and Souza, U\'{e}verton S. and Tale, Prafullkumar}, title = {{Reducing the Vertex Cover Number via Edge Contractions}}, booktitle = {47th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2022)}, pages = {69:1--69:14}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-256-3}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2022}, volume = {241}, editor = {Szeider, Stefan and Ganian, Robert and Silva, Alexandra}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2022.69}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-168671}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2022.69}, annote = {Keywords: Blocker problems, edge contraction, vertex cover, parameterized complexity} }