The Dijkgraaf-Vafa correspondence for theories with fundamental matter fields

In this talk I describe some applications of random matrix models to the study of N=1 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with matter fields in the fundamental representation. I review the derivation of the Veneziano-Yankielowicz-Taylor/Affleck-Dine-Seiberg superpotentials from constrained random matrix models (hep-th/0211082), a field theoretical justification of the logarithmic matter contribution to the Veneziano-Yankielowicz-Taylor superpotential (hep-th/0306242) and the random matrix based solution of the complete factorization problem of Seiberg-Witten curves for N=2 theories with fundamental matter (hep-th/0212212).