Let F[X] be the polynomial ring over the variables X = {x 1 , x 2 , . . . , x n }. An ideal I = p 1 (x 1 ), . . . , p n (x n ) generated by univariate polynomials {p i (x i )} n i=1 is a univariate ideal. We study the ideal membership problem for the univariate ideals and show the following results.• Let f (X) ∈ F[ℓ 1 , . . . , ℓ r ] be a (low rank) polynomial given by an arithmetic circuit where ℓ i : 1 ≤ i ≤ r are linear forms, and I = p 1 (x 1 ), . . . , p n (x n ) be a univariate ideal. Given α ∈ F n , the (unique) remainder f (X) (mod I) can be evaluated at α in deterministic time d O(r) • poly(n), where d = max{deg(f ), deg(p 1 ) . . . , deg(p n )}. This yields an n O(r) algorithm for minimum vertex cover in graphs with rank-r adjacency matrices. It also yields an n O(r) algorithm for evaluating the permanent of a n × n matrix of rank r, over any field F. Over Q, an algorithm of similar run time for low rank permanent is due to Barvinok [6] via a different technique.• Let f (X) ∈ F[X] be given by an arithmetic circuit of degree k (k treated as fixed parameter) and I = p 1 (x 1 ), . . . , p n (x n ) . We show that in the special case when I = x e1 1 , . . . , x en n , we obtain a randomized O * (4.08 k ) algorithm that uses poly(n, k) space.• Given f (X) ∈ F[X] by an arithmetic circuit and I = p 1 (x 1 ), . . . , p k (x k ) , membership testing is W[1]-hard, parameterized by k. The problem is MINI[1]-hard in the special case when I = x e1 1 , . . . , x e k k .