NSF Workshop on Research Directions in the Principles of Parallel Computation

There will be a one day NSF sponsored workshop on Research Directions in the Principles of Parallel Computation immediately following SPAA on June 28th in Pittsburgh.   The purpose is to brainstorm about possible research directions in the theory of parallel computation.  The workshop offers travel grants for students and the registration is free to all.   Also, the early registration deadline for SPAA is May 25th.

 

FOCS 2012 workshops

STOC 2012 started a new experiment of a workshop and tutorial day in the beginning of the conference. The program looks fascinating and I hope many people attend.

FOCS 2012 will have also have such an event on Saturday, October 20. We (Boaz Barak and Avrim Blum) are looking for proposals for workshops to run on that day. So, if you want to organize a workshop that day, please do visit the link above and send us a proposal by June 20, 2012.

Hope everyone enjoys the STOC workshops and please do start thinking of ideas for great FOCS workshops!

DARPA Call for Proposals on “big data” (XDATA)

DARPA-BAA-12-38: XDATA is a call for proposals by DARPA on “big data”. Abstracts (not required, 4 pages) due April 20.  Proposals due May 30.

From the announcement:

The XDATA program seeks to develop computational techniques and software tools for analyzing large volumes of data, both semi-structured (e.g., tabular, relational, categorical, meta-data) and unstructured (e.g., text documents, message traffic). Central challenges to be addressed include a) developing scalable algorithms for processing imperfect data in distributed data stores, and b) creating effective human-computer interaction tools for facilitating rapidly customizable visual reasoning for diverse missions.

…

Proposals are encouraged from diverse areas of expertise including computer scientists, electrical engineers, statisticians, computational biologists, applied mathematicians, econometricians, economists, and others, groups with experience processing large amounts of data and/or visualizing information.

As always, when you think DARPA, think demo, though this BAA seems fairly algorithms-friendly.  Since it is probably too late to put together an abstract if you are just hearing about this for the first time, standard advice is to contact the program manager if you are interested in submitting.  Also if anyone would like to guest-blog about experiences/advice regarding DARPA from a TCS perspective, please feel free to contact any of us on the CATCS.

 

Upcoming deadlines

Two upcoming deadlines:

• Simons Graduate Fellowships in Theoretical Computer Science.   Deadline May 1.  These are 2-year awards and the intent is to offer 5 awards per year.  “The intent of the program is to support graduate students who have already produced outstanding results.  Awards will be based on the quality of the applicant’s research contributions, as outlined in the Research Statement, and the strength of the letters of support. To be eligible the applicant must be a Ph.D. student at a U.S. institution of higher education. A track record of outstanding results in theoretical computer science is the key criterion.”  Limit of one application per university.  See: https://simonsfoundation.org/mps-simons-graduate-fellowships-rfa

• STOC (in NYC) early registration deadline April 19.  See: http://cs.nyu.edu/~stoc2012/default.htm.  Note that on Saturday May 19, in addition to a tutorial in the morning by Michael Kearns (on algorithmic trading and computational finance), STOC is having a  workshop program  in the afternoon with 4 workshops in parallel.  The workshops are:
  • Computational Sustainability
    Steven Phillips, Kirk Pruhs, David Shmoys
  • Algorithms for Distributed and Streaming Data
    Ashish Goel, Andrew McGregor, Sergei Vassilvitskii
  • Algorithms for Memory-Sensitive Computing
    Michael Bender, Martin Farach-Colton
  • Unique Games Conjecture and Related Advances
    Sanjeev Arora, Moses Charikar

  Tutorials and workshops will be at NYU.

New NSF solicitation on Big Data

A new NSF solicitation on Big Data was announced yesterday.  This program “aims to advance the core scientific and technological means of managing,  analyzing, visualizing, and extracting useful information from large, diverse, distributed and heterogeneous data sets.” Within TCS, some natural connections include efficient algorithms, machine learning, streaming and online algorithms, and privacy.

Deadlines: June 13 for “mid-scale” projects, July 11 for “small” projects (see solicitation for specifics).

Here is the announcement yesterday by Farnam Jahanian, head of CISE:

This afternoon at a White House event, the Administration unveiled a Big Data Research and Development Initiative, which creates enormous opportunities for extracting knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data. The CISE community is well poised to become an active participant in this new initiative.

NSF Director, Dr. Subra Suresh, joined other federal science agency leaders to discuss cross-agency plans and announce new research efforts to address big data. NSF will direct its current efforts to develop new methods to derive knowledge from data; construct new infrastructure to manage, curate and serve data to communities; and forge new approaches for associated education and training.

The cornerstone of the announcements includes a joint NSF-NIH solicitation on foundational research for big data. The “Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science & Engineering,” or “Big Data” (http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504767)program aims to advance the core scientific and technological means of managing, analyzing, visualizing and extracting information from large, diverse, distributed, and heterogeneous data sets in order to accelerate progress in science and engineering research.  Specifically, it will fund research to develop and evaluate new algorithms, technologies, and tools for improved data management, data analytics, and e-science collaboration environments.

Upcoming deadlines

Two upcoming deadlines:

• NSF Expeditions.  For ambitious projects involving a large team, funded at a level up to $2m/year for up to 5 years. Princeton’s CCI is one such expedition.  Preliminary Proposal Deadline: March 10.
• Women in Theory workshop being held at Princeton June 23-27, 2012. Intended for graduate and undergraduate students in the area of theory of computer science.   Application Deadline: February 29.

Postdoc positions

A quick roundup of postdoc and faculty positions currently advertised at http://intractability.princeton.edu/jobs/ whose deadlines have not yet passed:

• Postdoc at KTH Royal Institute of Technology (deadline Jan 31)
• Postdoc at Cornell at the interface of networks, computing, and economics (deadline Jan 30)
• Simons postdoc at Carnegie Mellon (deadline Jan 31)
• Postdoc at LIAFA (Paris) (deadline Feb 1)
• Theory Postdoc at EPFL and Faculty positions at EPFL (no deadline stated)
• Postdoc in Theory/Practice of Differential Privacy at UPenn (no deadline stated)
• Postdoc in Cryptography at Tel-Aviv University (no deadline stated)
• Faculty positions at Northeastern University, Boston. (no deadline stated)
• Tenure-track Faculty Position at Purdue (Krannert School of Management) (no deadline stated)

Check http://intractability.princeton.edu/jobs/ for further updates.

Two announcements of potential interest to TCS students

1. Simons Graduate Fellowships in TCS: intended for students who have already produced significant results in TCS, this fellowship provides support for two years plus includes travel funds.  At most one application per university, so coordinate with your department chair. The Simons foundation anticipates making roughly 5 awards.  Deadline is May 1, 2012.  More information.

2. IAS summer school in Computation and Biology, July 9-20, 2012, will explore topics at the interface of theoretical computer science, statistical physics and quantitative biology.  Organizers are Bernard Chazelle, David Huse, and Stanislas Leibler. Information about application procedures and a program schedule can be found on the website: www.ias.edu/pitp.  The program is intended for both PhD students and postdocs.  Application deadline: March 1, 2012. Here is a publicity poster.

DARPA Young Faculty Award program

DARPA’s 2012 Young Faculty Award program  provides grants of $150,000/year for up to 2 years for junior faculty.  The announcement explicitly mentions a number of topic areas, of which the most relevant to TCS look to be:

• Quantum Science and Technology
• Mathematics (listing algorithms, geometric and topological methods, combinatorics, and graph theory and network analysis, among others)
• Computational and Quantitative Social, Decision, and Behavioral Sciences.

Submission deadline is 4pm ET January 19, 2012.

See http://www.darpa.mil/Opportunities/Universities/Young_Faculty.aspx and the grants.gov site for more information.

Welcome to the CATCS blog

This is the blog for the SIGACT Committee for the Advancement of Theoretical Computer Science (CATCS).  The aims of this blog and site are to:

1. Inform the TCS community about funding opportunities that arise, as well as discuss tips, suggestions, and experiences related to funding and funding agencies.
2. Provide information (nuggets, slides, descriptions, surveys) that members of the TCS community can use to help in explaining the excitement of TCS to the broader public.
3. Enlist the help of the TCS community for matters vital to the community as a whole, for instance in identifying candidates for NSF program directors, etc.

This site is based on the theorymatters wiki initially created by Sanjeev Arora, Boaz Barak, and Luca Trevisan in 2005, and subsequently transferred to the oversight of the CATCS and maintained substantially by Salil Vadhan.  The porting of the wiki to a blog was done by Boaz Barak, Moses Charikar, and Luca Trevisan (many thanks to Boaz, Moses, and Luca for doing this!).

We hope you find this blog and site useful.  Feel free to contact committee members directly with questions or suggestions.

-Avrim Blum (CATCS chair)