Are you or your institution looking to hire a theoretician? Check out these job market profiles of TCS candidates. Feel free to share widely within your network. This information can also be found under the “TCS Job Market” tab in the menu above.
Candidates on the TCS job market: fill out this form to get your profile added to the list. We will review responses and add them to the list every 2-3 weeks.
I posted earlier about a permanent program director position at NSF in CCF/AF. There is also an opening for a rotator position. This is a great opportunity for anyone seeking a short (2-3 year) sabbatical from their academic position, and a wonderful and highly impactful way of serving the community. Please consider applying!
You can find more information at https://beta.nsf.gov/careers/openings/cise/ccf/ccf-2022-79939 for the rotator position. If you have any questions about the position, please feel free to reach out to me or to one of the current AF PDs.
Serving as a program director at the NSF is one of the most impactful ways of serving the TCS community. The Algorithmic Foundations Program in NSF/CISE/CCF is currently accepting applications for a permanent Program Director position. Please consider applying!
Apply here by January 12. Feel free and encouraged to contact the AF group (Tracy Kimbrel, Peter Brass, Funda Ergun) for information.
The ACM/IEEE-CS/AAAI CS2023 Curricular Task Force is working on updating the undergraduate CS curriculum guidelines for the next decade. They have distributed a survey about the role of math in that curriculum, which is of direct interest to the TCS community. Please consider taking the survey so your opinion is heard!
From the Task Force:
———–
Dear educator,
What math should undergraduate Computer Science students know?
The CS2023 Task Force is collecting (and will share!) input from the community on this very important topic both as a useful “sense of the community” for everyone and, pertinent to our immediate goal, to shape our decennial curricular recommendations.
We invite you to fill out a survey: https://tinyurl.com/7zjbu7pr
As you fill out this survey, we ask you to reflect on:
Thank you in advance for taking the time to fill out the survey!
If you believe that other colleagues in your department can contribute, please forward the survey link to them.
Amruth Kumar and Rajendra Raj
On behalf of the of the ACM/IEEE-CS/AAAI CS2023 Curricular Task Force
NOTE: By participating, you agree that we may use your responses for this study; and that this data may be presented in aggregate form (with no personally identifying information) in articles or websites.
——–
From chair of the committee, Dan Spielman:
Nominations are now being accepted for the National Academy of Sciences’ 2023 Michael and Sheila Held Prize. The Held Prize honors outstanding, innovative, creative, and influential research in the areas of combinatorial and discrete optimization, or related parts of computer science, such as the design and analysis of algorithms and complexity theory. This $100,000 prize is intended to recognize recent work (defined as published within the last eight years). Additional information, including past recipients, eligibility requirements, and more, can be found at http://www.nasonline.org/held
All nominations must be submitted online. Unless otherwise stated, the following materials must be submitted:
Nominations will be accepted through Monday, October 3, 2022. Please help spread the word that the nomination process is underway.
CATCS is resuming the effort to collect and disseminate profiles of theory researchers who are going on the job market during the 2022-23 academic year, complementing the job postings collected under the Jobs tab. The goals are to provide:
Candidates can fill out this form, which asks for basic information, graduation date (past or future), cv, bio, research summary, etc.
The responses will be reviewed and, if approved, edited and posted on Theory Matters starting on Oct 15, 2022. There is no deadline, but for responses received after Oct 15, please allow two weeks for review before your profile appears on the website. Responses received by Oct 15 will have summaries published in the following issue of SIGACT News (Dec’22 issue).
Are you trying to form a committee or panel or invite speakers for a TCS event, but cannot find enough women? Look no further. This spreadsheet contains the profiles of 100+ women TCS researchers spanning many subareas of TCS; countries; universities and research institutions; and career stages.
The spreadsheet is password protected. The password is a case-sensitive five letter phrase that captures the most iconic (but as yet unsolved) problem in TCS.
The spreadsheet was made possible through the efforts of Yusu Wang and Kira Goldner. We have full permission of the participants to have their information shared publicly.
Would you like your information added to or corrected on the spreadsheet? If so, fill out this Google form. Any edits will be verified and posted to the spreadsheet within 3-4 weeks.
Call for Participation
54th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2022) – Theory Fest
June 20-24, 2022
Rome, Italy
The 54th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2022) is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory and will be held in Rome, Italy, Monday June 20 – Friday, June 24, 2022.
STOC 2022 – Theory Fest will feature technical talk sessions, 6 workshops with introductory tutorials, poster sessions, social events, and a special joint session with “Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei”, the oldest and most prestigious Italian academic institution, followed by a reception and a concert at the Academy historic site.
Registration
STOC 2022 registration is available here.
Early registration deadline: April 30th.
Student Travel Grants
Information for student travel grant applications is available here.
Application deadline: April 20th.
STOC 2022 is sponsored by Algorand, Amazon, Apple, Google, IOHK, Microsoft, Sapienza University of Rome.
The 2022 STOC Test of Time Award recognizes papers published in the Proceedings of the Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing. This is the second year of this annual award. There are three awards, targeting the STOC conferences 10, 20, and 30 years prior to the year in which the award is given. While there is a preference for papers in the target years (and nominations from those years are encouraged), in each of these award categories it is also possible to nominate STOC conference papers published up to four conferences earlier than the targeted conference. Thus, the 2022 STOC Test of Time Awards will be for papers presented at the STOC conferences in 2008-2012, 1998-2002, and 1988-1992. The awards, which will be presented at STOC 2022, include a prize of US $500 per author as well as complimentary registration for all authors who attend the conference at which the award is given.
Nominations should be sent to stoc22.tot.award@gmail.com with a subject line of “STOC Test of Time Award” no later than April 30, 2022. Nominations should contain an explanation of the impact of the nominated paper(s), including references to follow-on work. A nomination may be accompanied by up to three additional endorsement letters, which may be sent by the endorsers directly to the same email address with the same subject line. Self-nominations are disallowed.
The winners will be selected by a committee appointed by the SIGACT Executive Committee. For 2022 the selection committee consists of Toniann Pitassi (Columbia), Satish Rao (Berkeley), Salil Vadhan (Harvard, chair), Avi Wigderson (Institute for Advanced Study).
In selecting the Test of Time Award winners, the Committee will pay particular attention to long-term impact. This impact can come in many forms, including but not limited to:
The committee expects to select exactly one paper for each award. However, when circumstances justify it, up to three may be selected. The committee may consider papers that were not explicitly nominated and gather additional input from experts, but formal nominations are extremely helpful in the committee’s deliberations and strongly encouraged.
Deadline: March 31, 2022.
The Donald E. Knuth Prize for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science is awarded for major research accomplishments and contributions to the foundations of computer science over an extended period of time. The Prize is awarded annually by the ACMSpecial Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) and the IEEETechnical Committee on the Mathematical Foundations of Computing (TCMF).
Nomination Procedure. Anyone in the Theoretical Computer Science community may nominate a candidate. To do so, please send nominations to knuth.prize.2022@gmail.com by March 31, 2022. The nomination should state the nominee’s name, summarize their contributions in one or two pages, provide a CV for the nominee or a pointer to the nominee’s web page, and give telephone and email contact information for the nominator. Any supporting letters from other members of the community (up to a limit of 5) should be included in the package that the nominator submits. Supporting letters should contain substantial information not in the nomination. Others may endorse the nomination simply by adding their names to the nomination letter. If you have nominated a candidate in past years, you can re-nominate the candidate by sending a message to that effect to the above email address. (You may revise the nominating materials if you so desire.)
Criteria for Selection. The winner is selected by a Prize Committee consisting of six people appointed by the SIGACT and TCMF Chairs, see below for the composition of the committee.
Previous nominations made or updated in the last 5 years will be considered. Older nominations must be updated for consideration. Note that the Knuth Prize is awarded to a single individual each year. Nominations of groups of researchers will not be considered.
In selecting the Knuth Prize winner, the Committee pays particular attention to a sustained record of high-impact, seminal contributions to the foundations of computer science. The selection may also be based partly on educational accomplishments and contributions such as fundamental textbooks and high-quality students. The award is not given for service to the theoretical computer science community, but service may be included in the citation for a winner if appropriate.
The 2022 prize committee consists of Harold Gabow (U. Colorado), Monika Henzinger (U. Vienna), Kurt Mehlhorn (Max Planck Institute), Dana Randall (Chair, Georgia Tech), Madhu Sudan (Harvard U.), and Andy Yao (Tsinghua U.).
Theory Matters