Upcoming SIGACT Awards deadlines

From the SIGACT executive committee:

The deadlines to submit nominations for the Gödel Prize, Knuth Prize, and SIGACT Distinguished Service Award are coming soon. Calls for nominations for all three awards can be found at the links below.

• Gödel Prize: deadline February 15, 2020.
• Knuth prize: deadline April 12, 2020. Note that this deadline is a bit later than usual, because the award will be presented at FOCS this year. Next year the deadline will be moved back to February.
• SIGACT Distinguished Service Award: deadline March 1, 2020.

SIGACT Award deadlines

From the SIGACT executive committee:

The deadlines to submit nominations for the Gödel Prize, Knuth Prize, and SIGACT Distinguished Service Award are coming soon. Calls for nominations for all three awards can be found at the links below. Note that March 1 is now the permanent deadline for SIGACT Distinguished Service Award nominations, this year and in future years.

• Gödel Prize: deadline February 15, 2019
• Knuth Prize: deadline February 15, 2019
• SIGACT Distinguished Service Award: deadline March 1, every year (including 2019)
  Those who intend to submit a nomination for the Distinguished Service Award are strongly encouraged to inform the Selection Committee Chair at least two weeks in advance.

NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII)

From NSF program director Jeremy Epstein: The Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) program is for research and teaching faculty in the first two years of their appointments.  In 2014-15, the first year of the program, there were 76 awards under this program.

There will be a webinar for potential CRII applicants on Aug 5 1pm-2pm, describing the goals and requirements of the program, and changes for the 2015-16 program.  Register by Aug 4.

Proposal submissions are due on Sept 30.

Highlights from STOC presentation

Since there wasn’t time to go through the full CATCS Report during the STOC business meeting last week, here are a few items of note.

• The URL http://www.theorymatters.org/ (listed in the presentation) is no longer active.  For now, our blog is just https://thmatters.wordpress.com/
• Tim Roughgarden will be taking over as chair of CATCS starting in August.
• Do make use of the cstheory-jobs site to advertise or look for jobs in theoretical computer science.

And many upcoming deadlines:

• June 30, 2015: proposals for 2017 programs at the Simons Institute 
• July 21, 2015: NSF CAREER Award (for new/young faculty).  See also our repository of past CAREER proposals and other proposal-writing tips.
• Late summer: universities sent calls for nominations for Simons Investigator Awards (long-term support for individuals)
• Late summer: Simons Fellows in Math (sabbatical funding)
• Early fall: Simons Collaborations in Math & Physical Sciences. (large grants for collaborative efforts on fundamental scientific questions of major importance)
• September 10, 2015: Nominations for ACM Fellows.
• September 16, 2015: NSF Medium proposals to Algorithmic Foundations, Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, and other programs.
• TBD (September?): Guggenheim Fellowships
• September 24, 2015: NSF Large proposals to Algorithmic Foundations, Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, and other programs.
• September 30, 2015: NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII).   For new faculty, easier to get than a CAREER award (but both can be submitted at once).  See FAQ.
• October 19, 2015: NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
• TBD (late Oct): NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
• October 31, 2015: ACM Dissertation Award
• November 1, 2015: AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships
• November 18, 2015: NSF Small proposals to Algorithmic Foundations, Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, and other programs.
• November 30, 2015: Many ACM Awards (e.g. Turing, Hopper, Kanellakis, Distinguished Service)
• Rolling or Dec 1: CCC Visioning Workshops (eg Theoretical Foundations of Social Computing 6/29-6/30)
• December 7, 2015: NSF CISE-MPS Interdisciplinary Faculty Program in Quantum Information (sabbatical support)
• December 7, 2015: NSF Exploiting Parallelism & Scalability (XPS)
• February 8, 2015: NSF Algorithms in the Field (AitF)
• TBD: Simons Award for Graduate Students in TCS
• March 1, 2016: Nominations for IEEE Fellows.
• March 9, 2016: NSF CISE Expeditions in Computing Preliminary Proposals
• TBD (April?): Symposia at 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting
• TBD (May?): NSF BIGDATA program
• Any time: DIMACS special focus proposal

Change in NSF Deadlines

In a Dear Colleagues letter from Jim Kurose, the CISE Directorate at NSF announced its intention to change the deadlines for a number of its programs, including Algorithmic Foundations (AF) and Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC).  The next deadlines are as follows:

• Medium proposals: September 16, 2015
• Large proposals: September 24, 2015
• Small proposals: November 18, 2015.

[6/7/15: edited to reflect actual deadlines rather than just months]

US-Israel BSF Travel Grants for Young Scientists

A CALL FOR APPLICATIONS IN THE PROF. R. RAHAMIMOFF TRAVEL GRANTS PROGRAM FOR YOUNG SCIENTISTS

BSF is announcing the availability of funds for short scientific trips by young American or Israeli scientists to the other country. In 2015 the program will have two calls and each will support 10 trips. Grants will be $4,000 each.  The program is open to PhD students doing research that requires facilities or expertise that are not available in their home countries.  The deadline for the 1st call for 2015 is May 14, 2015.

Call for 2016 AAAS Symposium Proposals

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has put out a Call for Symposium Proposals for the 2016 AAAS Annual Meeting, February 11-15 in Washington DC, with a proposal deadline of April 24.  

These symposia can be a way to increase awareness and even get popular press coverage of exciting research directions in theoretical computer science. Proposing and organizing a 90 or 180-minute symposium is not much work, but organizers should also work with institutional communications offices to draw attention to the symposium before the meeting (attendance at the symposia has high variance).

They are looking for proposals that either relate to the meeting theme “Global Science Engagement” (involving things such as innovation and international scientific collaboration, food and water security, sustainable development, infectious disease and health, climate change, natural disasters, and energy) or involve “groundbreaking areas of research, new and exciting developments, or cross-cutting activities in support of science, technology, and education.”

If you are thinking of submitting a proposal, we (CATCS) are happy to help and put you in touch with people who can offer advice.

NSF Brain Initiative Opportunities

As part of the Brain Initiative, there is a new NSF program on Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems  (NSF-NCS) that can provide opportunities for some CS theory research.  For “Integrative Foundations” proposals submitted direclty to the NSF-NCS program ($500k-$1m over 2-4 years), letters of intent need to be submitted by tomorrow (December 10).  But it is also possible to submit a “Core+Extensions” project as a supplement (up to $100k) to a proposal to another NSF program (such as the Algorithmic Foundations program, deadline January 14 for small proposals).

Bala Kalyanasundaram (bkalyana@nsf.gov) is a good program officer to contact with questions about submitting proposals related to CS theory.

New NSF program: Algorithms in the Field

Research Opportunity from NSF for Algorithms in the Field

Guest post from Tracy Kimbrel, NSF Program Director for Computing and Communication Foundations

The National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Computer Science and Engineering (CISE) recently announced a new program solicitation, Algorithms in the Field (AitF), which aims to promote collaboration between theory researchers and those in more applied areas.

The program originated from interest and excitement among the theory community and researchers in many applied fields during a well-attended workshop held in May 2011.

Bridging the gap between theory and practice in the design, analysis, implementation, and evaluation of algorithms can lead to new fields as well as broader cutting-edge applications. The premise is that by working jointly “in the field” researchers from these different communities will continually inform each other, innovate in their respective areas, and forge algorithms that are simultaneously validated by theory, systems, and applied communities.

The program synopsis reads as follows:

Algorithms in the Field encourages closer collaboration between two groups of researchers: (i) theoretical computer science researchers, who focus on the design and analysis of provably efficient and provably accurate algorithms for various computational models; and (ii) applied researchers including a combination of systems and domain experts (very broadly construed – including but not limited to researchers in computer architecture, programming languages and systems, computer networks, cyber-physical systems, cyber-human systems, machine learning, database and data analytics, etc.) who focus on the particular design constraints of applications and/or computing devices. Each proposal must have at least one co-PI interested in theoretical computer science and one interested in any of the other areas typically supported by CISE. Proposals are expected to address the dissemination of the algorithmic contributions and resulting applications, tools, languages, compilers, libraries, architectures, systems, data, etc.

I want to emphasize that lists of possible “field areas” such as those in the synopsis and other parts of the solicitation are not exhaustive and do not imply any limitation on scope.

NSF looks forward to the new research that will be supported through this endeavor.  The deadline for submissions is February 9, 2015.  Please read the full program solicitation for more information. A webinar will be held December 18, 2014 at 3 pm ET; details will be provided soon on the AitF page.

US-Israel BSF travel grants for PhD students

The US-Israel Binational Science Foundation Prof. Rahamimoff Travel Grants Program for young Scientists is open for submissions. The current deadline is Dec. 3, 2014 and the next deadline will be in the spring of 2015. The program supports research-related travel of PhD students (only) between the U.S. and Israel.

The Call for Proposals and Instructions can be found in the following BSF website page:    http://www.bsf.org.il/ElectronicSubmission/GatewayFormsAndGuidelines.aspx?PageId=7&innerTextID=0