TCS Visioning 2020 report and slides

In July 2020, the CATCS organized a visioning workshop. We are happy to announce the release of a report and posters based on this workshop. Material produced from this workshop is available and free to use by any member of the TCS community. We gratefully acknowledge financial as well as organizational support by the SIGACT and CCC for this activity.

We are planning a follow-up event for disseminating the report and posters to funding agencies in the next few months. Details are forthcoming.

TCS Visioning Full Report: here

Short Report (CCC Quadrennial paper): here

TCS Visioning Slides: in PPT and in PDF

The Case for Basic Research

The transcript of Eric Lander’s talk “The Miracle Machine,” given at the National Math Festival, makes a powerful case for basic research.

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• The URL http://www.theorymatters.org/ (listed in the presentation) is no longer active.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

STOC 2015 Presentation

Since time is tight at the STOC 2015 business meeting, I am attaching the slides for the CATCS presentation that would have been given: CATCS Report STOC 2015 

Simons Institute Symposium on Visions for the Theory of Computing

The Simons Institute held an inspiring Symposium on Visions for the Theory of Computing at the end of May.  You can read a summary of the talks by Christos Papadimitriou and watch videos of the presentations.

Presentation at STOC business meeting

Here are the slides from the STOC 2013 CATCS Report.  Probably the most important slide is the list of upcoming deadlines:

• 7/1: Simons Institute Call for Proposals for 2015 Programs

• 7/22: NSF Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards

• 8/28: NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site

• 9/30: NSF CCF Core Programs (incl. Algorithmic Foundations) Medium

• 9/30: NSF Secure & Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) Medium

• Anytime: DIMACS special focus proposal

CATCS Report at FOCS 2012

I have posted the slides from my presentation at FOCS 2012 at https://thmatters.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/catcs-report-focs-2012.pptx

Some items of note:

– We continually need good people from our community to serve at NSF.  This is a great service to the TCS community and can be a rewarding experience.  If you are potentially interested, please contact us and we can help you find out more about what would be involved.

– There are a number of upcoming deadlines of note:

•11/30: NSF CCF Core Programs (incl. Algorithmic Foundations) Large

•11/30: NSF Secure & Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) Medium

•11/30: Many ACM Award Nominations

•12/4: CISE-MPS Interdisciplinary Faculty Program in Quantum Information.

•12/14: NSF Secure & Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) Small

•12/10: NSF Expeditions in Computing

•12/15: Simons Institute Call for Program Proposals

•12/17: NSF CCF Core Programs (incl. Algorithmic Foundations) Small