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• The URL http://www.theorymatters.org/ (listed in the presentation) is no longer active.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

Simons Graduate Fellowships in Theoretical Computer Science

The Simons Foundation has put out a call for applications for the Simons Award for Graduate Students in Theoretical Computer Science program. From the solicitation: “These awards will be made to graduate students with an outstanding track record of research accomplishments.” “…the foundation seeks to identify and support these emerging stars by providing additional support to enable them to freely pursue their research interests.” “The award is not intended to replace the regular academic-year support of these outstanding students.”

The awards are for a period of two years (June 2015 to May 2017) for up to $24,000 per year.

Application deadline: February 12, 2015.

Simons Collaborations in Mathematics and the Physical Sciences

The Simons Foundation has issued a call for proposals for their new program Simons Collaborations in Mathematics and the Physical Sciences.  The aim of the program is to “stimulate progress on fundamental scientific questions of major importance in the broad area of mathematics, theoretical physics, and theoretical computer science.”  An example is the Simons Collaboration on Algorithms and Geometry.

Grant sizes are up to $2.5m/year for 4 years (which can be extended to 7 years).  Letters of intent are due by October 31.

Simons Math+X Program

The Simons Foundation’s Math+X program is designed to encourage novel collaborations between mathematics and other fields in science or engineering by providing substantial operating funds to create new chairs at U.S. universities that join mathematics departments with chosen partner departments through matching grants for endowment.

Number of Awards: The foundation may award up to two Math+X grants per year.

Mathematics and X Departments: The X partner should be a department of science or engineering that will engage in significant collaboration with the mathematics department in an area where such collaboration is not the norm. Both departments must have doctoral programs.

X partners in finance and business will not be considered. Areas where there are already well-established links with mathematics, such as economics, string theory or computational complexity, will also not be considered unless the proposal involves particularly unusual collaborations.

Letter of Intent Deadline: September 30

Simons Awards for Graduate Students in TCS

The Simons Foundation Division for Mathematics and the Physical Sciences invites applications for the  Simons Award for Graduate Students in Theoretical Computer Science program. These awards will be made to graduate students with an outstanding track record of research accomplishments.  To be eligible the applicant must be a graduate student who has completed two, three or four years at a U.S. or Canadian institution of higher education. A track record of outstanding results in theoretical computer science is the key criterion.  Deadline: February 7, 2013.

Another upcoming Simons deadline (January 31, 2013) is for the Collaboration Grants for Mathematicians program, which will make a large number of grants to accomplished, active researchers who do not otherwise have access to substantial research funding that supports travel and visitors.

 

Simons Investigator Nominations

This year, the Simons Foundation started the Simons Investigator program, which provides a stable base of support for a selected group of outstanding scientists in theoretical computer science, mathematics, and theoretical physics, enabling them to undertake long-term study of fundamental questions.

For the 2013 Simons Investigators, the Simons Foundation has asked 90 university presidents to provide a nomination up to two nominations in each of the three areas by December 14.  Given the short timeline, it may be good to check that your department chair and administration are aware of and pursuing this opportunity.