TCS Visioning Workshop — Call for Participation

The CATCS will be hosting a virtual “Visioning Workshop” the week of July 20 in order to identify broad research themes within theoretical computer science (TCS) that have potential for a major impact in the future. The goals are similar to the workshop of the same name in 2008: to package these themes in a way that can be consumed by the general public, which we would deliver primarily to the Computing Community Consortium and others (e.g. funding agencies) to help them advocate for TCS.

While participation in the workshop is primarily through invitation, we have a few slots available for the broader community. If you are interested in participating, please see details of the application process below. The workshop will be organized according to area-wise breakout groups. Each breakout group will have 1-2 leads. Breakout groups will meet for 4-5 hours spread across several days and will be tasked with brainstorming ideas and preparing materials related to their topic. Leads are further expected to participate in plenary sessions held on Monday July 20 and Friday July 24 (4-5 hrs of additional time) where these materials will be discussed.

If you are interested in participating in the workshop, please fill out this Google form by Monday June 15. On this form, applicants are asked to contribute one or two major results in the last 10 years whose significance can be explained in layperson terms, and one or two major challenges for theory whose significance can be explained in layperson terms. These descriptions can be very brief. We will just use them to select participants and create breakout groups.

(If the embedded link doesn’t work, paste this URL in your browser: https://forms.gle/cdCTsLfUs56CDhKS9.)

Edit-a-thon update

This event was a great success! Thank you to all of the participants for contributing your time. Please keep up the momentum and continue to edit the pages you made a start on. Please continue to record your progress on the list of topics. Special thanks to Aviad Rubinstein and Yuval Filmus for offering expert advice at the event.

We plan to organize this event again at future STOCs, and hope many more people can participate. Even an hour of your time can have a huge impact on the community!

CCC Call for Visioning Proposals

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) invites proposals for visioning workshops that will catalyze and enable innovative research at the frontiers of computing.  Successful activities will articulate new research visions, galvanize community interest in those visions, mobilize support for those visions from the computing research community, government leaders, and funding agencies, and encourage broader segments of society to participate in computing research and education.  Past examples can be found at www.cra.org/ccc/visioning/visioning-activities.

Workshop organizers are expected to bring together a group of scientists and practitioners in the area of interest, and to formulate a program that encourages new ideas, innovative thinking, and broad discussion. Workshops can be of varying sizes, typically ranging from 20 to 100 participants.  It is important that the participants cover a broad spectrum to ensure full coverage of the area, both in terms of content area representation and employment (academia, industry, research labs, and policy and funding organizations).

Workshops are expected to have a tangible output – for example, a whitepaper (or set thereof) or a workshop report. Workshop outcomes should be targeted to multiple audiences (the research community, science policy groups or funding agencies, the general public), and the deliverables should be tailored for easy dissemination.  CCC will help to support both workshop organization and the subsequent generation and communication of the output.

The CCC encourages creative ideas from all segments of the computing research community on topics ranging from the formulation of new basic research areas and technologies to the use of new or existing research ideas and technologies to address important scientific or societal challenges.

For CCC planning purposes, proposals with start dates prior to September 2015 should be submitted by December 1, 2014.

CCC Call for Visioning Workshop Proposals

[A CCC visioning workshop in 2008 led to the TCS vision nuggets hosted here.  Other CCC visioning workshops help generate new funding programs at NSF and other agencies.  It would be great to have another TCS-oriented visioning workshop, perhaps focused on a particular direction in the field.]

Excerpts from the call for proposals and the CCC website:

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) invites proposals for visioning workshops that will catalyze and enable innovative research at the frontiers of computing.  Successful activities will articulate new research visions, galvanize community interest in those visions, mobilize support for those visions from the computing research community, government leaders, and funding agencies, and encourage broader segments of society to participate in computing research and education.  Past examples can be found a twww.cra.org/ccc/visioning/visioning-activities.

Workshop organizers are expected to bring together a group of scientists and practitioners in the area of interest, and to formulate a program that encourages new ideas, innovative thinking, and broad discussion. Workshops can be of varying sizes, typically ranging from 20 to 100 participants.  It is important that the participants cover a broad spectrum to ensure full coverage of the area, both in terms of content area representation and employment (academia, industry, research labs, and policy and funding organizations).

The length of the project description should be commensurate with the scope of the proposed activities, but not longer than six (6) pages. *Note that we seek workshops that create visions for broad research agendas, not proposals whose primary purpose is to secure future funding for the participants.

Workshops are expected to have a tangible output – for example, a whitepaper (or set thereof) or a workshop report. Workshop outcomes should be targeted to multiple audiences (the research community, science policy groups or funding agencies, the general public), and the deliverables should be tailored for easy dissemination.  CCC will help to support both workshop organization and the subsequent generation and communication of the output.

For CCC planning purposes, proposals with start dates prior to September 2015 should be submitted by December 1, 2014.
If you have questions, please e-mail us or plan to tune into our webinar on October 2 at 1pm ET.  Please register for the webinar here by 12:00am September 30.

Call for Symposia at AAAS 2015 Meeting

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is soliciting proposals for symposia for its Annual Meeting from February 12-16, 2015 in San Jose, CA.  Deadline is April 25.

This is a great opportunity to get a research area exposed to a broad audience of scientists, engineers, policymakers, educators, and journalists.   CATCS is available to help with the process; let us know if you’re thinking of submitting a proposal!

CCC Call for Visioning Proposals

[A CCC visioning workshop in 2008 led to the TCS vision nuggets hosted here.  It would be great to have another TCS-oriented visioning workshop, perhaps focused on a particular direction in the field.]

———————–

From the CCC website:

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) solicits proposals for workshops that will create exciting visions and agendas for research at the frontiers of computing.  Successful workshops will articulate new research visions, galvanize community interest in those visions, and mobilize support for those visions from the computing research community, government leaders, and funding agencies.  Past examples can be found at www.cra.org/ccc/visioning/visioning-activities.

Workshop organizers will be expected to bring together a group of scientists and practitioners in the area of interest, and to formulate a program that encourages new ideas, innovative thinking, and broad discussion. Workshops can be of varying sizes, typically ranging from 20 to 100 participants.  CCC will help to support both workshop organization and subsequent communication of the results.  The output of a successful workshop will be one or more white papers and reports for the CCC to post on its website. The CCC will work with the workshop organizers to communicate to other stakeholders and funding agencies.

Proposals are encouraged across the full spectrum of theoretical and applied work related to the creation and application of information technologies as well as their use in addressing important scientific or societal challenges.

…

Proposals with start dates prior to September 2014 should be submitted by 1 December 2013.

FOCS 2013 workshops

Continuing the tradition of recent FOCS/STOC conferences, FOCS 2013 will have a workshop-and-tutorials day on Saturday, October 26, immediately preceding the main conferences. Chris Umans and I are the workshop chairs. We invite researchers to submit workshop or tutorial proposals. This is an opportunity to expose the FOCS audience to your favorite topic. The proposal is relatively light-weight – no more than 2 pages – so Chris and I encourage you to start thinking of ideas for great workshops/tutorials at FOCS.  The proposal submission deadline is August 15. See the details here: FOCS-2013-workshops-call

Additionally, if you have thoughts on topics for workshops/tutorials you would like to see at FOCS, but do not consider yourself an organizer, feel free to send them to Chris and me. We’ll do our best to find organizers.

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.

STOC & Related Workshops

The early registration deadline for STOC 2013 (June 1-4 in Palo Alto)  is this Friday, May 3.

Before the main STOC program begins, there are some other notable events:

• A Symposium on Visions for the Theory of Computing at the new Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing (May 29-31, UC Berkeley), and
• A day of tutorials and workshops on June 1 at the STOC conference hotel, including an evening panel discussion on grant-writing.

 

 

NSF upcoming deadlines & quantum workshop

Sept 28-29: Workshop on Quantum Information Science at the University of Maryland.  Relates to the new NSF Interdisciplinary Faculty Program in Quantum Information Science.  See also CCC blog post about the workshop.

Oct. 9:  Computing and Communications Foundations (CCF) Core Programs deadline for medium-sized proposals. This includes the Algorithmic Foundations program, which funds a broad range of research in theoretical computer science.   Large proposals are due Nov. 30 and small proposals are due Dec. 17.

Nov. 13: Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GFRP) deadline in Computer Science. (Mathematical Sciences deadline is Nov. 14.)  Open to students who are U.S. citizens, nationals, or permanent residents, and have completed at most one year of full-time graduate study.

Nov. 30: Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) deadline for medium-sized proposals.  The research supported by this program includes cryptography and privacy.  Small proposals and education proposals are due Dec. 14, and Frontier proposals (> Large) are due Jan. 30.

Dec. 4: CISE-MPS Interdisciplinary Faculty Program in Quantum Information Science.  Provides supplemental sabbatical salary for tenured faculty to make semester or year-long visits to other institutions to work on quantum information science.

Dec. 10: Expeditions in Computing deadline.  Supports ambitious large-scale projects at up to $2m/year for 5 years.  The Center for Computational Intractability (CCI) at Princeton is supported by this program.