SIGACT Institutes New STOC Test of Time Award
Beginning in 2021 and continuing annually thereafter, “Test of Time” awards will be given to papers published in past STOC conferences that have had exceptional long-term impact. The 2021 STOC Test of Time Awards will be for papers presented at the STOC conferences in 2007–2011, 1997–2001, and 1987–1991. For more information on eligibility and nomination procedures, see the call for nominations.
SIGACT Distinguished Service Award changes eligibility rules and extends 2021 nomination deadline
The SIGACT Distinguished Service Award has adopted a new eligibility rule. The award can be given to an individual or a group of individuals, for a single contribution or for a series of contributions over a career. All living individuals are eligible with the exception of the sitting SIGACT Chair, an individual or a group of individuals who nominated a majority of the current selection committee members, or a member of the current selection committee.
For 2021 only, the deadline to nominate an individual or group for the SIGACT Distinguished Award has been extended by one week, to March 8, 11:59 EST. In future years, the award will return to its regular deadline of March 1, 11:59 EST.
SIGACT Research Highlights Committee
The goal of the SIGACT Research Highlights Committee is to help promote top computer science theory research via identifying results that are of high quality and broad appeal to the general computer science audience. These results would then be recommended for consideration for the CACM Research Highlights section as well as other general-audience computer science research outlets.
Nomination and Selection Process
The committee solicits two types of nominations:
Conference nominations. Each year, the committee will ask the PC chairs of theoretical computer science conferences to send a selection of up to three top papers from these conferences (selected based on both their technical merit and breadth of interest to non-theory audience) and forwarding them to the committee for considerations.
Community nominations. The committee will accept nominations from the members of the community. Each such nomination should summarize the contribution of the nominated paper and also argue why this paper is suitable for broader outreach. The nomination should be no more than a page in length and can be submitted at any time by emailing it to sigact.highlights.nominations@outlook.com. Self-nominations are discouraged.
Please submit by October 22, 2021 (Fri).
The Committee
The SIGACT Research Highlights Committee currently comprises the following members:
- Irit Dinur, Weizmann Institute of Science
- Yuval Ishai, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology
- Jelani Nelson, University of California, Berkeley (chair)
- Ronald de Wolf, CWI Amsterdam
2020 SIGACT Distinguished Service Award, Knuth Prize, and Gödel Prize
We are pleased to congratulate the winners of the SIGACT Distinguished Service Award, Knuth Prize, and Gödel Prize for 2020.
- The SIGACT Distinguished Service Award is awarded to Dieter van Melkebeek for his leadership in creating the Computational Complexity Foundation (CCF) and transitioning the annual Computational Complexity Conference to be run under the auspices of the CCF.
- The Knuth Prize is awarded to Cynthia Dwork for her sustained record of contributions to theoretical computer science over the past four decades.
- The Gödel Prize is awarded to Robin A. Moser and Gábor Tardos for their algorithmic version of the Lovász Local Lemma in the paper “A Constructive Proof of The General Lovász Local Lemma,” Journal of the ACM 57(2): 11:1-11:15 (2010).
STOC 2020 and TheoryFest to be held online only
Due to the current situation with COVID-19, it was decided that Theory Fest and STOC 2020 will be held online only.
While the organizing committee is still finalizing the format of the conference, authors are being asked to prepare and upload a video recording of a 20-minute presentation of their paper before the conference, so participants can review the videos in advance. Plans are being made to allow for online discussions to happen during the conference itself (third week of June).
More details will be posted here: http://acm-stoc.org/stoc2020/.
SIGACT Membership Drive
As our research community continues to grow and thrive, SIGACT membership has not grown apace. We respectfully urge you to join SIGACT! Membership is very cheap (and does not require ACM membership) – only \$15 a year – and by joining you will be lending your support to the many activities that SIGACT undertakes on behalf of the theoretical computer science research community. These include:
sponsoring STOC and other theory conferences such as SPAA and PODC, as well as co-sponsoring SODA;
awards such as the Knuth, Gödel, and Kanellakis Prizes, the SIGACT Distinguished Service Award, and the best student paper awards at STOC and SODA;
supporting the Women in Theory workshop;
representing the theoretical computer science community to the ACM and beyond.
In addition to these community benefits, membership comes with individual benefits including voting rights in SIGACT elections, reduced rate for membership in EATCS, reduced conference registration rates at SIGACT-sponsored conferences, access to SIGACT News and announcements sent on the SIGACT email list.
SIG membership does not automatically renew when you renew your ACM membership, and we suspect this may be one reason for the decline in SIGACT membership. So the next time you renew your ACM membership, remember to also join SIGACT or renew your SIG membership! Better yet, why wait? If you’re not a SIGACT member, join right now.
Please do your part to nurture this important resource for our community.
Respectfully,
- The SIGACT Executive Committee
- Tal Rabin, Chair
- Ken Clarkson
- Valerie King
- Shachar Lovett
- Chris Umans
SIGACT Distinguished Service Award Prize Increase
The prize for the ACM SIGACT Distinguished Service Award was increased from \$1,000 to \$3,000. A call for nominations will be announced shortly.
Report on combating harassment and discrimination
The following message is from Sandi Irani, the chair of the ad hoc committee to combat harassment and discrimination in the Theory of Computing community.
A copy of the final report of the committee to address harassment in our community is now posted on the committee web page.
As always, feedback is welcome.