The 49th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS2008), sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Mathematical Foundations of Computing, will be held in Philadelphia, PA, October 25-28, 2008. Papers presenting new and original research on theory of computation are sought. Typical but not exclusive topics of interest include: algorithms and data structures, computational complexity, cryptography, computational geometry, computational game theory, algorithmic graph theory and combinatorics, randomness in computing, parallel and distributed computing, machine learning, applications of logic, algorithmic algebra and coding theory, theoretical aspects of databases, information retrieval, networks, computational biology, robotics, and quantum computing. Papers that broaden the reach of theory, or raise important problems that can benefit from theoretical investigation and analysis, are encouraged.

Important Dates:

 

Submission deadline:

Submissions must be received by Friday April 11, 2008 (19:59 EDT).

Notification:

Accept/reject decisions will be made by June 25, 2008.

Final versions:

Final versions of accepted papers are due August 1, 2008.

Abstract format:

Authors should submit an extended abstract (not a full paper). The submission should contain a scholarly exposition of ideas, techniques, and results, including motivation and a clear comparison with related work. The length should not exceed ten (10) letter-sized pages (not including the bibliography and figures) using 11-point or larger font, with ample spacing and 1-inch margins all around. More details may be given in an appendix, but any material beyond the 10-page limit may be ignored at the discretion of the Program Committee. Abstracts deviating significantly from these guidelines risk rejection without consideration of their merits.

Abstract submission:

Authors must submit their extended abstracts electronically. The submission page is now closed.

Notification:

Authors will be sent notification of acceptance or rejection by email on or before June 25, 2008. A final copy of each accepted paper is required by August 1, 2008. Again this is a firm deadline. An author of each accepted paper must attend the symposium and present the paper, or make alternative arrangements to have it presented.

Machtey award:

This prize will be given to the best paper written solely by one or more students. An abstract is eligible if all authors are full-time students at the time of submission. To indicate that a submission is eligible, please add the phrase "Eligible for best student paper" as the last sentence in the "Abstract" field in the web form on the submission server. The program committee may decline to make the award, or may split it among several papers.

Program Committee Chair:

R. Ravi, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. Contact email: focs08@easychair.org

Program Committee:

Scott Aaronson	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Yossi Azar	Microsoft Research and Tel Aviv University
Avrim Blum	Carnegie Mellon University
Harry Buhrman	Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica
Artur Czumaj	DIMAP, University of Warwick
Yevgeniy Dodis	New York University
David Eppstein	University of California, Irvine
Jeff Erickson	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Naveen Garg	Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
Tom Hayes	Toyota Technical Institute, Chicago
Sampath Kannan	University of Pennsylvania
Jonathan Katz	University of Maryland
Valerie King	University of Victoria
Mohammad Mahdian	Yahoo! Research
Yury Makarychev	Microsoft Research
Yishay Mansour	Tel Aviv University and Google
Rafail Ostrovsky	University of California, Los Angeles
Toniann Pitassi	University of Toronto
Harald Raecke	DIMAP, University of Warwick
R. Ravi (chair)	Carnegie Mellon University
Madhu Sudan	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Emanuele Viola	Columbia University

Local arrangements:

Information about local arrangements can be obtained from the Local Arrangements Chairs:

Sudipto Guha, Sanjeev Khanna, and Sampath Kannan
Department of Computer and Information Science
University of Pennsylvania
Levine Hall
3330 Walnut St
Philadelphia, PA 19104
focs2008@cis.upenn.edu

FOCS 2008
Last modified 2/24/2008