The 55th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2014), sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Mathematical Foundations of Computing, will be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 19-21, 2014 (Sunday through Tuesday). Several workshops and invited tutorial presentations will be given on Saturday, October 18, 2014.
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 learning theory, computational game theory, parallel and distributed algorithms, quantum computing, computational geometry, computational applications of logic, algorithmic graph theory and combinatorics, optimization, randomness in computing, approximation algorithms, algorithmic coding theory, algebraic computation, and theoretical aspects of areas such as networks, privacy, information retrieval, computational biology, and databases. Papers that broaden the reach of the theory of computing, or raise important problems that can benefit from theoretical investigation and analysis, are encouraged.
| Submission deadline | |
| Notification | |
| Camera Ready Deadline | |
| Travel grant application deadline | TBD |
| Early Registration Deadline | September 22, 2014 |
| Hotel Rate Cutoff Deadline | September 22, 2014 |
| Workshops and conference | October 18-21, 2014 |
Authors are required to submit their papers electronically, in PDF format (without security restrictions on copying or printing). Submissions should follow the guidelines specified below. The submission server will open in March and will close at the submission deadline specified above. Submissions will be judged solely on the basis of the papers submitted by the deadline; post-deadline revisions will not be allowed. All submissions will be treated as confidential, and will only be disclosed to the committee and their chosen sub-referees. An extended abstract of each accepted paper will need to be submitted by the camera-ready deadline and will appear in the proceedings. Instructions will be sent to authors of accepted papers at a later stage.
Online posting: Authors are strongly encouraged to post full versions of their submissions in a freely accessible online repository such as the arXiv, the ECCC, or the Cryptology ePrint archive. Papers that are not written well enough for public dissemination are probably also not ready for submission to FOCS. Abstracts of accepted papers will be made public by the PC following notification. We expect that authors of accepted papers will make full versions of their papers, with proofs, available on a freely accessible online repository by the camera-ready deadline. (This should be done in a manner consistent with the IEEE Copyright Policy.)
Submissions should be written such that their content, style, and appearance help to facilitate the reviewing process, to make it as easy as possible for the reviewers to grasp the submission's contributions, limitations, and relation to prior works. Submission should be typeset using 11-point or larger fonts, a single column, with ample spacing throughout and at least 1-inch margins all around. Each submission should have a title page containing the paper's title; each author's name, affiliation, and email address; and a short abstract summarizing the paper's contributions. For more instructions and suggestions, see the following advice for FOCS authors which all authors should read before preparing their submission. Quality of presentation will be a factor in the acceptance decision.
The conference will follow SIGACT's policy on prior publication and simultaneous submissions. Work that has been previously published in another conference proceedings or journal, or which is scheduled for publication prior to December 2014, will not be considered for acceptance at FOCS 2014. Simultaneous submission of the same (or essentially the same) abstract to FOCS 2014 and to another conference with published proceedings or journal is not allowed. The program committee may interact with program chairs of other (past or future) conferences to find out about closely related submissions. Notwithstanding the above, works that were previously published or announced in another journal or conference with a significantly different format, content, and audience than FOCS might still be considered at the PC's discretion; in such cases authors should contact the program chair prior to submission.
The Machtey award will be given to the best paper or papers written solely by one or more students. An abstract is eligible if all authors are full-time students at the time of submission. This should be indicated at the time of submission. All submissions are eligible for the Best Paper award. The committee may decide to split the awards between multiple papers, or to decline to make an award.
One author of each accepted paper will be expected to present the work at the conference. Authors are expected to contact the program chair before submission in case insufficient travel funds could prevent them from attending the conference.
| Scott Aaronson | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Boaz Barak | Microsoft Research, New England (chair) |
| Nikhil Bansal | Eindhoven University of Technology |
| Timothy Chan | University of Waterloo |
| Moses Charikar | Princeton University |
| Shuchi Chawla | University of Wisconsin - Madison |
| Julia Chuzhoy | Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago |
| Andrew Drucker | Institute for Advanced Study |
| Valerie King | University of Victoria |
| Robert Kleinberg | Cornell University |
| Eyal Kushilevitz | Technion |
| James R. Lee | University of Washington |
| Aleksander Mądry | EPFL |
| Raghu Meka | Microsoft Research, Silicon Valley |
| Ankur Moitra | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Aaron Roth | University of Pennsylvania |
| Alexander Russell | University of Connecticut |
| David Steurer | Cornell University |
| Madhu Sudan | Microsoft Research, New England |
| Kunal Talwar | Microsoft Research, Silicon Valley |
| Brent Waters | University of Texas - Austin |
| Ryan Williams | Stanford University |
| David Woodruff | IBM Research, Almaden |
| General Chair | David Shmoys (Cornell University) |
| PC Chair | Boaz Barak (Microsoft Research) |
| Local Arrangements | Rebecca Wright (Rutgers and DIMACS) and Lisa Zhang (Bell Labs) focs2014@dimacs.rutgers.edu |
| Workshop and tutorial chairs | Sanjeev Khana (University of Pennsylvania) and Kunal Talwar (Microsoft Research) |
| Special Issue editors | Julia Chuzhoy (Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago) and Alexander Russell (University of Connecticut) |