Call for Papers

STOC 2017

Theory Fest

June 19-23, 2017
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Submission Deadline: Wednesday, November 2, 2016, 11:59pm PDT

The 49th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2017), sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT), will be held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. This year, STOC will be part of Theory Fest, an expanded program of invited talks, tutorials, poster sessions, and workshops from Monday, June 19 to Friday, June 23, 2017. Papers presenting new and original research on the theory of computation are sought. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: algorithms and data structures, computational complexity, randomness in computing, algorithmic graph theory and combinatorics, approximation algorithms, cryptography, computational learning theory, economics and computation, parallel and distributed algorithms, quantum computing, algorithmic coding theory, computational geometry, computational applications of logic, optimization, algebraic algorithms, and theoretical aspects of areas such as networks, privacy, computational biology, and databases. Papers that extend the reach of the theory of computing, or raise important problems that can benefit from theoretical investigation and analysis, are encouraged. The program committee will make every effort to consider a broad range of areas.

Submission format: Submissions should start with a title page consisting of the title of the paper; each author's name, affiliation, and email address; and an abstract of 1-2 paragraphs summarizing the paper's contributions. There is no page limit and authors are encouraged to use the "full version" of their paper as the submission. The submission should contain within the initial ten pages following the title page a clear presentation of the merits of the paper, including a discussion of the paper's importance within the context of prior work and a description of the key technical and conceptual ideas used to achieve its main claims. The submission should be addressed to a broad spectrum of theoretical computer science researchers. Proofs must be provided which can enable the main mathematical claims of the paper to be fully verified. Although there is no bound on the length of a submission, material other than the abstract, references, and the first ten pages will be read at the committee's discretion. Authors are encouraged to put the references at the very end of the submission. The submission should be typeset using 11-point or larger fonts, in a single-column, single-space (between lines) format with ample spacing throughout and 1-inch margins all around, on letter-size (8 1/2 x 11 inch) paper. Submissions deviating significantly from these guidelines risk rejection without consideration of their merits.

Submission Instructions: Authors are required to submit their papers electronically, in PDF (without security restrictions on copying or printing). The submission server is now open.

Authors are encouraged to also make full versions of their submissions freely accessible in an online repository such as the arXiv, ECCC, or the Cryptology ePrint archive. (Papers that are not written well enough for public dissemination are probably also not ready for submission to STOC.) It is expected that authors of accepted papers will make their full papers, with proofs, publicly available by the camera-ready deadline.

Prior and Simultaneous Submissions: 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 July 2017, will not be considered for acceptance at STOC 2017. The only exception to this policy are prior or simultaneous publications appearing in the Science and Nature journals. SIGACT policy does not allow simultaneous submissions of the same (or essentially the same) material to another conference with published proceedings. The program committee may consult with program chairs of other (past or future) conferences to find out about closely related submissions.

Dates:

Extended Abstract Submission: Wednesday, November 2, 2016 (11:59pm PDT).
Notification: by email on or before February 8, 2017.
Deadline for accepted papers: A camera-ready copy of each accepted paper is required by April 10, 2017. The page limit is 14 pages including all references and appendices. The format of your paper must strictly adhere to the ACM Format (new), more specifically, the sigconf option. Please use the following LaTeX style definition: \documentclass[sigconf]{acmart}
STOC talks: Monday morning June 19 to Thursday afternoon June 22, 2017
Theory Fest activities: Monday morning June 19 to Friday afternoon June 23, 2017

Presentation of Accepted Papers: One author of each accepted paper will be expected to present the work in the form of a talk at the conference. In addition, one or more authors will be expected to present the work in an evening poster session.

Best Paper Award: The program committee may designate up to three papers accepted to the conference as STOC Best Papers. Every submission is automatically eligible for this award. Rules for the award can be found at http://www.sigact.org/Prizes/BestPaper.

Danny Lewin Best Student Paper Award: A prize of $500 will be given to the author(s) of the best student authored paper (or split between more than one paper if there is a tie). A paper is eligible if all of its authors are full-time students at the time of submission. To inform the program committee about a paper's eligibility, check the appropriate box in the web form on the submission server. The list of past winners can be found at http://www.sigact.org/Prizes/Student.

Program Committee:

Nina Balcan (Carnegie Mellon University)
Allan Borodin (University of Toronto)
Keren Censor-Hillel (Technion)
Edith Cohen (Google and Tel Aviv University)
Artur Czumaj (University of Warwick)
Yevgeniy Dodis (New York University)
Andrew Drucker (University of Chicago)
Nick Harvey (University of British Columbia)
Monika Henzinger (University of Vienna)
Russell Impagliazzo (University of California, San Diego)
Ken-ichi Kawarabayashi (National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo)
Valerie King (chair) (University of Victoria)
Ravi Kumar (Google)

James R. Lee (University of Washington)
Katrina Ligett (California Institute of Technology and Hebrew University)
Aleksander Ma̧dry (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Cristopher Moore (Santa Fe Institute)
Jelani Nelson (Harvard University)
Eric Price (University of Texas, Austin)
Amit Sahai (University of California, Los Angeles)
Jared Saia (University of New Mexico)
Shubhangi Saraf (Rutgers University)
Alexander Sherstov (University of California, Los Angeles)
Mohit Singh (Microsoft Research and Georgia Institute of Technology)
Gábor Tardos (Rényi Institute, Budapest)

General Co-Chairs: Hamed Hatami (McGill University), Pierre McKenzie (Université de Montréal)

The committee intends to provide registered attendees with internet access to the Proceedings on a password-protected site that will be available from about two weeks before the conference until the end of the conference. Authors can opt out of this online distribution by contacting the program committee chair by March 16.

SIGACT provides travel awards to students without available support, and researchers from developing countries. More information on the award process will be posted shortly.