By John Gilbert
The inaugural SIAM Conference on Applied and Computational Discrete Algorithms (ACDA21), which is scheduled to take place from July 19-21, 2021 in either a hybrid or virtual format, will bring together researchers who are working on various applications of discrete mathematics. It is co-located with the 2021 SIAM Annual Meeting.
Why another meeting? There are meetings aplenty on graph theory, combinatorial algorithms, theoretical computer science, and discrete techniques in individual fields like biology, networks, optimization, parallel computing, and so on. But there are very few (perhaps even no) venues that cut across application fields to focus on the entire pipeline of applied discrete mathematics: formulation of combinatorial problems from applications, theoretical analysis and design of algorithms, computational evaluation of algorithms, and deployment of software to enable applications. ACDA21, which is organized by SIAM under the auspices of the SIAM Activity Group on Applied and Computational Discrete Algorithms, aims to provide such a venue.
It's a challenge to design a meeting that is attractive to researchers from diverse communities with different cultures of research, presentation, and publication. In some communities, the prestigious publications are refereed conference proceedings, and the most worthwhile ones are the most selective. Other communities use conferences for more inclusive sharing of information and judge merit by publication in refereed journals. Experimental and theoretical research often follow different timelines and apply different criteria for impact. Bridging research cultures is harder than bridging scientific disciplines.
ACDA21 is currently soliciting three types of contributions: archival proceedings papers, non-archival extended abstracts, and posters. Proceedings papers will be refereed by a double-blind process. Extended abstracts, which may describe work in progress or work that is being published archivally elsewhere, will be selected with an emphasis on talks that are closely connected to applications. Conference organizers are particularly interested in descriptions of industrial problems and applications. Archival and non-archival talks will be the same length and scheduled in mixed sessions.
In addition to contributed presentations, ACDA21 will feature six invited talks, an industrial problem session, and one or two minitutorials. Awards will be presented for best paper, best poster, and best student presentation.
The ACDA21 organizing committee is chaired by Bruce Hendrickson (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) and Blair Sullivan (University of Utah). Michael Bender (Stony Brook University) and I co-chair a highly interdisciplinary program committee. The deadline for submissions is March 1, 2021. Please check out the conference website for more details about submission, registration, travel assistance, and COVID-19 contingency plans. We hope to see you there!
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John Gilbert is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he works on graphs, matrices, and high-performance computing. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1981 and worked at Cornell University and Xerox PARC before joining UCSB in 2002. He is also a SIAM Fellow. |