Many excellent and deserving theory works, but they will not nominate themselves!

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The Gödel Prize 2018 – Call for Nominations

Deadline: February 15, 2018

The Gödel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science is sponsored jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery, Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (ACM SIGACT). The award is presented annually, with the presentation taking place alternately at the International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP) and the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC). The 26^th Gödel Prize will be awarded at the 45^th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming to be held during July 9-13, 2018 in Prague, Czech Republic

The Prize is named in honor of Kurt Gödel in recognition of his major contributions to mathematical logic and of his interest, discovered in a letter he wrote to John von Neumann shortly before von Neumann’s death, in what has become the famous “P versus NP” question. The Prize includes an award of USD 5,000.

Award Committee: The 2018 Award Committee consists of Moses Charikar (Stanford University), Anuj Dawar (Cambridge University), Joan Feigenbaum (Yale University), Orna Kupferman (Chair, Hebrew University), Giuseppe Persiano (Università di Salerno), and Omer Reingold (Stanford University).

Eligibility: The 2018 Prize rules are given below and they supersede any different interpretation of the generic rule to be found on websites of both SIGACT and EATCS. Any research paper or series of papers by a single author or by a team of authors is deemed eligible if:

– The main results were not published (in either preliminary or final form) in a journal or conference proceedings before January 1st, 2005.

– The paper was published in a recognized refereed journal no later than December 31, 2017.

The research work nominated for the award should be in the area of theoretical computer science. Nominations are encouraged from the broadest spectrum of the theoretical computer science community so as to ensure that potential award winning papers are not overlooked. The Award Committee shall have the ultimate authority to decide whether a particular paper is eligible for the Prize.

Nominations: Nominations for the award should be submitted by email to the Award Committee Chair: orna@cs.huji.ac.il. Please make sure that the Subject line of all nominations and related messages begin with “Goedel Prize 2018.” To be considered, nominations for the 2018 Prize must be received by February 15, 2018.

A nomination package should include:

1. A printable copy (or copies) of the journal paper(s) being nominated, together with a complete citation (or citations) thereof.
2. A statement of the date(s) and venue(s) of the first conference or workshop publication(s) of the nominated work(s) or a statement that no such publication has occurred.
3. A brief summary of the technical content of the paper(s) and a brief explanation of its significance.
4. A support letter or letters signed by at least two members of the scientific community.

Additional support letters may also be received and are generally useful. The nominated paper(s) may be in any language. However, if a nominated publication is not in English, the nomination package must include an extended summary written in English.

Those intending to submit a nomination should contact the Award Committee Chair by email well in advance. The Chair will answer questions about eligibility, encourage coordination among different nominators for the same paper(s), and also accept informal proposals of potential nominees or tentative offers to prepare formal nominations. The committee maintains a database of past nominations for eligible papers, but fresh nominations for the same papers (especially if they highlight new evidence of impact) are always welcome.

Selection Process: The Award Committee is free to use any other sources of information in addition to the ones mentioned above. It may split the award among multiple papers, or declare no winner at all. All matters relating to the selection process left unspecified in this document are left to the discretion of the Award Committee.

Recent Winners (all winners since 1993 are listed at http://www.sigact.org/Prizes/Godel/ and http://eatcs.org/index.php/goedel-prize):

2017: Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim and Adam Smith, Calibrating Noise to Sensitivity in Private Data Analysis, Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality, Volume 7, Issue 3, 2016 (preliminary version in Theory of Cryptography, TCC 2006).

2016: Stephen Brookes, A Semantics for Concurrent Separation Logic. Theoretical Computer Science 375(1-3): 227-270 (2007). Peter W. O’Hearn, Resources, Concurrency, and Local Reasoning. Theoretical Computer Science 375(1-3): 271-307 (2007).

2015: Dan Spielman and Shang-Hua Teng, Nearly-linear time algorithms for graph partitioning, graph sparsification, and solving linear systems, Proc. 36th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, pp. 81-90, 2004; Spectral sparsification of graphs, SIAM J. Computing 40:981-1025, 2011; A local clustering algorithm for massive graphs and its application to nearly linear time graph partitioning, SIAM J. Computing 42:1-26, 2013; Nearly linear time algorithms for preconditioning and solving symmetric, diagonally dominant linear systems, SIAM J. Matrix Anal. Appl. 35:835-885, 2014.

2014: Ronald Fagin, Amnon Lotem, and Moni Naor, Optimal Aggregation Algorithms for Middleware, Journal of Computer and System Sciences 66(4): 614–656, 2003.

2013: Antoine Joux, A one round protocol for tripartite Diffie-Hellman, J. Cryptology 17(4): 263-276, 2004. Dan Boneh and Matthew K. Franklin, Identity-Based Encryption from the Weil pairing, SIAM J.  Comput. 32(3): 586-615, 2003.