57th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2016)
New Brunswick, New Jersey, October 9-11, 2016.

The 57th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2016), sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Mathematical Foundations of Computing, will be held in New Brunswick, New Jersey on October 9-11 (Sunday through Tuesday). Several workshops and invited tutorial presentations will be given on Saturday, October 8th.

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, economics and computation, 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.

Important Dates (tentative):

Submission deadline: 3:59pm EST, April 5, 2016.
Notification: by June 24th, 2016.
Final version of accepted papers due: August 15, 2016.

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. A submission must contain within its first ten pages a clear presentation of the merits of the paper, including discussion of its importance, prior work, and an outline (similar to a brief oral presentation) of key technical ideas and methods used to achieve the main claims. There is no bound on the length of a submission, but material other than the abstract, references, and the first ten pages may be considered as supplementary and 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 include all of the ideas necessary for an expert to verify fully the central claims in the paper. Finally, the submission should be addressed to a broad spectrum of theoretical computer scientists, not solely to experts in the subarea.

The extended abstract 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. Submissions deviating significantly from these guidelines risk rejection without consideration of their merits.

All submissions will be treated as confidential, and will only be disclosed to the committee and their chosen sub-referees.

Submission instructions:
Authors are required to submit their extended abstracts electronically, in PDF (without security restrictions on copying or printing). Detailed instructions will be available later on. Submissions will be judged solely on the basis of the extended abstract submitted by the deadline; postdeadline revisions will not be allowed.

On-line posting:
Authors are encouraged to post full versions of their submissions in a freely accessible on-line 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.) We expect that authors of accepted papers will make full versions of their papers, with proofs, available by the camera-ready deadline. (This should be done in a manner consistent with the IEEE Copyright Policy.)
Prior and simultaneous submission:
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 2016, will not be considered for acceptance at FOCS 2016. Simultaneous submission of the same (or essentially the same) abstract to FOCS 2016 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.

Awards:
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.

Presentation of Accepted Papers:
One author of each accepted paper will be expected to present the work at the conference.

Program Committee:
Mark Braverman Princeton University
Siu On Chan The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Moses Charikar Stanford University
Marek Cygan University of Warsaw
Irit Dinur (chair) Weizmann Institute of Science
Andrew Drucker University of Chicago
Faith Ellen University of Toronto
Sariel Har-Peled University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Prahladh Harsha Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Alexandra Kolla University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Swastik Kopparty Rutgers University
Robert Krauthgamer Weizmann Institute of Science
Brendan Lucier Microsoft Research
Or Meir University of Haifa
Raghu Meka University of California, Los Angeles
Daniele Micciancio UCSD
Moni Naor Weizmann Institute of Science
Joe Neeman University of Bonn and University of Texas, Austin
Rasmus Pagh IT University of Copenhagen
Rocco Servedio Columbia University
Yaoyun Shi University of Michigan
Ola Svensson EPFL
Thomas Vidick Caltech
Daniel Wichs Northeastern University


Contact Information:
General Chair:
Rafail Ostrovsky
UCLA

Program Committe Chair:
Irit Dinur
Weizmann Institute
focs16chair@gmail.com

Local Arrangements Chairs:
Rebecca Wright (Rutgers)
Lisa Zhang (Bell Labs)