Thursday, October 27, 2016

[DMANET] call for nominations: 2018 Flajolet Lecture Prize

2018 FLAJOLET LECTURE PRIZE

Call for Nominations

The Philippe Flajolet Lecture Prize for outstanding contributions to
analytic combinatorics and analysis of algorithms is awarded every two
years by the Analysis of Algorithms (AofA) community that owes its
existence to Philippe Flajolet. The first Flajolet Lecture was presented
by D. E. Knuth at the 2014 AofA International Conference on
Probabilistic, Combinatorial and Asymptotic Methods for the Analysis of
Algorithms, Paris, France, and the second one by Bob Sedgewich at the
2016 AofA Conference in Krakow, Poland.

The prize is named in honor and recognition of the extraordinary
accomplishments of late Philippe Flajolet, who spent most of his
scientific life at INRIA, France. Philippe is best known for
fundamental advances in mathematical methods for the analysis of
algorithms. His research laid the foundation of a subfield of
mathematics, now known as analytic combinatorics. Analytic
combinatorics is a modern basis for the quantitative study of
combinatorial structures (such as words, trees, mappings, and graphs),
with applications to probabilistic study of algorithms that are based on
these structures. It also strongly influences research in other
scientific domains, such as statistical physics, computational biology,
and information theory. Flajolet's work takes the field forward by
introducing original approaches in combinatorics based on two types of
methods: symbolic and analytic. The symbolic side is based on the
automation of decision procedures in combinatorial enumeration to derive
characterizations of generating functions. The analytic side treats
those functions as functions in the complex plane and leads to precise
characterization of limit distributions. Beyond these foundational
contributions, Philippe's research opened new avenues in various domains
of applied computer science, including streaming algorithms,
communication protocols, database access methods, data mining, symbolic
manipulation, text-processing algorithms, and random generation.

The next Flajolet Lecture will be delivered at the 2018 AofA Conference
in Uppsala, Sweden. Nominations are due on February 28, 2017. The
winner will be selected by a Prize Committee consisting of:

Michael Drmota, Chair (TU Wien)
Mireille Bousquet-Melou (Univ. Bordeaux)
Peter Winkler (Dartmouth College)
Bob Sedgewick, ex officio (Princeton University)

The nomination letter should summarize his/her contributions in one or
two pages. All nominations should be sent to Michael Drmota at
michael.drmota@tuwien.ac.at .

In selecting the Flajolet-Prize winner, the Committee will pay
particular attention to a sustained record of high-impact, seminal
contributions to the research areas most directly impacted by the work
of Flajolet: the foundations of analysis of algorithms and/or analytic
combinatorics. The selection may also be based partly on educational
accomplishments and contributions such as fundamental textbooks and
high-quality students. The final selection will be approved by the
Steering Committee of the AofA.


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