Monday, March 23, 2020

[DMANET] PACE 2020 Second Call for Participation

This is the second call for participation for PACE, the Parameterized Algorithms and Computational Experiments Challenge. By now, public instances are available and preliminary submissions are possible at optil.io . The goals of PACE as well as official reports for past challenges can be found on our website: https://pacechallenge.org/

In this fifth edition, the challenge is on treedepth:
* Input: A connected undirected graph
* Output: A treedepth decomposition of the graph

Let us recall that a treedepth decomposition of a connected graph G=(V,E) is a rooted tree T=(V,E_T) such that every edge of G connects a pair of nodes that have an ancestor-descendant relationship in T. The depth of T is the maximum number of nodes in a root-vertex path in T. The treedepth of G is a minimum depth of a treedepth decomposition of G.

** Tracks
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There are two different tracks in which you can compete:

*Exact:* Compute a treedepth decomposition of minimum depth. You have 30 minutes per instance. Contestants are ranked by number of instances solved and time required as a tiebreaker.
*Heuristic:* Heuristic: Compute some treedepth decomposition of decent depth. You have 30 minutes per instance. Contestants are ranked by the quality of their results.

Detailed instructions and public instances are available on https://pacechallenge.org/

** Prizes
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Thanks to the generous sponsoring of the NETWORKS project (http://thenetworkcenter.nl/), 4000 euros in prize money and travel support is available for the winners of the competition.

** Timeline
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* October 25th, 2019: Announcement of the challenge (Problem)
* November 11th, 2019: Announcement of the tracks and additional information
* December 16th, 2019: Public instances are available
* March 13th, 2020: Challenge leaderboard and submission of preliminary versions available via optil.io
* June 1st, 2020 (AOE) Submission of final version (solver description two weeks after the code)
* July, 2020: Announcement of the results
* December 14-16, 2020 Award ceremony at the International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2020) in Hong Kong

** Program Committee
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* Lukasz Kowalik (mailto:kowalik@mimuw.edu.pl) (chair) (University of Warsaw)
* Marcin Mucha (University of Warsaw)
* Wojciech Nadara (University of Warsaw)
* Marcin Pilipczuk (University of Warsaw)
* Manuel Sorge (University of Warsaw)
* Piotr Wygocki (University of Warsaw)

** Steering Committee
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* Edouard Bonnet (LIP, ENS Lyon)
* Holger Dell (IT University of Copenhagen)
* Johannes Fichte (Technische Universitat Dresden)
* Markus Hecher (Technische Universitat Wien)
* Bart M. P. Jansen (chair) (Eindhoven University of Technology)
* Petteri Kaski (Aalto University)
* Christian Komusiewicz (Philipps-Universitat Marburg)
* Florian Sikora (LAMSADE, Universite Paris Dauphine)

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