The IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) is an

academic conference An academic conference or scientific conference (also congress, symposium, workshop, or meeting) is an event for researchers (not necessarily academics) to present and discuss their scholarly work. Together with academic or scientific journals an ...

in the field of

theoretical computer science Theoretical computer science (TCS) is a subset of general computer science and mathematics that focuses on mathematical aspects of computer science such as the theory of computation, lambda calculus, and type theory. It is difficult to circumsc ...

. FOCS is sponsored by the

IEEE Computer Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

. As writes, FOCS and its annual

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

counterpart STOC (the

Symposium on Theory of Computing The Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) is an academic conference in the field of theoretical computer science. STOC has been organized annually since 1969, typically in May or June; the conference is sponsored by the Association for ...

) are considered the two top conferences in theoretical computer science, considered broadly: they “are forums for some of the best work throughout theory of computing that promote breadth among theory of computing researchers and help to keep the community together.” includes regular attendance at FOCS and STOC as one of several defining characteristics of theoretical computer scientists.

Awards

The

Knuth Prize The Donald E. Knuth Prize is a prize for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science, named after the American computer scientist Donald E. Knuth. History The Knuth Prize has been awarded since 1996 and includes an award of U ...

for outstanding contributions to theoretical computer science is presented alternately at FOCS and STOC. Works of the highest quality presented at the conference are awarded the Best Paper Award. In addition, the

Machtey Award The Machtey Award is awarded at the annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) to the author(s) of the best student paper(s). A paper qualifies as a student paper if all authors are full-time students at the date of the submiss ...

is presented to the best student-authored paper in FOCS.

History

In 1960–1965, FOCS was known as the Symposium on Switching Circuit Theory and Logical Design, and in 1966–1974 it was known as the Symposium on Switching and Automata Theory. The current name has been used since 1975. Since 1973, the cover page of the conference proceedings has featured an artwork entitled ''synapse'', by Alvy Ray Smith, who has also been the author of three papers in the conference. The publisher uses the acronym SFCS on their web sites for the conferences in 1975 to 1987.

Location

FOCS is almost exclusively held in North America, and in particular in the United States, with few exceptions.IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS)
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References

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Notes

DBLP DBLP is a computer science bibliography website. Starting in 1993 at Universität Trier in Germany, it grew from a small collection of HTML files and became an organization hosting a database and logic programming bibliography site. Since Nove ...

.
FOCS Best Student Paper Award (Machtey Award)

Citation Statistics for FOCS/STOC/SODA

Piotr Indyk Piotr Indyk is Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor in the Theory of Computation Group at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Academic biography Indyk received the Magister (MA) ...

and Suresh Venkatasubramanian, July 2007.
Nelson H. F. Beebe's FOCS bibliography
23 March 2007. {{Authority control Theoretical computer science conferences Recurring events established in 1960 IEEE conferences

Awards

History

Location

See also

References

Notes

External links