The objective of this project is to help support student attendance at the ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) in Kyoto, Japan to be held on January 17-19, 2012. SODA is the premier conference that covers research in algorithmic aspects of combinatorics, discrete mathematics, and computer science and their applications in the sciences and business. Research on algorithms is one of the most important and active areas in computing. Algorithmic questions pervade business, technology, and science and their study continues to be a major research topic. SODA produces one of the most widely read proceedings in algorithms.
Many of the students who have papers accepted at the conference may not be able to obtain sufficient support from their home institutions. Attendance is particularly valuable for students who are just starting out and are more likely to profit from direct NSF support. By providing it, the NSF will be able to help nurture a new generation of researchers in this key area.
Funding for this grant, Student Travel Support to SODA 2012, was used to support travel for 21 graduate students from US institutions to the ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms held on January 17 -19, 2012, in Kyoto, Japan (SODA12). The funds (partially) supported student registration fees, shared hotel rooms, airfare, and meals. We were able to supplement this NSF award with support from Microsoft Research, IBM Research and Google, in order to fund seven additional student travel awards. Travel support for students, who may only have only limited funding for International travel funding from their institutions, is essential for growth in the field. SODA is an annual gathering of the top researchers from academia and industry. The field of discrete algorithms is one of the most important areas in computing. Algorithmic questions pervade computer science and continue to be a major research topic of interest to the NSF. SODA covers a wide range of research and applications and its proceedings is one of the most widely cited in computer science and discrete mathematics. The algorithms developed and analyzed within the context of SODA have applications to Communication Networks, Computational Geometry, Computer Graphics and Computer Vision, Cryptography and Computer Security, Data Compression, Data Structures, Databases and Information Retrieval, Distributed and Parallel Computing, Machine Learning, Quantum Computing, Pattern Matching, Robotics, Scheduling, Resource Allocation Problems, and Symbolic Computation. SODA is an ideal forum in which students can interact with and learn from the community of researchers in discrete algorithms. SODA12 was the first edition of the series to be based in the Asia. As a result, student attendees were able to meet and interact with researchers who do not normally attend SODA. SODA12 was a highly successful meeting with 350 attendees. Because of the funding from this grant, many of the student co-authors and speakers from the US were able to attend. The results of SODA12, including the talks given by the students who were awarded travel funds under this grant are documented in a widely cited proceedings.
