Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science

The IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) is an academic conference in the field of theoretical computer science. FOCS is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society.

As Fich (1996) writes, FOCS and its annual Association for Computing Machinery counterpart STOC (the Symposium on Theory of Computing) 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.” Johnson (1984) includes regular attendance at FOCS and STOC as one of several defining characteristics of theoretical computer scientists.

Awards

The Knuth Prize 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.^[1] In addition, the Machtey Award 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.^[2] The publisher uses the acronym SFCS on their web sites for the conferences in 1975 to 1987.^[3]

Location

FOCS is almost exclusively held in North America, and in particular in the United States, with few exceptions.^[4]


Year	PC and Local Chairs	Location	Steering Committee	Test of Time Award Committee
1975	Daniel Rosenkrantz (PC Chair), Eugene Lawler (Local Chair)	Berkeley
1976	Michael Fischer (PC Chair), Meera Blattner (Local Chair)	Houston
1977	Paul Young (PC Chair), John Savage (Local Chair)	Providence
1978	Nancy Lynch (PC Chair), William Rounds (Local Chair)	Ann Arbor
1979	Rao Kosaraju (PC Chair), Rolando Peinado (Local Chair)	San Juan, Puerto Rico
1980		Syracuse
1981	Arnold Rosenberg (PC Chair), Patrick Fischer (Local Chair)	Nashville
1982		Chicago
1983	Lawrence Snyder (PC Chair), Peter Downey (Local Chair)	Tucson
1984		Singer Island
1985	Robert Tarjan (PC Chair), Eugene Luks (Local Chair)	Portland
1986	John Hopcroft (PC Chair), Charles Rackoff (Local Chair)	Toronto	Ashok Chandra (TCMF Chair)
1987	Tom Leighton (PC Chair), Seymour Ginsburg (Local Chair), Ming-Deh Huang (Local Chair)	Los Angeles	"
1988		White Plains
1989	Zvi Galil (PC Chair), Jon Reif (Local Chair)	Research Triangle Park	Christos Papadimitriou (TCMF Chair)
1990	Mihalis Yannakakis (PC Chair), Jonathan Turner (Local Chair)	St. Louis	"
1991	Mike Sipser (PC Chair), Tom Leighton (Local Chair), Alok Aggarwal (Local Chair)	San Juan, Puerto Rico	"
1992	Michael Luby (PC Chair), Gary Miller (Local Chair)	Pittsburgh
1993	Leonidas J. Guibas (PC Chair), Andrei Broder (Local Chair)	Palo Alto
1994	Shafi Goldwasser (PC Chair), Sorin Istrail (Local Chair)	Santa Fe
1995	Prabhakar Raghavan (PC Chair), Aditi Dhagat (Local Chair), Rene Peralta (Local Chair)	Milwaukee
1996	Martin Tompa (PC Chair), Carl Smith (Local Chair)	Burlington
1997	Anna Karlin (PC Chair), Victor Milenkovic (Local Chair)	Miami Beach
1998	Rajeev Motwani, Michael Mitzenmacher (Local Chair)	Palo Alto
1999	Paul Beame (PC Chair), Piotr Berman (Local Chair)	New York
2000	Avrim Blum (PC Chair), Marek Chrobak (Local Chair), Tao Jiang (Local Chair)	Redondo Beach
2001	Moni Naor (PC Chair), Lawrence Larmore (Local Chair), Wolfgang Bein	Las Vegas
2002	Bernard Chazelle (PC Chair) Arvind Gupta (Local Chair)	Vancouver, Canada
2003	Madhu Sudan (PC Chair), Michael Mitzenmacher (Local Chair)	Cambridge
2004	Eli Upfal(PC Chair), Giuseppe F. Italiano (Local Chair)	Rome, Italy
2005	Eva Tardos (PC Chair), Avrim Blum (Local Chair), Anupam Gupta (Local Chair)	Pittsburgh
2006	Sanjeev Arora, Satish Rao (Local Chair)	Berkeley
2007	Alistair Sinclair (PC Chair), Philip Klein (Local Chair), Anna Lysyanskaya (Local Chair), Claire Mathieu (Local Chair)	Providence
2008	R. Ravi (PC Chair), Sudipto Guha (Local Chair), Sanjeev Khanna (Local Chair), Sampath Kannan (Local Chair)	Philadelphia	Paul Beame (TCMF Chair)
2009	Dan Spielman (PC Chair), David Shmoys (General co-Chair), Milena Mihail (Local Chair), Prasad Tetali (Local Chair)	Atlanta	"
2010	Luca Trevisan (PC Chair), Larry Larmore (Local Chair)	Las Vegas	"
2011	Rafail Ostrovsky (PC Chair), Marek Chrobak (Local Chair), Neal Yong (Local Chair),	Palm Springs	"
2012	Tim Roughgarden (PC Chair), Rebecca Wright (Local Chair), Lisa Zhang (Local Chair), Boaz Barak (Workshop Chair), Avrim Blum (Workshop Chair)	New Brunswick	David Shmoys (TCMF Chair)
2013	Omer Reingold (PC Chair), Christos Papadimitriou (Local Chair), Umesh Vazirani (Local Chair), Moses Charikar (Workshop Chair), Chris Umans (Workshop Chair)	Berkeley	"
2014	Boaz Barak (PC Chair), Rebecca Wright (Local Chair), Lisa Zhang (Local Chair), Sanjeev Khanna (Workshop Chair), Kunal Talwar (Workshop Chair)	Philadelphia	"
2015	Venkatesan Guruswami (PC Chair), Kristin Kane (Local Chair), Prasad Raghavendra, Luca Trevisan	Berkeley	Rafail Ostrovsky (TCMF Chair)
2016	Irit Dinur (PC Chair), Rebecca Wright (Local Chair), Lisa Zhang (Local Chair), Alexandr Andoni (Workshop Chair), Aleksander Mądry (Workshop Chair)	New Brunswick	"
2017	Chris Umans (PC Chair), Andrew Jan (Local Chair), Prasad Raghavendra (Local Chair), Aleksander Mądry (Workshop Chair), James R. Lee (Workshop Chair)	Berkeley	"
2018	Mikkel Thorup (PC Chair), Adi Rosén (Local Chair), Sophie Laplante (Local co-Chair),Alessandro Luongo (Local co-Chair), Robert Kleinberg (Workshop Chair), James R. Lee (Workshop Chair)	Paris, France	Yuval Rabani (TCMF Chair), Shang-Hua Teng (TCMF Vice Chair), Avrim Blum, Shafi Goldwasser, Rafail Ostrovsky, Toniann Pitassi
2019	David Zuckerman (PC Chair), Michael Dinitz (Local Chair), Maria-Florina Balcan (Workshop Chair), Robert Kleinberg (Workshop Chair)	Baltimore	"	Paul Beame, Allan Borodin, Uriel Feige, Monika Henzinger, Johan Håstad (chair), Mihalis Yannakakis (inaugural award)
2020	Sandy Irani (PC Chair), Debmalya Panigrahi (Local Chair), Kamesh Munagala (Local Chair), Maria-Florina Balcan (Workshop Chair), Alexander Sherstov (Workshop Chair)	Virtual (planned for Raleigh/Durham)	"	Paul Beame (chair), Uriel Feige, Anna Karlin, Yishay Mansour, Claire Mathieu, Luca Trevisan
2021	Nisheeth Vishnoi (PC Chair), Alexandra Kolla (Local/Finance Chair), Vincent Cohen-Addad (Workshop Chair), Alexander Sherstov (Workshop Chair)	Virtual (planned for Denver)	"	Russell Impagliazzo, Yael Tauman Kalai, Anna Karlin, Yishay Mansour, Michael Saks, Luca Trevisan (chair)
2022	Jelani Nelson (PC chair), Alexandra Kolla (Local Chair), Rong Ge (Finance Chair), Vincent Cohen-Addad (Workshop Chair), Henry Yuen (Workshop Chair)	Denver	Shang-Hua Teng (TCMF Chair), Venkatesan Guruswami (TCMF Vice Chair), Avrim Blum, Shafi Goldwasser, Rafail Ostrovsky, Toniann Pitassi, Yuval Rabani	Russell Impagliazzo, Yael Tauman Kalai, Michael Saks (chair), Alistair Sinclair, Éva Tardos, David Zuckerman
2023	Amit Sahai (PC Chair), Shubhangi Saraf (PC Co-chair), Thomas Vidick (PC Co-chair), Alexandra Kolla (General Chair), Pravesh Kothari (Workshop Chair), Henry Yuen (Workshop Chair)	Santa Cruz	"	Jin-Yi Cai, Faith Ellen, Leonard Schulman, Alistair Sinclair, Éva Tardos, David Zuckerman (chair)
2024	Santosh Vempala (PC Chair), Aravindan Vijayaraghavan (General Chair), Lev Reyzin (General Chair), Mohsen Ghaffari (Workshop Chair), Pravesh Kothari (Workshop Chair)	Chicago	Ran Canetti (TCMF Chair), Rocco Servedio (TCMF Vice Chair)	Jin-Yi Cai (chair), Julia Chuzhoy, Constantinos Daskalakis, Faith Ellen, Shafi Goldwasser, Leonard Schulman

References

Hartmanis, Juris (1981), "Observations about the development of theoretical computer science", IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 3 (1): 42–51, doi:10.1109/MAHC.1981.10005, hdl:1813/6244, ISSN 1058-6180.
Fich, Faith (1996), "Infrastructure issues related to theory of computing research", ACM Computing Surveys, 28 (4es): 217–es, doi:10.1145/242224.242502, S2CID 195706843.

Johnson, D. S. (1984), "The genealogy of theoretical computer science: a preliminary report", ACM SIGACT News, 16 (2): 36–49, doi:10.1145/1008959.1008960, S2CID 26789249.