Friday, June 28, 2013

YouTube channel for the School of Computer Science at Reykjavik University

The School of Computer Science at Reykjavik University has, at long last, created its own YouTube channel. See https://www.youtube.com/user/rucomputerscience. We are uploading videos of talks from season one of our Pearls of Computation seminar series and from last year's Alan Turing Year events, as well as other material that might be of general interest.

In case you are interested in following the events we organize, I'd be grateful if you could spend approximately 5 seconds to open the page and click "Subscribe". Thanks in advance!

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Call for guest bloggers from ICALP 2013

I would like to have some blog coverage for ICALP 2013. If you are attending the 40th ICALP in Riga and you are interested in guest blogging, drop me a line. Ideally, I would like to have a guest blogger for each of the tracks in the conference. You are, of course, also most welcome to blog about the five invited talks and the award ceremonies.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

PhD Positions at GSSI L'Aquila, Italy - CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

I have been asked to distribute this call for applications for PhD positions in  a newly founded international PhD School in Italy, the Gran Sasso Science Institute. I hope that you will encourage some of your best students to apply.

------ PhD Positions at GSSI L'Aquila, Italy - CALL FOR APPLICATIONS -------

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to ask for your help in spreading around the call for application for PhD candidates in Computer Science at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI)

<http://www.gssi.infn.it/index.php/en/announcements-all/400-ph-d-call-forapplications>

We are particularly interested in attracting foreign students. So it would be great if you can deliver this announcement through your emailing lists in your countries.

The deadline for applying to the program is 15th july.

Students will be offered  free housing and meals plus the standard three years PhD grant.  The official language is English.

GSSI is a new initiative that is starting in L'Aquila as a consequence of the redevelopment plan after the earthquake. The school  is  managed by INFN (http://www.infn.it/index.php?lang=en) and will start a PhD program in Computer science that is centered around new generation computing, including distributed, ubiquitous and autonomous systems, with emphasis on three main disciplinary pillars: algorithms, software engineering and specification and analysis.

There will be other three Phd programs offered by GSSI, one concerning urban studies, one in Physics mainly centered around astro-particles phisics because of the proximity with the famous Lab
(http://www.lngs.infn.it/), and another in Mathematics centered around mathematical modeling.

The school is supported by other three Italian already established graduate schools, IMT in Lucca for computer science (www.imtlucca.it<http://www.imtlucca.it/> ), SISSA in Trieste for mathematics and physics
(http://www.sissa.it/), and Scuola Superiore S. Anna in Pisa for urban studies (www.sssup.it <http://www.sssup.it/> ).

Thank you in advance for your attention and your support.

Friday, June 07, 2013

Gödel Prize 2013

As some of you might know already, the Gödel Prize 2013, which is awarded jointly by ACM SIGACT and the EATCS, goes to the authors of the following two papers:


Antoine Joux: A One Round Protocol for Tripartite Diffie-Hellman, J. Cryptology 17(4): 263-276 (2004). (Conference version: ANTS 2000)

Dan Boneh, Matthew K. Franklin: Identity-Based Encryption from the Weil Pairing, SIAM J. Comput. 32(3): 586-615 (2003) . (Conference version: CRYPTO 2001)

for their contributions to cryptographic concepts and schemes that provide greater efficiency, flexibility, and security.  These papers established the field of pairing-based cryptography by supplying a precise definition of the security of this approach, and providing compelling new applications for it.
 
The press release issued by the ACM is available at

www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2013/goedel-prize-13/

Congrats to the award recipients.