The year 2023 gives way to 2024, a year we hope will be prosperous and favourable to research for all.
We wish you all the best of health and happiness!

In this week's IRIF Newsletter, you are all expected at the IRIF General Meeting next Tuesday (January 9, 2024)! Also, a new year celebration afternoon will be organised by IRIF, on the 29th of January. Notice also that printers were moved and budget is closed.
On the news sides, you still have a few days to register to the Journées Francophones des Langages Applicatifs co-organised by Adrien Guatto.
This week's focus is on Gaëtan Douéneau-Tabot, who defended his thesis in november.
The emergence 2024 call for tender is now open.

Enjoy reading and have a nice weekend!

• IRIF General Meeting (Assemblée Générale): the next IRIF general meeting will take place on January, the 9th, 2024 in the Amphithéatre Buffon from 10H00 to 12h30 and will be followed by a buffet (do not forget to take your bottle of water since there will no bottles and of water and disposable glasses). The buffet will be held on the 4th floor of Sophie Germain Building. The provisional agenda is:
  • Financial and Human Ressources report
  • Actions and commissions
  • Discussion on whether future professor positions should be opened according to the “voie 46.1” (the usual way) or “voie 46.3” (positions reserved for MCF of the university who have an HdR) and, in the former case, whether IRIF should still apply the CSUFR motion of February 2019, the 19th
  • AOB
    N.B. there have been requests (cf. IRIF's Zulip) to discuss the new immegration law at the general meeting. This will be done in the AOB session if there are volunteers to chair the debate.

• New Year's afternoon: the direction is pleased to invite you to an afternoon to celebrate the New Year of IRIF 2024 on Monday 29th of January, 2024. It will start with a visit to the new Museum of Mathematics, at the French Henri Poincaré Institut . It will take place from 4:30pm to 5:30pm. It is free but it is mandatory to register here if you want to visit the museum. It will then be followed by an aperitif buffet still at the IHP starting from 5:30 until 8:30pm.

• Printers and mailboxes new location: 4th floor printers and mailboxes have been moved to room 4068.

• The budget is currently closed on both CNRS and University sides, it is not possible to make any reservation or purchase before January 15 for university and January 22 for CNRS.

• On the return of a mission made on Notilus, you have to validate your trip and join you receipes directly on the Notilus in order to start the reimbursement process.

• Claire Mathieu's resignation: Following the adoption of the immigration law by the government, Claire Mathieu resigned from the Presidential Science Council, which was set up on 7 December 2023.

• Véronique Cortier lecture - DTS: the next speaker of the Distinguished Talks Series on February 7, will be Véronique Cortier. The subject of her talk is “Electronic voting: design and formal verification”. You can find the abstract here.

• [DERNIER APPEL] Journées Francophones des Langages Applicatifs : les inscriptions pour les JFLA organisées par Delphine Demange (IRISA) et Adrien Guatto sont ouvertes ! Ces journées réunissent concepteurs, utilisateurs et théoriciens ; elles ont pour ambition de couvrir les domaines des langages, applicatifs, de la preuve formelle, de la vérification de programmes, et des objets mathématiques qui sous-tendent ces outils. Ces domaines doivent être pris au sens large afin de promouvoir les ponts entre les différentes thématiques. Vous avez jusqu'au 8 janvier 2024 pour vous inscrire ; attention les places sont limitées. Vous pourrez trouver toutes les informations nécessaires sur la page dédiée.

• [RAPPEL] Programme PAUSE : ce programme permet de soutenir financièrement des artistes et chercheurs contraints à l'exil par leurs pays pour qu'ils puissent poursuivre leur travail. Ils sont accueillis dans des établissements d’enseignement supérieur et/ou de recherche et des institutions culturelles en France. Une aide leur est également proposée pour les assister administrativement et les accompagner dans leur insertion professionnelle. Vous pouvez demander ici un cofinancement du programme PAUSE pour accueillir un chercheur en danger.

• Théâtre Forum : dans le cadre de ses missions de sensibilisation aux situations de harcèlement, la Faculté des Sciences organise pour l'ensemble des personnels de la Faculté des Sciences, un Théâtre Forum sur le harcèlement moral, le mardi 30 janvier de 12h30 à 14h en amphi 12 E à la Halle aux Farines. Ce Théâtre Forum vous est proposé par la « compagnie théâtrale d’action citoyenne et artistique » Synergies Théâtre. Un théâtre Forum est une performance interactive d’une durée de 90 minutes en deux parties. Pendant la première partie, vous assisterez à plusieurs scènes interprétées par les comédien.nes. La seconde partie vous permettra de rejouer les scènes avec les comédien.nes en incarnant l’un des personnages de l’histoire. Inscription auprès de Séverine Leidwanger, vice-doyenne Egalités, Diversité, Inclusion.

• [REMINDER] Sexist and sexual violence (SSV) training: a french speaking session is planned on January 23rd. You can subscribe on this link.

Gaëtan Douéneau-Tabot a soutenu sa thèse en novembre 2023 ; son sujet était les “Optimization of string transducers.”

Dans son portrait, il parle de sa position de doctorant rattaché au corps des ingénieurs de l'armement, d'optimisation de programmes et de ses futurs projets de développement de futures générations de satellites militaires.

Abstract:

“Transducers are finite-state machines which compute functions (or relations) from words to words. They can be seen as simple programs with limited memory which manipulate strings. These machines have been studied for long in fundamental computer science as a part of automata theory, and are used in many areas such as compiling, natural language processing or stream processing. […]

This thesis solves various membership problems between existing classes of transductions, both over finite or infinite words. Among others, the celebrated models of two-way transducers and pebble transducers are investigated in detail. Each time, the membership procedure is non-trivial and turns out to be effective (in the sense that it builds a “simpler” transducer whenever it exists). Therefore our results can be considered as program optimization statements. Furthermore, we offer a systematic high-level strategy for solving these problems, which relies on semantic properties (i.e. dealing intrinsically with the functions) as well as syntactic properties (referring to the transducers which compute these functions). Additionally, this thesis provides new computation models and characterizations in order to capture known classes of transductions. These results complete the previous understanding of these classes and provide new insights on their expressive power. The author believes that the various techniques of this manuscript form a rather extensive toolbox for investigating other open membership problems.”

• Emergence 2024: Emergence intends to support the launch of a new research theme and/or the conduct of a pilot study to test new research hypothesis(es). You have until February 23, 2024, 11am to submit your project. All information needed can be found here.

• [LAST CALL] Concours chercheurs et chercheuses CNRS : la date limite du dépôt des dossiers est fixée au 9 février. L’arrêté d’ouverture des concours ne sera publié que début décembre. Les jurys d’admission auront lieu fin juin-début juillet.

• Galette des rois - CLAS Grands Moulins: A galette des rois will be held on Thursday 18 January 2024 from 1pm to 2pm in the Grands Moulins hall, building A. It is free but please register here to help the organizers.

• Conseil d’UFR : le premier Conseil d’UFR de l’année 2024 se réunira le vendredi 12 janvier, de 9h00 à 11h00 (salle 3058 à Sophie Germain). Voici l'ordre du jour valant convocation.

• [REMINDER] Appel à manifestation d’intérêt - Médiation Scientifique 2024 : la Faculté des Sciences lance un appel à manifestation d’intérêt pour accompagner et soutenir ses membres dans leurs initiatives ayant vocation à rendre accessible un sujet de recherche scientifique à un public non spécialiste. Les dossiers doivent être déposés complets sur la plateforme avant le 9 février 2024 minuit. Retrouvez toutes les informations nécessaires dans ce document. Pour plus d'informations, rendez-vous sur la page dédiée.

• Confund MathPhDInFrance doctoral program - FSMP: This year, the programme will offer 24 grants for theses co-directed by a laboratory in the Paris Region and a laboratory in another region. Applications are made in two stages:
  • The first stage of the application procedure is open until 14 February 2024.
  • Important eligibility condition: to be eligible for the programme, students must not have spent more than one year in France between 14/02/2021 and 14/02/2024.

• [REMINDER] AUFRANDE program for PhD students: AUFRANDE (Australia-France network of doctoral excellence) is an interdisciplinary doctoral programme bringing together French and Australian universities, research institutes and non-academic partners. The students selected will be enrolled in a doctoral training programme at one of the AUFRANDE Australian universities starting from October 2024. You have until January 24th, 2024 to apply. More information here.

Partner newsletter : Les lettres arrivent sporadiquement aux membres de l'IRIF. Elles sont donc listées ci-dessous.

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