Lettre de l'IRIF du 22 juillet 2022

Edito

Cette semaine dans la lettre, un appel à participation pour la prochaine Fête de la Science et l'ouverture de l'appel à projets générique ANR 2023. Nous vous rappelons également la fermeture exceptionnelle du bâtiment le 26 juillet.

Côté actualités scientifiques, un bref aperçu de l'un des 4 papiers acceptés et co-écrit par des membres de l'IRIF à PODC'22, un papier accepté à CSGT 2022 et la conférence Sciences du logiciel de l'INS2I.

Finalement, un focus sur le prix de l'EATCS 2022 et le prix Presburger 2022 présentés lors de la conférence ICALP.

Bonne lecture et bel été à tous et toutes !

Annonces de la direction

  • Fête de la Science 2022 : La 31e fête de la Science se déroule du 7 au 17 octobre 2022. Comme chaque année, l'IRIF s'implique dans cet événement et organisera 2 types d'activités.
    • Des ateliers d'informatique débranchée et un baptême de programmation pour des niveaux fin primaire / début collège. Nous avons besoin de votre aide pour encadrer ces activités qui se dérouleront les 7-10-11-12-13-14 et 17 octobre entre 9h30 et 15h30 dans des salles de cours du bâtiment Sophie Germain. Pour participer, écrivez à fdlsInfo@irif.fr.
    • Un parcours découverte des Technologies Quantiques pour les niveaux lycée et organisé conjointement avec le Laboratoire MPQ. Cette activité se déroulera les 12-13-14 octobre dans le Hall du bâtiment Condorcet.
  • [Rappel] Shutdown between July 25 4pm to July 27 morning : Due to an electric shutdown at IRIF building, the access to Sophie Germain will be closed on July 26. IT services will not be accessible. In consequence, mail, web, cloud will not be accessible but no mail will be lost. Please note that the fridges will be emptied on Monday July 25th at noon. Make sure to pick up your belongings before that time.


Actualités

  • PODC'22 / Accepted paper : P. Fraigniaud (IRIF) and A. Paz, S. Rajsbaum are among the four papers coauthored by IRIF members presented at PODC'22 July 25-29 2022 in Salerno, Italy. They will present their paper A Speedup Theorem for Asynchronous Computation with Applications to Consensus and Approximate Agreement introducing an extension to asynchronous distributed computing of the speedup technique for finding lower bounds, which was originally designed for synchronous failure-free computing. This extension allowed the authors to lower bounding the complexity of several variants of agreement tasks, even for models using sophisticated objects such as test&set and binary consensus, in addition to read/write registers.
  • Célébration de 75 ans d'informatique en France : Le LIP6 et l’IRIF ont organisé en mai dernier un événement pour célébrer les 75 ans de l’informatique en France ! Découvrez cette soirée sur la chaîne Youtube du LIP6-Sorbonne Université.


Focus on the 2022 EATCS Award and the 2022 Presburger Award

Patrick Cousot and his late wife Radhia Cousot introduced and developed the framework of abstract interpretation for program analysis. Abstract interpretation formalizes the interplay of static abstraction with dynamic execution for reasoning about the correctness of programs. Since its introduction in 1977, abstract interpretation has become one of the fundamental concepts in programming languages and compiler optimization and has greatly influenced the theory and practice of many related fields, from verification and software engineering to real-time systems and security. Dozens of new instantiations, extensions, and applications of the framework are published every year. Patrick has devoted a lifetime of research to abstract interpretation, having not only formulated the elegant mathematics that lies at the core the framework, but also leading its transition to industrial use, most notably through the Astree project for the analysis of avionics and space software. Recently Patrick summarized his life’s work in the textbook “Principles of Abstract Interpretation.”

The Unique Games Conjecture, formulated in 2002, is one of the central open questions in theoretical computer science, providing a plausible explanation of the hardness of approximation for a variety of natural problems, and weaving connections between computational complexity, algorithms, analysis, and geometry. While the jury is still out on this conjecture, the closely related variant of the 2-to-2 Games Conjecture was recently resolved by Minzer and his co-authors over a remarkable series of four papers between 2017 and 2018. “Lesser” variant notwithstanding, it has several important consequences, including establishing the hardness of distinguishing between almost-4-colourable graphs from almost-k-colourable graphs for constant k, and ruling out a polynomial-time-vs-truly-exponential-time dichotomy for approximating constraint satisfaction problems.
The proof of the 2-to-2 Games Conjecture involves a complex process of reformulating and reducing it to a concrete combinatorial hypothesis about the expansion properties of Grassmann graphs, and then proving this hypothesis using tools from the analysis of Boolean functions.
Minzer has also to his credit other strong and insightful results, in areas spanning property testing, information complexity, invariance and isoperimetry, noise sensitivity, and more. Minzer's work establishes him as a world leader in Boolean function analysis, an area central to obtaining and understanding many diverse and significant advances in theoretical computer science.

Appels d'offres et informations des partenaires

  • ANR / Appel à projets générique 2023 : Principal appel de l’Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR), l’Appel à projets générique 2023 (AAPG 2023) s’adresse à toutes les communautés scientifiques et à tous les acteurs publics ou privés impliqués dans la recherche française. Il doit permettre aux chercheurs et chercheuses des différents domaines scientifiques, d’accéder, en complément des financements récurrents qui leur sont alloués, à des co-financements sur un grand nombre de thématiques de recherche, finalisées ou non. L'AAPG 2023 est ouvert depuis le 18/07/2022. Clôture de la soumission des pré-propositions le 07/11/2022 à 17h00 CET.
  • Université Paris Cité / Multilingualism Week : As part of the European University Circle U., Dans le cadre de Circle U., the « Multilingualism Week » will take place on September 5-9 at King’s College, London. On September 8 afternoon, the large public will be able to attend online two activities on the programme.
    • Circle U. Think and Do Tank Café - September 8 | 15h30-16h30 (CEST) : The goal of this activity is to explore how informal learning groups of doctoral students succeed in improving their oral skills in other languages through thematic discussions around their own research. Register here.
    • Policy Roundtable on Multilingualism in Higher Education - September 8 | 17h00-20h00 (CEST) : The goal of this policy roundtable is among other things to explore the obstacles and opportunities related to the alliance’s ambition of increasing multilingual practices and opportunities at our home universities.

Newsletter des partenaires : Les lettres arrivent sporadiquement aux membres de l'IRIF. Elles sont donc listées ci-dessous.