FOCS 2023 Test of Time Awards
Call for Nominations
The 2023 FOCS Test of Time Awards, awarded annually, recognize papers published in the Proceedings of the Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science. This is the fifth annual award. The target years for the Test of Time Awards in 2023 are for papers presented at the FOCS conferences in 1993, 2003, and 2013, which are each considered for separate awards.
Nomination Procedure
Nominations should be sent by July 31, 2023 to focs2023tot@gmail.com with a subject line of “TOT nomination”. Nominations should contain an explanation of the impact of the nominated paper(s), including references to follow-on work. Self-nominations are discouraged.
Selection
The winners will be selected by a committee appointed by the FOCS Steering Committee. For 2023 the award committee consists of Jin-Yi Cai (University of Wisconsin), Faith Ellen (University of Toronto), Leonard Schulman (Caltech), Alistair Sinclair (UC Berkeley), Éva Tardos (Cornell University), and committee chair David Zuckerman (UT Austin).
In selecting the Test of Time Award winners, the Committee will pay particular attention to long-term impact. This impact can come in many forms, including:
- Solving a problem of lasting importance,
- Pioneering a new area of research,
- Introducing novel techniques.
The committee expects to select exactly one paper for the award associated with each of the targeted years 1993, 2003 and 2013 conferences, but may select up to three papers in each category. The committee may give awards to papers that are not nominated.
While papers in the target years will be favored, the committee may award in each category nominated papers published up to four conferences earlier, if it concludes that the nominated papers were not awarded by prior committees despite their obvious worthiness due to constraints or neglect. Thus, in exceptional circumstances, papers published at FOCS 89-92 can compete for the award targeting the 1993 conference, and similarly for the other two awards.
