Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
The IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science is an academic conference in the field of theoretical computer science. FOCS is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society.
As writes, FOCS and its annual Association for Computing Machinery counterpart STOC 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." 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. 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. The publisher uses the acronym SFCS on their web sites for the conferences in 1975 to 1987.The cover pages of the conference feature an artwork entitled synapse, by Alvy Ray Smith; Smith donated the original artwork to the Simons Institute in 2023.
Location
FOCS is almost exclusively held in North America, and in particular in the United States, with few exceptions.| Year | PC and Local Chairs | Location | Steering Committee | Test of Time Award Committee |
| 1975 | Daniel Rosenkrantz, Eugene Lawler | Berkeley | ||
| 1976 | Michael Fischer, Meera Blattner | Houston | ||
| 1977 | Paul Young, John Savage | Providence | ||
| 1978 | Nancy Lynch, William Rounds | Ann Arbor | ||
| 1979 | Rao Kosaraju, Rolando Peinado | San Juan, Puerto Rico | ||
| 1980 | Syracuse | |||
| 1981 | Arnold Rosenberg, Patrick Fischer | Nashville | ||
| 1982 | Chicago | |||
| 1983 | Lawrence Snyder, Peter Downey | Tucson | ||
| 1984 | Singer Island | |||
| 1985 | Robert Tarjan, Eugene Luks | Portland | ||
| 1986 | John Hopcroft, Charles Rackoff | Toronto | Ashok Chandra | |
| 1987 | Tom Leighton, Seymour Ginsburg, Ming-Deh Huang | Los Angeles | " | |
| 1988 | White Plains | - | - | |
| 1989 | Zvi Galil, Jon Reif | Research Triangle Park | Christos Papadimitriou | |
| 1990 | Mihalis Yannakakis, Jonathan Turner | St. Louis | " | |
| 1991 | Mike Sipser, Tom Leighton, Alok Aggarwal | San Juan, Puerto Rico | " | |
| 1992 | Michael Luby, Gary Miller | Pittsburgh | ||
| 1993 | Leonidas J. Guibas, Andrei Broder | Palo Alto | ||
| 1994 | Shafi Goldwasser, Sorin Istrail | Santa Fe | ||
| 1995 | Prabhakar Raghavan, Aditi Dhagat, Rene Peralta | Milwaukee | ||
| 1996 | Martin Tompa, Carl Smith | Burlington | ||
| 1997 | Anna Karlin, Victor Milenkovic | Miami Beach | ||
| 1998 | Rajeev Motwani, Michael Mitzenmacher | Palo Alto | ||
| 1999 | Paul Beame, Piotr Berman | New York | ||
| 2000 | Avrim Blum, Marek Chrobak, Tao Jiang | Redondo Beach | ||
| 2001 | Moni Naor, Lawrence Larmore, Wolfgang Bein | Las Vegas | ||
| 2002 | Bernard Chazelle Arvind Gupta | Vancouver, Canada | ||
| 2003 | Madhu Sudan, Michael Mitzenmacher | Cambridge | ||
| 2004 | Eli Upfal, Giuseppe F. Italiano | Rome, Italy | ||
| 2005 | Eva Tardos, Avrim Blum, Anupam Gupta | Pittsburgh | ||
| 2006 | Sanjeev Arora, Satish Rao | Berkeley | ||
| 2007 | Alistair Sinclair, Philip Klein, Anna Lysyanskaya, Claire Mathieu | Providence | ||
| 2008 | R. Ravi, Sudipto Guha, Sanjeev Khanna, Sampath Kannan | Philadelphia | Paul Beame | |
| 2009 | Dan Spielman, David Shmoys, Milena Mihail, Prasad Tetali | Atlanta | " | |
| 2010 | Luca Trevisan, Larry Larmore | Las Vegas | " | |
| 2011 | Rafail Ostrovsky, Marek Chrobak, Neal Yong, | Palm Springs | " | |
| 2012 | Tim Roughgarden, Rebecca Wright, Lisa Zhang, Boaz Barak, Avrim Blum | New Brunswick | David Shmoys | |
| 2013 | Omer Reingold, Christos Papadimitriou, Umesh Vazirani, Moses Charikar, Chris Umans | Berkeley | " | |
| 2014 | Boaz Barak, Rebecca Wright, Lisa Zhang, Sanjeev Khanna, Kunal Talwar | Philadelphia | " | |
| 2015 | Venkatesan Guruswami, Kristin Kane, Prasad Raghavendra, Luca Trevisan | Berkeley | Rafail Ostrovsky | |
| 2016 | Irit Dinur, Rebecca Wright, Lisa Zhang, Alexandr Andoni, Aleksander Mądry | New Brunswick | " | |
| 2017 | Chris Umans, Andrew Jan, Prasad Raghavendra, Aleksander Mądry, | Berkeley | " | |
| 2018 | Mikkel Thorup, Adi Rosén, Sophie Laplante, Alessandro Luongo, Robert Kleinberg, | Paris, France | Yuval Rabani, Shang-Hua Teng, Avrim Blum, Shafi Goldwasser, Rafail Ostrovsky, Toniann Pitassi | |
| 2019 | David Zuckerman, Michael Dinitz, Maria-Florina Balcan, Robert Kleinberg | Baltimore | " | Paul Beame, Allan Borodin, Uriel Feige, Monika Henzinger, Johan Håstad, Mihalis Yannakakis |
| 2020 | Sandy Irani, Debmalya Panigrahi, Kamesh Munagala, Maria-Florina Balcan, Alexander Sherstov | Virtual | " | Paul Beame, Uriel Feige, Anna Karlin, Yishay Mansour, Claire Mathieu, Luca Trevisan |
| 2021 | Nisheeth Vishnoi, Alexandra Kolla, Vincent Cohen-Addad, Alexander Sherstov | Virtual | " | Russell Impagliazzo, Yael Tauman Kalai, Anna Karlin, Yishay Mansour, Michael Saks, Luca Trevisan |
| 2022 | Jelani Nelson, Alexandra Kolla, Rong Ge, Vincent Cohen-Addad, | Denver | Shang-Hua Teng, Venkatesan Guruswami, Avrim Blum, Shafi Goldwasser, Rafail Ostrovsky, Toniann Pitassi, Yuval Rabani | Russell Impagliazzo, Yael Tauman Kalai, Michael Saks, Alistair Sinclair, Éva Tardos, David Zuckerman |
| 2023 | Amit Sahai, Shubhangi Saraf, Thomas Vidick, Alexandra Kolla, Pravesh Kothari, | Santa Cruz | " | Jin-Yi Cai, Faith Ellen, Leonard Schulman, Alistair Sinclair, Éva Tardos, David Zuckerman |
| 2024 | Santosh Vempala, Aravindan Vijayaraghavan, Lev Reyzin, Mohsen Ghaffari, Pravesh Kothari | Chicago | Ran Canetti, Rocco Servedio | Jin-Yi Cai, Julia Chuzhoy, Constantinos Daskalakis, Faith Ellen, Shafi Goldwasser, Leonard Schulman |
| 2025 | Ran Raz, Rotem Oshman, Clément Canonne, Troy Lee, Mohsen Ghaffari, Dakshita Khurana | Sydney, Australia | Ran Canetti, Rocco Servedio | Shafi Goldwasser, Julia Chuzhoy, Constantinos Daskalakis, Irit Dinur, Piotr Indyk, Ryan O’Donnell |