Three Decades of DIMACS: The Journey Continues

2019年，DIMACS（离散数学和理论计算机科学中心）和美国国家科学基金会的科学技术中心项目庆祝了三十年的运作和三十年的定义和塑造现代研究。在当今充满活力的研究领域，三十年是一个非凡的里程碑，本项目拟举办一场大型会议“DIMACS的三十年：旅程继续”，以纪念DIMACS作为美国国家科学基金会（NSF）首批科学技术中心之一的过去，展望未来。会议将探讨传统DIMACS主题的未来方向，并突出日益重要的新兴主题。会议将讨论一些广泛的问题，如：理论计算机科学的未来是什么？算法面临的新挑战是什么？离散数学？它们是如何与应用领域联系在一起的？它们如何与数据科学联系起来？人工智能和机器学习？隐私和公平？最后，在一个即时通信、数据无处不在、学科日益融合以解决各种各样的基本问题的世界里，中心的角色正在发生变化。会议将探讨对DIMACS、STCs和其他各种类型的中心的影响。计划中的项目包括许多女性和未被充分代表的少数族裔作为演讲者和小组成员，并将重点介绍扩大计算机科学和数学参与的创新项目，这些项目可能会成为其他地方的榜样。该课程还讨论了如何教育学生跨越学科界限，在科学已成为国际活动、工作性质将在智能机器时代发生变化的世界中开展工作。它的特点是教师描述他们在创新教育计划和材料方面的经验，这些计划和材料将数学和计算方法与高中课堂的科学内容相结合。这类项目有望打造一支能够跨越学科界限、利用计算能力应对未来挑战的未来劳动力队伍。演讲还将涉及当前在可持续性和气候变化、流行病学、国土安全、隐私和社会责任算法等领域具有全球社会重要性的研究。会议将展望未来，介绍正在进行的研究，并强调将推动我们进入下一个十年的重要挑战和问题。它将强调计算机科学理论中的重要主题，如复杂性和机器学习（特别是深度学习），以及社会技术挑战，如隐私和公平，这些挑战在一个越来越智能的机器和无处不在的数据的世界中出现。会议将探讨统计物理理论在机器人技术中的应用，面对气候变化的生态学和相关社会科学中的计算挑战，以及计算生物学和数学流行病学的进步使医疗保健领域的新能力成为可能。报告还将着眼于传统DIMACS领域当前和未来的研究方向，如离散数学、优化和统计学及其在利用数据革命中的核心作用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In 2019, both DIMACS (the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science) and the National Science Foundation's Science and Technology Centers program celebrate thirty years of operation and thirty years of defining and shaping modern research. In today's dynamic research landscape, thirty years is a remarkable milestone, and one that this project proposes to commemorate with a major conference, "Three Decades of DIMACS: The Journey Continues," that looks to the future as it honors the past when DIMACS was one of the original class of NSF Science and Technology Centers (STCs). The conference will explore future directions of traditional DIMACS topics and highlight emerging topics of growing importance. The conference will consider broad questions such as: What is the future of theoretical computer science? What are new challenges for algorithms? For discrete mathematics? How do they tie to applications areas? How do they connect to data science? To AI and machine learning? To privacy and fairness? Finally, the role of centers is changing in a world with instant communication, data everywhere, and disciplines increasingly merged to address fundamental problems of great variety. The conference will explore the implications for DIMACS, STCs, and other centers of various types. The planned program includes many women and underrepresented minorities as speakers and panelists and will highlight innovative programs for broadening participation in computer science and mathematics that may serve as models elsewhere. The program also features discussions of how to educate students to work across disciplinary boundaries and operate in a world where science has become an international activity and the nature of work will change in the age of intelligent machines. It features teachers describing their experiences with innovative education programs and materials that integrate mathematical and computational methods with science content for high school classrooms. Such programs hold promise for building a future workforce that is able to cross disciplinary boundaries and harness the power of computing to address future challenges. Presentations will also address current research that has global societal importance in areas such as sustainability and climate change, epidemiology, homeland security, privacy, and aspects of socially responsible algorithms.The conference will look to the future with presentations describing ongoing research and emphasizing important challenges and questions that will propel us into the next decade. It will emphasize important themes in computer science theory such as complexity and machine learning (particularly deep learning), as well as the socio-technical challenges, such as privacy and fairness, that arise in a world with increasingly intelligent machines and ubiquitous data. The conference will explore applications in robotics enabled by theory from statistical physics, computational challenges in ecology and related social sciences in the face of climate change, as well as new capabilities in healthcare made possible by advances from computational biology and mathematical epidemiology. Presentations will also look at current and future research directions in traditional DIMACS areas, such as discrete mathematics, optimization, and statistics and their central role in harnessing the data revolution.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.