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FEATURED EVENT

Turing Centenary Conference

39th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 2012)

dimap/icalp2012

University of War wick War wick, UK

Photo courtesy of Flickr user firepile

July 9-13, 2012 http://www2.war wick.ac.uk/fac/cross_ fac/

(CiE 2012) Cambridge, United Kingdom June 18-23, 2012

19th Workshop on Logic, Language,
Information and Computation (WoLLIC
2012)
University of Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina
September 3 - 6, 2012
http://wollic.org/wollic2012/

The university where Alan Turing made his first steps in computing as an undergraduate student 80 years ago hosts a conference in his honor organized by the Computer Laboratory. Apart from being members of one the biggest events for computing, the participants will also have the opportunity to experience the city that Turing used to live in during the first years of his career and enjoy the “Harry Potter” experience that the University of Cambridge can offer.

23rd International Conference on
Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2012)
The Hilton Newcastle/Gateshead
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
September 3-8, 2012
http://conferences.ncl.ac.uk/concur-2012/

CONTESTS & EVENTS

CiE 2012 is one of the special events running throughout the Alan Turing Year and deals with theoretical approaches to practical computational problems in many different areas. Mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, biologists, philosophers, as well as all those interested in computing are invited to discuss computability-theoretic concerns underlying the broad spectrum of Turing’s interests, and the contemporary research areas founded upon and animated by them.

An impressive list of invited speakers has already been organized with Andrew Hodges (Oxford) and Lenore Blum (Carnegie Mellon) among them. Four other big meetings (two conferences and two workshops) will be co-located with the centenary meeting for those that want more than the main conference. For more information, visit http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/ turing2012/WScie12/.

Microsoft Blue Hat Prize Contest Microsoft challenges independent security researchers to design a novel runtime mitigation technology for preventing the exploitation of memory safety vulnerabilities. A board of judges organized by Microsoft will decide on the merit of each idea. The winning idea will receive the Black Hat USA 2012 title and the grand prize of $200,000. First runner up and second runner up will receive $50,000 and an MSDN Universal subscription worth $10,000 respectively. Entries are not allowed after April 1, 2012. There’s still time to get your best security idea crowned. http://www.microsoft.com/security/ bluehatprize/

—Vaggelis Giannikas

Computer Animation Festival
In 2012, SIGGRAPH’s Computer
Animation Festival celebrates its 39th year
as the world’s most innovative exploration
of computer-generated animation and
visual effects. The four-day long festival
is going to showcase some amazing
pieces of animation art. Some expert
talks are scheduled during this festival,
illuminating a variety of animation and
visual effect related topics. Entries are due
by April 9, 2012.

TURING CENTENARY

Alan Mathison Turing (June 23, 1912 – June 7, 1954) was an extremely influential English mathematician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist of the 20th century. He exhibited unusual talent in science and mathematics early in school, and during his education at Cambridge University he formulated the seminal concept that later became known as the Universal Turing Machine. During World War II, Turing was a leading contributor to secret code breaking efforts at Bletchley Park. In 1949, he worked on one of the earliest computer programs—the Manchester Mark 1. Contributing to artificial intelligence, Turing devised a standard for a machine to be termed “intelligent.” The widely used CAP TCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) was developed from this concept. Turing also worked on mathematical biology. He died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning, just weeks before his 42nd birthday.

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Turing’s birth, the Turing Centenary Advisory Committee is organizing a yearlong set of events honoring Turing’s life and achievements.

ALAN TURING RESOURCES

Book: Alan Turing: The Enigma
Andrew Hodges, Vintage (1992)
Product description from Amazon UK:
“Andrew Hodges’s biography of Alan
Turing, the brilliant Cambridge
mathematician who masterminded the
cracking of the German Enigma code and
indeed was the the father of the modern
computer, was regarded as ‘the paperback
buy of the season’ (Sunday Times) when it
was first published. It is now reissued in
Vintage with a new preface.”

Book: The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing’s Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine Charles Petzold, John Wiley and Sons (2008)