The Second Symposium on Innovations in Computer Science (ICS2011) opened at Tsinghua’s FIT Building on January 7, 2011.Tsinghua University Vice President Qiu Yong, Professor Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, Dean of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, and Professor Amy Yuexuan Wang, Deputy Dean of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences joined scholars from such prestigious universities and research institutions as Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kungl Tekniska Hogskolan (KTH), Tsinghua University and Microsoft Research New England at the opening ceremony.

As one of the top-ranking international academic conferences in theoretical computer science, Innovations in Computer Science (ICS) is initiated by Professor Andrew Chi-Chih Yao and hosted by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences. It seeks to promote research that carries a strong conceptual message (e.g., introducing a new concept or model, opening a new line of inquiry within traditional or cross-disciplinary areas, or introducing new techniques or new applications of known techniques). Last year, ICS 2010 witnessed a great success with the publication of the high-level conference proceedings by Tsinghua University Press.

There are 38 papers accepted by ICS 2011 which represent leading-edge research results covering such fields as computational complexity, allocation algorithms and cryptography.

During the three-day symposium, there will be two invited talks by Prof. Silvio Micali from MIT and Prof. Gil Kalai from Hebrew University. At the Panel Discussion Session on the third day, Prof. Micali will join Prof. Noam Nisan from Hebrew University, Prof. Peter Bro-Miltersen from Aarhus University and other scholars in a high-level discussion with participants.

ICS 2011 has been sponsored by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, National Basic Research Program of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China and Tsinghua University. And the conference proceeding has been published independently by Tsinghua University Press.

(From the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences)