IACR News item: 02 February 2016
Announcement
Dear IACR members,
The past year has again seen vibrant research activity in cryptology and many successful IACR events. For example, the IACR Cryptology Schools program has gained momentum with four schools sponsored in 2015. Another significant change was the introduction of parallel sessions at Eurocrypt, Crypto, and Asiacrypt to cope with the increased number of high-quality papers (more on that later). Last but not least, Alexandra Boldyreva has joined as co-editor of the Cryptology ePrint Archive, replacing Tal Rabin.
Board of Directors
As it happens every year, the composition of the Board has changed for 2016. I'd like to thank the leaving Board members, Svetla Petkova-Nikova, Steven Galbraith, Thomas Ristenpart, and Tom Berson, for their contributions to the IACR and to cryptology research.
A very special *thank you* from my side goes to Tom Berson, Fellow of the IACR, former president, secretary and much more: He was among the founding members of this association and has held almost every position since 1983; though his work in building the IACR he helped the individuals in the field make careers in research and technology; his dedication to the organization positioned cryptology to become an independent and vibrant domain today. We are sure he will enjoy board-meeting-free Sundays at the conferences in the future!
Joining the Board are three colleagues: Phil Rogaway has been newly elected to the Board in 2015, Steven Myers and SM Yiu join in their roles as General Chairs of Crypto and Asiacrypt in 2017 -- welcome!
Conference attendance
As many members have asked about attendance at our conferences I am including here the attendee counts at the 2015 events:
Asiacrypt 2015: 200
CHES 2015: 448
Crypto 2015: 322
Eurocrypt 2015: 324
FSE 2015: 136
PKC 2015: 144
TCC 2015: 145
Referendum on parallel sessions and bylaws modifications
The Board had suggested for many years that Program Chairs find a way to accommodate the increased number of submitted papers, including organizing parallel sessions. In 2014 the Board asked the Program Chairs of the 2015 general conferences (Eurocrypt, Crypto, Asiacrypt) directly to introduce parallel sessions in the program. The echo at the conferences was positive. As promised before we will now organize a formal membership vote on the question of continuing with parallel sessions like this.
With the same referendum we also propose to change the bylaws in minor ways. The document currently distinguishes between "IACR conferences" (Eurocrypt, Crypto, Asiacrypt) and "IACR workshops" (CHES, FSE, PKC, TCC). Since the latter have by far surpassed the common notion of a workshop in scope and attendance, we will rename them to "IACR Area Conferences". Some further small changes are also proposed.
You will receive email form the Helios voting system with your credential to vote. The full text of the referendums appears at iacr.org/elections/2016-vote/announcement.html.
Conferences
The first IACR conference in 2016 has already taken place (TCC 2016-A in Tel Aviv). Our next conferences are:
Closing
This is *your* IACR: Please share your feedback and suggestions for improving IACR's services. Contact me, other Board members, the conference chairs, and feel free to use other communication channels.
Best regards,
Christian Cachin
President, IACR
The past year has again seen vibrant research activity in cryptology and many successful IACR events. For example, the IACR Cryptology Schools program has gained momentum with four schools sponsored in 2015. Another significant change was the introduction of parallel sessions at Eurocrypt, Crypto, and Asiacrypt to cope with the increased number of high-quality papers (more on that later). Last but not least, Alexandra Boldyreva has joined as co-editor of the Cryptology ePrint Archive, replacing Tal Rabin.
Board of Directors
As it happens every year, the composition of the Board has changed for 2016. I'd like to thank the leaving Board members, Svetla Petkova-Nikova, Steven Galbraith, Thomas Ristenpart, and Tom Berson, for their contributions to the IACR and to cryptology research.
A very special *thank you* from my side goes to Tom Berson, Fellow of the IACR, former president, secretary and much more: He was among the founding members of this association and has held almost every position since 1983; though his work in building the IACR he helped the individuals in the field make careers in research and technology; his dedication to the organization positioned cryptology to become an independent and vibrant domain today. We are sure he will enjoy board-meeting-free Sundays at the conferences in the future!
Joining the Board are three colleagues: Phil Rogaway has been newly elected to the Board in 2015, Steven Myers and SM Yiu join in their roles as General Chairs of Crypto and Asiacrypt in 2017 -- welcome!
Conference attendance
As many members have asked about attendance at our conferences I am including here the attendee counts at the 2015 events:
Asiacrypt 2015: 200
CHES 2015: 448
Crypto 2015: 322
Eurocrypt 2015: 324
FSE 2015: 136
PKC 2015: 144
TCC 2015: 145
Referendum on parallel sessions and bylaws modifications
The Board had suggested for many years that Program Chairs find a way to accommodate the increased number of submitted papers, including organizing parallel sessions. In 2014 the Board asked the Program Chairs of the 2015 general conferences (Eurocrypt, Crypto, Asiacrypt) directly to introduce parallel sessions in the program. The echo at the conferences was positive. As promised before we will now organize a formal membership vote on the question of continuing with parallel sessions like this.
With the same referendum we also propose to change the bylaws in minor ways. The document currently distinguishes between "IACR conferences" (Eurocrypt, Crypto, Asiacrypt) and "IACR workshops" (CHES, FSE, PKC, TCC). Since the latter have by far surpassed the common notion of a workshop in scope and attendance, we will rename them to "IACR Area Conferences". Some further small changes are also proposed.
You will receive email form the Helios voting system with your credential to vote. The full text of the referendums appears at iacr.org/elections/2016-vote/announcement.html.
Conferences
The first IACR conference in 2016 has already taken place (TCC 2016-A in Tel Aviv). Our next conferences are:
- Public Key Cryptography, March 6-March 9, 2016, Taipei, Taiwan.
http://troll.iis.sinica.edu.tw/pkc16/ - Fast Software Encryption, March 20-March 23, 2016, Bochum, Germany.
http://fse.rub.de/ - Eurocrypt 2016, May 8-May 12, 2016, Vienna, Austria
http://ist.ac.at/eurocrypt2016/
Closing
This is *your* IACR: Please share your feedback and suggestions for improving IACR's services. Contact me, other Board members, the conference chairs, and feel free to use other communication channels.
Best regards,
Christian Cachin
President, IACR
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