[TYPES/announce] Final Call for Papers: First Symposium on Compositional Structures (SYCO 1) **Submission Deadline Monday 13 August**

[Jamie Vicary]

[Extended Submission Deadline Monday 13 August]

FIRST SYMPOSIUM ON COMPOSITIONAL STRUCTURES (SYCO 1)

School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham
               20-21 September, 2018

      http://events.cs.bham.ac.uk/syco/1/

The Symposium on Compositional Structures is a new interdisciplinary
series of meetings aiming to support the growing community of
researchers interested in the phenomenon of compositionality, from
both applied and abstract perspectives, and in particular where
category theory serves as a unifying common language. We welcome
submissions from researchers across computer science, mathematics,
physics, philosophy, and beyond, with the aim of fostering friendly
discussion, disseminating new ideas, and spreading knowledge between
fields. Submission is encouraged for both mature research and work in
progress, and by both established academics and junior researchers,
including students.

Submission is easy, with no format requirements or page restrictions.
The meeting does not have proceedings, so work can be submitted even
if it has been submitted or published elsewhere.

While no list of topics could be exhaustive, SYCO welcomes submissions
with a compositional focus related to any of the following areas, in
particular from the perspective of category theory:

 - logical methods in computer science, including classical and
quantum programming, type theory, concurrency, natural language
processing and machine learning;
 - graphical calculi, including string diagrams, Petri nets and
reaction networks;
 - languages and frameworks, including process algebras, proof nets,
type theory and game semantics;
 - abstract algebra and pure category theory, including monoidal
category theory, higher category theory, operads, polygraphs, and
relationships to homotopy theory;
 - quantum algebra, including quantum computation and representation theory;
 - tools and techniques, including rewriting, formal proofs and proof
assistants, and game theory;
 - industrial applications, including case studies and real-world
problem descriptions.

This new series aims to bring together the communities behind many
previous successful events which have taken place over the last
decade, including "Categories, Logic and Physics", "Categories, Logic
and Physics (Scotland)", "Higher-Dimensional Rewriting and
Applications", "String Diagrams in Computation, Logic and Physics",
"Applied Category Theory", "Simons Workshop on Compositionality", and
the "Peripatetic Seminar in Sheaves and Logic".

The steering committee hopes that SYCO will become a regular fixture
in the academic calendar, running regularly throughout the year, and
becoming over time a recognized venue for presentation and discussion
of results in an informal and friendly atmosphere. To help create this
community, in the event that more good-quality submissions are
received than can be accommodated in the timetable, we may choose to
*defer* some submissions to a future meeting, rather than reject them.
This would be done based on submission order, giving an incentive for
early submission, and avoiding any need to make difficult choices
between strong submissions. Deferred submissions would be accepted for
presentation at any future SYCO meeting without the need for peer
review. This will allow us to ensure that speakers have enough time to
present their ideas, without creating an unnecessarily competitive
atmosphere. Meetings would be held sufficiently frequently to avoid a
backlog of deferred papers.

# INVITED SPEAKERS

David Corfield, Department of Philosophy, University of Kent: "The
ubiquity of modal type theory"
Jules Hedges, Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford:
"Compositional game theory"

# IMPORTANT DATES

All times are midnight anywhere-on-earth
(https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/aoe).

 - Submission deadline: Monday 13 August 2018
 - Author notification: Monday 20 August 2018
 - Travel support application deadline: Monday 27 August 2018
 - Registration deadline: Thursday 13 September 2018
 - Symposium dates: Thursday 20 September and Friday 21 September 2018

# SUBMISSIONS

Submission is by EasyChair, via the following link:

 - https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=syco1

Submissions should present research results in sufficient detail to
allow them to be properly considered by members of the programme
committee, who will assess papers with regards to significance,
clarity, correctness, and scope. We encourage the submission of work
in progress, as well as mature results. There are no proceedings, so
work can be submitted even if it has been previously published, or has
been submitted for consideration elsewhere. There is no specific
formatting requirement, and no page limit, although for long
submissions authors should understand that reviewers may not be able
to read the entire document in detail. There is no problem making a
short submission of just a few pages, especially for ideas which
are at an early stage.

 # FUNDING

Some funding is available to cover travel and subsistence costs, with
a priority for PhD students and junior researchers. To apply for this
funding, please contact the local organizer Jamie Vicary at
<j.o.vicary at bham.ac.uk> by the deadline given above, with a short
statement of your travel costs and funding required.

We are grateful for generous sponsorship from Cambridge Quantum
Computing and the Royal Society.

 # PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

The symposium managed by the following people, who also serve as the
programme committee.

 - Ross Duncan, University of Strathclyde
 - Chris Heunen, University of Edinburgh
 - Aleks Kissinger, Radboud University Nijmegen
 - Samuel Mimram, École Polytechnique
 - Simona Paoli, University of Leicester
 - Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh, Queen Mary, University of London
 - Pawel Sobocinski, University of Southampton
 - Jamie Vicary, University of Birmingham and University of Oxford
(local organizer)