6th International Workshop on Algorithms and Computation (WALCOM):

WALCOM 2012, the 6th event of the reputed international conference series was held at BUET during 15-17 February 2012. WALCOM 2012 was hosted jointly by Bangladesh Academy of Sciences (BAS) and the Department of CSE, BUET. The event started with a short inaugural session on the 15th of February chaired by Prof. Dr. S. M. Nazrul Islam, Vice Chancellor, BUET. Architect Yeafesh Osman, the honourable State Minister, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of People’s Republic of Bangladesh kindly graced the occasion with his presence as the Chief Guest of the session. Prof. Dr. M. Shamsher Ali, President, Bangladesh Academy of Sciences, was present at the occasion as a Special Guest. Prof. Dr. M. Habibur Rahman, Pro-Vice Chancellor, BUET and Prof. Dr. Naiyyum Choudhury, Secretary, Bangladesh Academy of Sciences were also present as Guests of Honour. A tribute to the Martyrs of the Language Movement was paid with due honour in observance of the month of February during the inaugural session.

The scientific sessions of the WALCOM 2012 started just after the inaugural session with an interesting invited talk by Prof. Dr. Peter Widmayer (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland). The twenty contributed talks, which were carefully selected by a Program Committee comprising 25 researchers of international repute from Bangladesh, Canada, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Taiwan and USA, were presented in different sessions spanning areas like Approximation Algorithms, Computational Geometry, Combinatorial Optimization, Cryptography, Data Structures, Algorithmic Game Theory, Graph Algorithms, Graph Drawing, Parameterized Complexity, and String Algorithms. Additionally, two other invited talks by eminent scientists, Prof. Dr. Kazuo Iwama (Kyoto University, Japan) and Prof. Dr. Sue Whitesides (University of Victoria, Canada) were also presented during the scientific sessions. The regular scientific sessions ended with an intriguing brainstorming problem session, where different open problems and current state of the art thereof were presented and discussed.

WALCOM 2012 was proudly sponsored by Therap Services LLC and Vizrt. Apart from having technical sessions, the scientists and participants of WALCOM 2012 took part in social gatherings including Workshop dinners and sightseeing activities. Notably, a total of 27 foreign scientists including academicians and PhD students from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Switzerland participated at the workshop. WALCOM has been being organized by Bangladesh and India in alternate years since 2008. In this setting, it was decided that the next WALCOM, i.e., WALCOM 2013 would be organized by India at IIT Kharagpur.

Posted on: [2012-03-14]