European Symposia on Algorithms

General information

The Symposium covers research in efficient algorithms and data structures in computer science, discrete applied mathematics, operations research and mathematical programming. Starting from 2002, the symposium has two tracks:

• Design and Analysis Track

  Design and mathematical analysis of algorithms

• Engineering and Application Track

  Real-world applications, engineering and experimental analysis of algorithms

The creation of two tracks in ESA follows the incorporation of the annual Workshop on Algorithm Engineering (WAE) into ESA.

Each track has its own program committee. Papers are submitted to a particular track, but the committees have the right to move papers between tracks.

In 2014, the ESA community decided to start an ESA Test-of-Time Award to recognize paper(s) from ESA Proceedings from 19-21 years ago which are still influential and stimulating for the field today.

News

• The ESA Test-of-Time Award 2018 goes to

  Bernard Chazelle
  Car-Pooling as a Data Structuring Device: The Soft Heap
  Proceedings ESA'98, pp. 35-42, also in:
  Journal of the ACM 47(6): 1012-1027 (2000)

  The paper presents an ingenious data structure, the soft heap, which realizes an intricate compromise between what is possible (speed) and what is useful (accuracy). The soft heap is an approximate priority queue, in the sense that the items it returns are not necessarily items of minimum key. A soft heap is allowed to increase the keys of some, but not too many, of its items, to facilitate what Chazelle calls the "car-pooling equivalent of data structures". All soft heap operations take constant amortized time, given a desired level of accuracy. Soft heaps were devised by Chazelle to obtain a deterministic, comparison-based O(mα(m,n))-time algorithm for the fundamental minimum spanning tree problem. Twenty years on, this is still the fastest algorithm of its kind. Soft heaps were also used by Pettie and Ramachandran (2002) to obtain an optimal algorithm for the problem, i.e., with algorithmic complexity equal to its decision-tree complexity, albeit with an as yet unknown running time. The soft heaps paper has not aged over the years and continues to inspire as a fundamental achievement.

  more information

ESA Locations and Links

• The 28th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2020) will take place in Pisa, Italy, from September 7 to September 11, 2020
• The 27th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2019) will take place in Munich/Garching, Germany, from September 9 to September 11, 2019
• The 26th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2018) took place in Helsinki, Finland, from August 20 to August 22, 2018
• The 25th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2017) took place in Vienna, Austria, from September 4 to September 6, 2017
• The 24th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2016) took place in Aarhus, Denmark, from August 22 to August 26, 2016
• The 23rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2015) took place in Patras, Greece, from September 14 to 16, 2015.
• The 22nd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2014) took place in Wrocław, Poland, from September 08 to 10, 2014.
• The 21th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2013) took place in Sophia Antipolis, France, from September 02 to 04, 2013.
• The 20th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2012) took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from September 10 to 12, 2012.
• The 19th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2011) took place in Saarbrücken, Germany, from September 5 to 9, 2011.
• The 18th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2010) took place in Liverpool, United Kingdom, from September 6 to 8, 2010.
• The 17th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2009) took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, from September 7 to 9, 2009.
• As of ESA 2007, in addition to the best student paper award, ESA confers a best paper award. The prize acknowledges the best contributed ESA paper of that year, as judged by the program committee. The award is sponsored by EATCS.