POPL 2012: 39th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages

Important information

Scope

The annual Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages is a forum for the discussion of all aspects of programming languages and systems, with emphasis on how principles underpin practice. Both theoretical and experimental papers are welcome, on topics ranging from formal frameworks to experience reports. Papers discussing new ideas and areas are most welcome, as are high-quality expositions or elucidations of existing concepts that are likely to yield new insights ("pearls").

Program

This year, POPL accepted 44 papers out of 205 submitted. For dates and times for presentations, check out the conference program. A master schedule for all events colocated with POPL is also available.

Our invited talks this year are:

• Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare, FRS, FREng, FBCS, Microsoft Research
  • ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award Interview
• J Strother Moore, University of Texas at Austin
  • Meta-Level Features in an Industrial-Strength Theorem Prover
• Jennifer Rexford, Princeton University
  • Programming Languages for Programmable Networks

If you have a Windows phone, you can use this app as an electronic guide to the conference program.

POPL TutorialFest!

POPL 2012 will have a TutorialFest event with seven "distilled" 90 minute tutorials. This event is on January 28, immediately following the main POPL conference. The TutorialFest requires separate registration and registrants of TutorialFest may attend any of the tutorials offered throughout the day.

More information about TutorialFest and the tutorials is available here. A schedule of talks and rooms is available here.

Travel awards and visa letters

A limited number of grants are available through the SIGPLAN Professional Activities Committee (PAC) to support students going to POPL. You must be an ACM member to apply.

Students that are interested in attending both POPL and the PLMW Workshop should first seek funds via PLMW and then contact PAC if the PLMW grant is not awarded. PLMW grants are explained on the PLMW website.

Requests for visa support letters for purposes of attending or presenting at POPL 2012 are handled by ACM. For more information, go here.

Registration

To register for POPL, visit the URL https://regmaster3.com/2012conf/POPL12/register.php. The early registration deadline is December 24, 2011.

The registration fees of POPL and associated events are as follows:

Conference hotel

The conference will be held at the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel in Philadelphia's historic district. To make reservations at the special conference rate of $139/night, go to http://www.starwoodmeeting.com/Book/POPL2012. Alternately, call the hotel directly at +1-215-238-6000 and mention the group ACM/POPL 2012.

We realize that you may want to consider other hotels. Before you decide, please read why you should try to stay at the conference hotel.

To be eligible for the special conference rate, bookings must be made by December 24, 2011. However, as the conference rate applies only to a limited number of rooms, attendees are encouraged to make their hotel reservations at the earliest opportunity.

If the conference hotel (Sheraton Society Hill) is unavailable for your preferred nights, we've also secured a block of rooms at two other hotels:

• Hyatt Penns Landing, which is a very short walk from the conference hotel, at the rate of $149/night. You can book there via this link or by calling (888) 421-1442 and quoting the group code "acm2012".

• Holiday Inn, Historic District, which is only a bit farther. The rate here is $139/night. You can reserve a room via this link or by calling (877) 834-3613 and using the group code "PPL".

Here is a floor plan for the floor where the conference will be held.

If you'd like help identifying a roommate for a shared hotel room, please contact Tobias Wrigstad (tobias.wrigstad@it.uu.se), mentioning the nights you'd like to stay and any other pertinent constraints. He will contact you if he finds a suitable match. You can also use the MyEventCompass app to connect with others interested in POPL 2012. For example, the app can be used to find room-mates at hotels, find other attendees to share rides from airports, or build discussion groups.

Conference banquet

The POPL banquet will be held in the adjacent Landmark and Hamilton buildings of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA). PAFA was founded in 1805 by painter and scientist Charles Willson Peale, sculptor William Rush, and other artists and business leaders. It is the oldest art museum and school in the U.S. The Landmark building opened in 1876 and has been designated a National Historic Landmark; the Hamilton Building, originally built as an automobile showroom in 1916, was renovated to house new PAFA galleries in 2002. The Landmark building galleries highlight PAFA's permanent collection; the Harmilton building galleries display rotating exhibitions. Details on current exhibits may be found here.

Hors d'oeuvres (with an open bar*) will be served from 19:00 to 20:00; dinner will be served at 20:00. The same menu of food and drinks will be offered in both buildings. However, the capacity of the Landmark building is limited, so if you have a particular interest in visiting the Landmark building galleries, we encourage you to arrive early, have a look around, then head across the street to the Hamilton building for the balance of the evening. We will direct visitors to the Hamilton building once the Landmark building reaches capacity.

Buses will run continuously from the Sheraton Society Hill lobby entrance to PAFA between 18:30 and 19:30. Buses will depart as soon as they are full (NB: depending on traffic, there may be some gaps between buses). Buses will return from PAFA to the Sheraton starting at 21:00, and run continuously until 22:00. If you prefer to go on your own, PAFA can be reached on foot from the Sheraton in about 30 minutes, or via transit and foot in about 20 minutes.

* Each POPL registrant will receive a ticket good for one alcoholic beverage. Additional beverages may be purchased. The minimum drinking age in the U.S. is 21; you may be asked to show proof of age.

Local information

Philadelphia, also known as the City of Brotherly Love, is where the U.S. was born. The historic downtown of the city is...

• ...23 minutes away from the Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). You can travel downtown from PHL by rail, taxi, and shuttle. Note that the train from the airport won't take you to the neighborhood of the hotel but to the 30th street station; you'll then have to take a taxi, bus, or Metro. Here's a map showing how to go from the 30th street train station to the hotel, but all things considered, the most convenient way to get to the hotel is probably to take a taxi.

• ...about an hour by train from the Newark International Airport (EWR).
• ...accessible by train and bus from New York, Boston, Washington DC, and Baltimore.

For more information about cultural attractions, check out the official visitor site or the local alternative weeklies (here and here). A tour of the historic district, especially the Independence Hall, is highly recommended. The Philadelphia Art Museum is not only one of the largest art museums in the US, it is also home to the iconic Rocky steps (we recommend that you dedicate the run up and down the stairs to your POPL paper). Those with quirkier tastes should consider visiting the Mutter Museum or take a mural tour.

Philadelphia has one of the best restaurant scenes in America, and here is a map listing some of the restaurants in the neighborhood around the hotel. However, your trip to Philadelphia will not be complete unless you have had a cheesesteak. Temperatures in late January hover around freezing. We recommend packing a winter coat.

Forecast Radar Cameras

Workshops and co-located events

A master schedule showing all events colocated with POPL is available here.

Organizers General Chair: John Field Google 76 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY 10011, USA. jfield@google.com   Program Chair: Michael Hicks Department of Computer Science University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20866, USA mwh@cs.umd.edu   Program Committee:   [Show program committee] Swarat Chaudhuri Rice University, USA Adam Chlipala MIT, USA Dan R. Ghica University of Birmingham, UK Aarti Gupta NEC Labs America, USA Chris Hawblitzel Microsoft Research, Redmond, USA Suresh Jagannathan Purdue University, USA Ranjit Jhala University of California, San Diego, USA Sorin Lerner University of California, San Diego, USA Ondrej Lhotak University of Waterloo, Canada P. Madhusudan University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Rupak Majumdar MPI-SWS, Germany Matthew Might University of Utah, USA Todd Millstein University of California, Los Angeles, USA Greg Morrisett Harvard University, USA Andrew Myers Cornell University, USA Matthew Parkinson         Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK Frank Piessens K.U. Leuven, Belgium Andrew Pitts University of Cambridge, UK Andreas Podelski University of Freiburg, Germany François Pottier INRIA, France Norman Ramsey Tufts University, USA Tachio Terauchi Nagoya University, Japan Mandana Vaziri IBM Research, USA Dimitrios Vytiniotis Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK Nobuko Yoshida Imperial College, London, UK Francesco Zappa Nardelli INRIA, France   Workshops Chair:   Matthew Might University of Utah   Treasurer:   Bor-Yuh Evan Chang University of Colorado, Boulder   Publicity Chair:   Swarat Chaudhuri Rice University   Student Activities Chair:   Tobias Wrigstad Uppsala University   External review committee:   [Show external review committee] Umut Acar, MPI-SWS Rajeev Alur, Penn Josh Berdine, MSR Cambridge Emery Berger, UMass Hans Boehm, HP Labs Ahmed Bouajjani, University of Paris 7 David Brumley, CMU Bor-Yuh Evan Chang, Colorado James Cheney, Edinburgh Koen Claessen, Chalmers William Cook, UT Austin Derek Dreyer, MPI-SWS John Field, Google Robby Findler, Northwestern Cormac Flanagan, UCSC Jeff Foster, Maryland Nate Foster, Cornell Patrice Godefroid, MSR Redmond Andy Gordon, MSR Cambridge Dan Grossman, Washington Rajiv Gupta, UC Riverside Kohei Honda, Queen Mary Joxan Jaffar, Singapore Somesh Jha, Wisconsin Patty Johann, Strathclyde Neel Krishnaswami, MSR Cambridge Viktor Kuncak, EPFL Paul Levy, Birmingham Yitzhak Mandelbaum, AT&T Roman Manevich, UT Austin Ken McMillan, MSR Mayur Naik, Intel Aditya Nori, MSR Bangalore Luke Ong, Oxford Erez Petrank, Technion Simon Peyton Jones, MSR Cambridge Brigitte Pientka, McGill Mark Ryan, Birmingham Andrey Rybalchenko, T.U. Munich Vijay Saraswat, IBM T.J. Watson Helmut Seidl, T.U. Munich Peter Sewell, Cambridge Chung-chieh Shan, Rutgers Zhong Shao, Yale Satnam Singh, MSR Cambridge Yannis Smaragdakis, UMass Manu Sridharan, IBM T.J. Watson Sam Staton, Cambridge Zhendong Su, UC Davis Nikhil Swamy, MSR Redmond Ashish Tiwari, SRI Stavros Tripakis, VERIMAG Jean-Baptiste Tristan, Harvard Martin Vechev, IBM T.J. Watson David Walker, Princeton Stephanie Weirich, UPenn Adam Welc, Adobe Kwangkeun Yi, Seoul Steve Zdancewic, UPenn Noam Zeilberger, University of Paris 7 Sponsors