The meeting will take place May 25-26, in the University Center on the Carnegie Mellon campus.
"The premise is that algorithms are used much more in industry than many people realize," says conference co-chair Guy E. Blelloch, Carnegie Mellon associate professor of computer science. "Chemical companies, airlines, and trucking firms are using algorithms to do scheduling. Web search companies use them to do their searches. Genome researchers are using them to design genetic maps and car manufacturers use them to design cars."
Blelloch says that airline firms claim they've been able to save hundreds of millions of dollars annually by using optimization algorithms for scheduling flights and crews.
"Algorithms are in demand as never before," adds Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Professor and conference co-chair Daniel D. Sleator, "but algorithm designers who are mostly theoretical computer scientists at universities or research laboratories, don't have a clear idea of the needs of business and industry, which contributes to the fact that there is generally a 20-year lag between the time an algorithm is invented and when it becomes widely used.
"We want to reduce the time frame and increase communication between developers and users, says Sleator. "This is the first meeting that brings theoreticians and practitioners together so each can learn what the other has done."
Conference speakers include academicians from Carnegie Mellon, the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who will join in discussion with experts from Xerox PARC, Intertrust, Google, AT&T, Celera Genomics and the National Institutes of Health.
Topics include the process of enabling algorithms to be used in industry, the length of time it should take for new theoretical algorithms to appear in applications, the need for a repository of examples of algorithms and their applications, exploring application domains in which algorithms could play a larger role, and dealing with the tension between creating broadly useful algorithms and meeting the needs of a specific client.
Several conference speakers are recipients of the A.M. Turing Award, the highest honor in computing, given for technical achievements deemed to be of lasting and significant importance to the computing community, and the Kanellakis Award, given to computer scientists for theoretical accomplishments that have had a significant and demonstrable effect on computing practice. More details are on the Web at. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~realworld.