British Colloquium for Theoretical Computer Science (BCTCS) 2006

The British Colloquium for Theoretical Computer Science (BCTCS) is an organisation whose function is to stage an annual meeting for the benefit of the UK-based Theoretical Computer Science community, in particular its PhD students. The first BCTCS meeting was held at Leeds University in 1985, and further colloquia have been organised in each subsequent year at different venues around the country. This year, in April of 2004, Stirling University hosted the 20th meeting of the BCTCS in Pitlochry. The 21st meeting will take place in March 2005 at Nottingham University, the 22nd meeting in April 2006 at Swansea University, and the 23rd meeting in April 2007 in Oxford.One of the central aims of BCTCS is training of PhD students. It provides an environment for PhD students to gain experience in presenting their work, to broaden their outlook on the subject, and to benefit from contact with established researchers. The meetings of the BCTCS do not follow the standard conference forum in which the topic is restricted to a specialized area and presenters are vetted in a competitive refereeing process. Rather, the BCTCS meeting provides a unique forum for PhD students to present their research work to an interested, supportive and friendly audience. All PhD students are encouraged to use this opportunity to obtain trainging in formal presentation skills. The abstracts of all presentations are traditionally published in the Bulletin of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS).Due to the unique opportunity offered to PhD students, they have traditionally been partially funded by EPSRC to attend these meetings through stipends to cover their registration and accommodation expenses. This funding is seen as essential for the success of BCTCS as a training ground for PhD students. This application seeks to continue this funding over the next three meetings, in Nottingham (2005), Swansea (2006) and Oxford (2007).Funding is also sought to support one of the invited speakers each year, specifically a reknown researcher in some field of theoretical computer science from outside of the UK. Finally, a small contribution is sought for producing and distributing a poster to advertise the colloquia.