For the first time in 42 years the Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL 2015) was held in India. POPL is the flagship conference organized by the Association of Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (ACM SIGPLAN). For the past 41 years, this annual conference was held alternatively between North America and Europe. However, due to the efforts of the POPL 2015 organization members, Sriram Rajamani, the General Chair, David Walker, the Program Chair, and Paritosh Pandya, the Local Chair, this prestigious conference was held at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) from January 12 to January 18.
For the first time in 42 years the Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL 2015) was held in India. POPL is the flagship conference organized by the Association of Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (ACM SIGPLAN). For the past 41 years, this annual conference was held alternatively between North America and Europe. However, due to the efforts of the POPL 2015 organization members, Sriram Rajamani, the General Chair, David Walker, the Program Chair, and Paritosh Pandya, the Local Chair, this prestigious conference was held at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) from January 12 to January 18.
"For a country aspiring to be a major player in the area of software development, programming languages are like life blood. Hence, having trained manpower which understand the state-of-the-art in programming languages is a strategic necessity. It was indeed our privilege to host this conference for the benifit of the Indian computer science community. It was our earnest effort to provide a comfortable environment where delegates can have a comfortable stay and fruitful deliberations." said Prof. Paritosh Pandya, Chairperson, Local Organization Committee.
"Most people in India think about programming as a commercial activity, and one that you do to make money. However, there is deep science behind computer programming, the design of programming languages, and tools for programming. I hope that POPL inspires Indian students to take up research in this fascinating topic" said Sriram Rajamani, the General Chair.
A total of 390 researchers attended the conference, and they gave talks on myriad fields ranging from formally verifying the correctness of software programs using the Coq proof assistant, to various compiler optimization techniques used in the implementation of programming languages, like partial evaluation. The papers presented at the conference were selected by a competitive peer-review process, on the basis of scientific merit. Each paper was evaluated by an average of 4 experts in the given field, and less than one in every four papers was selected.
"It is quite competitive to get papers accepted in POPL. By bringing POPL to India it was our fond hope that the Indian computer science community will get access to this premiere event where the best minds in the subject can share their expertise and vision, and they can enthuse and inspire young researchers and students." added Pandya
Beside talks selected on the basis of merit, several renowned programming language researchers were invited to talk at the conference by Dr. Sumit Gulvani, Dr. Peter Lee and Prof. Peter Buneman. Some of the researchers present at POPL 2015 were Xavier Leroy, the primary developer of the OCaml programming language, and Bill Thies, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research India. In addition to the main conference, the POPL 2015 organization also conducted several smaller conferences and workshops, such as VMCAI and the one-day Programming Languages Mentoring Workshop (PLMW) for students who aspire to do research on programming languages.
"POPL is the premier international event for researchers in programming languages. Many seminal results are announced at the conference, and renowned people travel far and wide in order to attend. As someone working in Bangalore, it was a special treat to be able to attend POPL in Mumbai. The local arrangements were excellent and provided a perfect backdrop to this scientific gathering" said Bill Thies, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research India.
India has two main technical and computing communities, a strong software engineering industry, and a strong community working on the mathematical foundations of designing systems. POPL 2015 heralds the beginning of a third community dedicated to programming language research in India. In addition, not only does it complement the existing Information Technology and Computer Science communities in India, but also it serves to bridge the gap between these two communities.
"We were fortunate to be able to get participation of over 140 Indian delegates from leading Indian institutes and industry, who constituted over 40% of the delegates. With generous support of institutions and sponsors we were able to assist these researchers in taking part. It is our hope and belief that POPL 2015 will leave a lasting mark on the computer science and programming langauge research in India, and its effects will be felt in years to come." added Pandya.
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