This article is published in the October 2023 issue.

Kick-off to the 10th Heidelberg Laureate Forum

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By Catherine Gill, Program Associate, CCC

September 25, 2023 marked the first official day of the 10th Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Heidelberg, Germany. The Computing Community Consortium has attended and covered the HLF conference every year since 2018, with the exception of last year, 2022. This year we are back in action, and will be covering the conference in-person in the idyllic town of Heidelberg.

 To give some background, the Heidelberg Laureate Forum is an annual conference which brings together some of the greatest minds in mathematics and computer science, both those well established in their fields and those who are just beginning their careers. 200 young researchers are selected to attend and meet the laureates, winners of some of the most prestigious awards in computer science and mathematics, including the ACM Turing award and the ACM Prize in Computing. 

 While the HLF conference schedule does contain many session types typical of scientific conferences, such as lectures given by the laureates and scientific poster sessions, the Heidelberg Laureate Forum also recognizes the importance of unstructured time in which to network and learn from each other. The week-long program features tours of the city of Heidelberg, a boat trip down the picturesque Neckar river, and a farewell dinner at the Heidelberg castle. As Petra Olschowski, the Minister of Science, Research, and Arts in Baden-Wurttemberg stated in her opening address, the HLF is based on the idea of giving young researchers the opportunity to interact with their role models, and this idea is embodied in the open schedule of the conference. A well organized and tenacious young researcher may even have enough time to talk to every laureate!

 I unfortunately will not be able to talk to everyone, but I hope to highlight some interesting in-depth discussions with laureates and young researchers alike. The conference kicks off each day at 9:00 am Central European Time, or 3:00 am Eastern Time, so many of our readers will not be able to catch a lot of the live sessions which are streamed on the HLF Youtube channel. Each livestreamed lecture, however, will be published online a few days at most after they premiere, and some sessions will begin at more manageable times for US based people, such as 6:00 am ET and later. Please check out the schedule for the 10th HLF conference.