This spot on Telegraph Hill overlooks the bay in San Francisco, where ALENEX11 will take place. Image courtesy of Wally Gobetz, under Creative Commons 2.0.

The Workshop on Algorithm Engineering and Experiments (ALENEX11) will be held on 22 January 2011 at the Holiday Inn San Francisco Golden Gateway, San Francisco, California, US; papers are due 5 October 2010.

The aim of the ALENEX workshop is to provide a forum for presentation of original research in the implementation and experimental evaluation of algorithms and data structures. We invite submissions that present significant case studies in experimental analysis (such studies may tighten, extend, or otherwise improve current theoretical results) or in the implementation, testing, and evaluation of algorithms for realistic environments and scenarios, including specific applied areas (for example, databases, networks, operations research, computational biology and physics, computational geometry, and the world wide web) that present unique challenges in their underlying algorithmic problems. We also invite submissions that address methodological issues and standards in the context of empirical research on algorithms and data structures. The scientific program will include time for discussion and debate of topics in this rapidly evolving research area.

This workshop precedes the ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA11) being held 23-25 January 2011. The workshop will take place on the same day as the Analytic Algorithmics and Combinatorics (ANALCO11). Since researchers in both fields are approaching the problem of learning detailed information about the performance of particular algorithms, we expect that interesting synergies will develop.

Registrants from either workshop will be cross-registered with the other. Proceedings of ALENEX and ANALCO will be published openly and electronically in January 2011. A special issue of the ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics will be dedicated to selected papers from ALENEX10.

A paper that has been reviewed and accepted for presentation at SODA is not eligible for submission to ALENEX. We recognize, however, that some research projects spawn multiple papers that elaborate on different aspects of the work, and are willing to respond to inquiries about SODA, ALENEX, and ANALCO papers that may overlap. Papers of interest to both the ALENEX and the ANALCO communities are particularly encouraged. Such papers may be submitted to either workshop and will, as appropriate, be presented in a joint session. Inquiries regarding ALENEX may be sent to workshop organizers Matthias Muller-Hannemann (muellerhinformatik.uni-halle.de) or Renato Werneck (renatowmicrosoft.com).

Authors are invited to submit 10-page extended abstracts by 11:59 EDT PM on October 5, 2010 (strict deadline). Authors may include a clearly marked appendix, which will be read at the discretion of the program committee.

Papers should be submitted in the form of an extended abstract, which begins with the title of the paper, each author's name, affiliation, and e-mail address, followed by a clear statement of the problem considered, a succinct summary of the results obtained, a brief discussion of the significance and novelty of the research, and a clear comparison with related work. The remainder of the extended abstract should provide sufficient detail to allow the program committee to evaluate the validity, quality, and relevance of the contribution.

Submissions should be typeset in single column format, using 11-point or larger font, with reasonable margins and line spacing. Excluding the title page and bibliography, the extended abstract must not exceed ten pages.

The submission server is now available at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=alenex11.

Authors of accepted papers are strongly encouraged to submit publicly available code and data to the ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics Research Code Repository via http://www.jea.acm.org/repository/.

ALENEX policy does not allow simultaneous submissions of the same (or essentially the same) abstract material to another conference with a published proceedings.

Authors will be notified by e-mail in mid-November 2010.

The deadline for receipt of papers in final version is 20 December 2010. Presenters must have submitted the final versions of their papers in order to be able to present them at the workshop.