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• The 2020 ASL Election. In the 2020 election, the members of the ASL elected Juliet Floyd (Boston University) and Dima Sinapova (University of Illinois-Chicago) to the Executive Committee; and Sebastiaan Terwijn (Radboud University, Nijmegen) and Wei Li (Chinese Academy of Sciences) to the ASL Council. All terms are for 3 years beginning January 1, 2021.
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• Special 25th Anniversary BSL Prize. The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic published its first volume in 1995. Over the past 25 years, the BSL has published many expository papers of outstanding quality, on a variety of topics, and from a variety of perspectives within logic. These papers have helped students to get started, have allowed researchers to see connections between different areas, and have let all of us learn more of the history of our subject.
To celebrate, and to advertise the BSL, the ASL is giving a special BSL 25th Anniversary Prize. Details appeared in issues 3–4 of volume 26 (2020) of the BSL. The ASL salutes the seven authors of the winning articles, and also expresses its pride in the overall quality of the BSL and its appreciation for all authors who have submitted articles, communications, reviews, and other items to the first 25 volumes. Over that time, the BSL has developed into a premier journal for exposition of topics in all areas of logic, and this is principally due to the high quality of contributions from a wide variety of logicians. The base of contributors has gradually grown larger and more diverse as the years have passed, and we hope to continue to broaden that base and to receive many more outstanding submissions in the years to come.
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• 2021 Sacks Prize. The ASL invites nominations for the 2021 Sacks Prize for the most outstanding doctoral dissertation in mathematical logic. Nominations must be received by September 30, 2021. The Sacks Prize was established to honor the late Professor Gerald Sacks of MIT and Harvard for his unique contribution to mathematical logic, particularly as adviser to a large number of excellent Ph.D. students. The Prize was first awarded in 1994 and became an ASL Prize in 1999. The Fund on which the Prize is based is now administered by the ASL and the selection of the recipient is made by the ASL Committee on Prizes and Awards. The Sacks Prize will consist of a cash award plus 5 years free membership in the ASL. For general information about the Prize, visit http://aslonline.org/other-information/prizes-and-awards/. Anyone who wishes to make a nomination for the 2021 Sacks Prize should consult the web page http://aslonline.org/other-information/prizes-and-awards/sacks-prize-recipients/sacks-prize-nominations/ for the precise details of the application process. A brief summary of the procedure is provided here.
Students who defend their dissertations (equivalent to the American doctoral dissertation) between October 1, 2020, and September 30, 2021, are eligible for the Prize this year. This is an international prize, with no restriction on the nationality of the candidate or the university where the doctorate is granted. Nominations should be made by the thesis adviser, and consist of: name of student, title and 1–2 page description of dissertation, date and location of the thesis defense, letter of recommendation from the adviser, an electronic copy of the thesis in pdf form, or the address of a website from which an electronic copy in pdf form can be downloaded, and an independent second letter of recommendation. Nominations and questions about the Prize should be sent to the Committee Chair, Justin Moore; pdf files sent as attachments by email to justin@math.cornell.edu are preferred. The form of such letters and other pertinent details can be found at the website above, and need to be read prior to submitting a nomination.
Those wishing to contribute to the Sacks Prize Fund may send contributions to the ASL Business Office, Dept. of Mathematics, Univ. of Connecticut, 341 Mansfield Road, U-1009, Storrs, CT 06269-1009, USA. All such contributions are tax-deductible within the USA.
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• Student Travel Awards: ASL and ASL-Sponsored Meetings. Student members of the ASL may apply for travel grants to ASL and ASL-sponsored meetings. To be considered for a travel award, please (1) send a letter of application, and (2) ask your thesis supervisor to send a brief recommendation letter. The application letter should be brief (preferably one page) and should include: (1) your name; (2) your home institution; (3) your thesis supervisor’s name; (4) a one-paragraph description of your studies and work in logic, and a paragraph indicating why it is important to attend the meeting; (5) your estimate of the travel expenses you will incur; (6) (for citizens or residents of the USA) citizenship or visa status; and (7) (voluntary) indication of your gender and minority status. Women and members of minority groups are strongly encouraged to apply. Application by email is encouraged; put “ASL travel application” in the subject line of your message.
For all ASL or ASL-sponsored meetings except the Logic Colloquium and the North American Annual Meeting, applications (from student members of the ASL) and recommendations must be received at least 3 months prior to the start of the meeting, via email to asl@uconn.edu or at the ASL Business Office (address at the top of this Newsletter). Decisions will be communicated at least 2 months prior to the meeting.
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• ASL Sponsorship of Meetings. The ASL often sponsors research meetings and conferences in logic, all over the world. Sponsorship is granted to those meetings that uphold high standards of scholarship and rigor and whose purpose is in concert with the mission of the ASL. Student members of the ASL may apply to the ASL for travel support to attend sponsored meetings, as described below, and a report on each sponsored meeting subsequently appears in the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic. Meeting organizers who are ASL members and wish to request ASL sponsorship of their meetings should do so at least 6 months before the beginning of the meeting, following the instructions at http://aslonline.org/sponsorship-of-meetings/.
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• Renewing Memberships for 2021. Renewals for the year 2021 are now open!
Many logicians, when becoming members of the ASL, opt out of receiving email from Cambridge University Press, which administers the membership program. In such cases, due to European Union regulations regarding opting-out, these members do not receive any electronic notification of the expiration of their memberships, and we know of cases where memberships have lapsed simply because the member was unaware of the expiration date. The ASL is working with CUP to develop a better system, still conforming to the EU regulations. In the meantime, we encourage all those whose memberships expired in 2020, especially those who may have opted out of email, to be careful to renew their memberships in a timely fashion! At http://aslonline.org/membership/individual-membership/, a link is available for online renewal with CUP, and paper renewal forms are also available there that can be returned by snail mail or email. For those who hold multi-year memberships and wish to confirm the expiration date, please log in to your account with CUP or send email to USmemberservices@cambridge.org.
Cambridge University Press has arranged to offer members the option to choose, for each of our three journals individually, whether to receive print copies or only to have online access to the journal. We urge our members to consider the environment and to choose the print option only for those journals which they actually need in hard copy. (To make this new arrangement possible, we have reduced the number of options for the term of membership, which will now be available for either a single year or 5 years.)
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• Mailing of Journals. For some months during the current pandemic, Cambridge University Press was unable to maintain its usual schedule of printing and mailing ASL journals to our members. The mailing of journals has now resumed, but it will take time to work through the backlog and catch up. All journals remain available online to members as always, but the arrival of printed copies still could be significantly delayed. CUP has apologized to the ASL Publisher for the delays, and requests that we all recognize the significant challenges it faces in this extraordinary situation.
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• Status of Scheduled Meetings. Under the circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic and the measures in place to combat it, many logic meetings scheduled for 2021 have already been canceled, and it is likely that more will be canceled or postponed. (See below for the change of dates for the North American Annual Meeting!) Information appearing here is current as of publication, but ASL members should use the URL given in each item to confirm the ongoing status of any meeting they may consider attending. For completeness, the listings here include short items for postponed meetings, even when the new dates are uncertain.
We urge all logicians to use caution and common sense in planning their schedules, and to avoid unnecessary travel during these unusual times.
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• Online Logic Seminars. To replace canceled meetings and seminars, certain regular online logic seminars have sprung up. A list of existing seminar series with talks available online appears at http://miguelmath.com/webminars.html. Additionally, the site http://lagrange.math.siu.edu/calvert/OnlineLogicSeminar.html has been created to host a new, purely online logic seminar. The site ctaseminar.computability.org hosts an online seminar entitled Computability Theory and Applications, and the Logic Supergroup at logic.uconn.edu/supergroup/ runs an online seminar on logic across linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy.
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• 2021 ASL North American Annual Meeting June 22–25, 2021, South Bend, Indiana (Virtual). Notice the change of dates! This meeting was originally planned for May 2021 at Notre Dame University. The dates were changed as a result of revisions to the Notre Dame academic calendar, and then the meeting was converted into an online meeting, due to the coronavirus pandemic. It will take place on June 22–25, 2021, rather than on the original dates.
Plenary speakers will include J. Franklin, M. Gehrke, C. Hill, T. McNicholl, A. Szendrei, N. Trang, and J. Wolf. Tutorials will be presented by J. Moore and R. Moosa. Special sessions are being organized in Computability Theory (by A. Pauly and T. Kihara); Model Theory (D. Haskell and E. Walsberg); Non-Classical Logic (N. Galatos and W. Holliday); History and Philosophy of Logic (T. Lando, S. Smets, and A. Özgün); and Set Theory (J. Cummings and A. Tserunyan). The Program Committee consists of G. Bezhanishvili, C. Franks, S. Ng, D. Sinapova, M. Thomas, and H. Towsner (chair). The Organizing Committee consists of T. Bays, J. Beall, P. Blanchette, P. Cholak, C. Franks, J. Knight (co-chair), A. Pillay (co-chair), and S. Starchenko.
Abstracts of contributed talks submitted by ASL members will be published in The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic if they satisfy the Rules for Abstracts (below). Abstracts must be received by the deadline of March 22, 2021, at the ASL Business Office, preferably by email: asl@uconn.edu.
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• 2021 ASL European Summer Meeting (Logic Colloquium) July 19–24, 2021, Poznań, Poland (Virtual). This conference was originally scheduled for July 13–18, 2020, but was postponed due to the pandemic. It will now be held as an online meeting, hosted by Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, and organized by the AMU Faculty of Psychology and Cognitive Science and the AMU Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. The plenary speakers are A. Chernikov, V. Fischer, N. Greenberg, B. Monin, L. Motto Ros, E. Pimentel, F. Pfenning, L. Westrick, and R. Williams. Tutorials will be offered by K. Krupinski and A. Marks, and the postponed 2020 Gödel Lecture will be delivered by E. Bouscaren. There will be special sessions on Computability; Logic in Cognitive Science and Linguistics; Modal and Epistemic Logic; Model Theory; Proofs and Programs; and Set Theory.
The members of the Program Committee are W. Buszkowski, A. Dawar, G. Primiero, M. Soskova, H. Towsner, M. Viale, and B. Zil’ber (chair). The Local Organizing Committee consists of W. Buszkowski, J. Golińska-Pilarek, L. Kołodziejczyk, P. Łupkowski, R. Murawski (co-chair), M. Nasieniewski, J. Pogonowski, T. Skura, K. Świrydowicz, M. Urbański (co-chair), and A. Wiśniewski. The deadline for submitting abstracts of contributed talks is April 30, 2021; abstracts should satisfy the ASL’s Rules for Abstracts (below). See https://lc2021.pl/ for further information.
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• 2021 Asian Logic Conference Canceled. We regret to announce that the Asian Logic Conference scheduled for 2021 has been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. The next Asian Logic Conference is scheduled to occur in 2023.
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• Changes to the 2022 Joint Mathematics Meetings. Beginning with the meeting scheduled for January 5–8, 2022, in Seattle, WA, the Joint Mathematics Meetings will be organized primarily by the American Mathematical Society. The AMS has enlisted a number of partner organizations, including the ASL, to provide mathematical content and social events at the JMM. The ASL will continue to organize the 2-day ASL Winter Meeting within the JMM: we expect it to be held next year on January 7–8, 2022. Additionally, the ASL hopes for its members to organize one or more AMS–ASL Special Sessions at the JMM; the call for proposals appears immediately below. These Special Sessions usually take place during the first 2 days of the JMM, so as not to conflict with the ASL Winter Meeting.
As a further activity, the ASL plans to add a tutorial during the first 2 days of the JMM in 2022. Our plan is for a logician to give a presentation describing a particular topic within logic and the influence of that topic on some broader area of mathematics beyond logic. The presentation will be aimed at an audience familiar with the broader area of mathematics under discussion, but not necessarily with logic. The JMM is a natural venue for this activity. The precise format is still under discussion with the AMS, but we expect the first tutorial to occur at the 2022 JMM.
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• Call for Proposals: 2022 AMS–ASL Joint Special Session. The ASL Committee on Logic in North America seeks proposals for an AMS–ASL Joint Special Session to be held at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle, Washington, January 5–8, 2022, as described above. Proposals or requests for information should be sent to the Committee Chair, Tom Scanlon (scanlon@math.berkeley.edu). The deadline for receipt of proposals is March 15, 2021.
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• Rules for Abstracts. The rules for abstracts of contributed talks at the above ASL meetings (including those submitted “by title”) may be found at http://aslonline.org/rules-for-abstracts/. Please note that abstracts must follow the rules as set forth there; those which do not conform to the requirements will be returned immediately to the authors who submitted them. Revised abstracts that follow the rules will be considered if they are received by the announced deadline.
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• Computability in Europe 2021 July 5–9, 2021, Ghent, Belgium (Virtual). CiE 2021 will take place as a virtual conference. The invited speakers are L. Crosilla, M. Lohrey, J. R. Moschovakis, J. Ouaknine, K. Yokoyama, and H. Yuen, with tutorials offered by R. Miller and C. Tasson. Special sessions are planned in Church’s Thesis in Constructive Mathematics; Computational Geometry; Computational Pangenomics; Classical Computability Theory; Proof Theory and Computation; and Quantum Computation and Information. The co-chairs of the Program Committee are L. De Mol and A. Weiermann. Further information is available at https://www.cie2021.ugent.be/.
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• Panhellenic Logic Symposium July 14–18, 2021, Volos, Greece. The Panhellenic Logic Symposium is a biennial scientific event in logic that was established in 1997. It aims to promote interaction and cross-fertilization among different areas of logic, including philosophical logic, logic in computer science, model theory, computability/complexity theory, and set theory. The scientific program will include hour-long invited talks by A. Brooke-Taylor, T. Kihara, J. Knight, V. Koutavas, A. Macintyre, T. Pheidas, A. Silva, and L. Westrick. Tutorials will be given by A. Kavvos, N. Leonardos, and S. Zachos. Please see http://panhellenic-logic-symposium.org/13/ for further information. (ASL Sponsored Meeting.)
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• 36th Summer Topology Festival July 19–23, 2021, Vienna, Austria. This meeting will have a partial focus on logic, including a special session in set-theoretic topology. The invited speakers include A. Kwiatkowska and M. Magidor. It is hoped that the meeting can be held in person; please consult https://www.univie.ac.at/projektservice-mathematik/e/index.php?event=stc21 for updates. (ASL Sponsored Meeting.)
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• Sao Paulo School of Advanced Science on Contemporary Logic, Rationality, and Information University of Campinas, Brazil. This School, originally scheduled for July 13–24, 2020, has been postponed, with no rescheduled date yet set. See https://splogic.org/ for updates.
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• Ph.D. Abstracts in the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic. In 2018 the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic began publishing abstracts of recent Ph.D. theses in logic. Christian Rosendal, the editor for this section of the BSL, relies on thesis advisors to apprise him of new doctorates. For further information, or to inform him of a newly completed dissertation, see http://aslonline.org/journals/the-bulletin-of-symbolic-logic/logic-thesis-abstracts-in-the-bulletin-of-symbolic-logic/.
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• New ASL Books. To see new books in the ASL’s Lecture Notes in Logic and Perspectives in Logic series, visit http://aslonline.org/books/lecture-notes-in-logic/ for LNL volumes and http://aslonline.org/books/perspectives-in-logic/ for Perspectives volumes.
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• Book and Journal Discounts for ASL Members. Several publishers offer discounts on books and journals to ASL members. For a detailed description of these discounts, see http://aslonline.org/membership/member-services-and-resources/ or write to the ASL Business Office.
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• The Cabal Seminar, Vols. I–IV. Editors: Alexander S. Kechris, Benedikt Löwe, and John R. Steel (Cambridge University Press, 2020, ISBN 978-1-108-92022-3). The proceedings of the Los Angeles Caltech-UCLA “Cabal Seminar” were originally published in the 1970s and 1980s. This series of four books collects the seminal papers from those proceedings, together with extensive unpublished material, new papers on related topics, and discussion of research developments since the publication of the original volumes. Volume I focuses on the subjects of “Games and Scales” and “Suslin Cardinals, Partition Properties, and Homogeneity,” Volume II on “Wadge Degrees and Pointclasses” and “Projective Ordinals,” Volume III on “HOD and Its Local Versions” and “Recursion Theory,” and Volume IV on “Extensions of AD, models with choice,” along with material important to the Cabal that does not fit neatly into one of its main themes. The four-volume set is now available as part of the ASL’s Lecture Notes in Logic series, and is offered at a 25% discount to ASL members. (The code for this discount is available from Shannon Miller at asl@uconn.edu.) For details, see https:// www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/mathematics/logic-categories-and- sets/cabal-seminar-volumes-iiv?format=WX∖&isbn=9781108920223.
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• Discounted Dues for New ASL Individual Members. The ASL offers a 50% discount on dues for new individual members during each of the first 2 years of membership. Visit http://aslonline.org/membership/individual-membership/ for more information.
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• Emeritus and Retired ASL Individual Membership. The ASL offers retired individual members two membership options. Emeritus membership includes all the privileges of regular individual membership and is available to retired individuals who have been members of the ASL for 15 years. The dues for Emeritus membership for 2021 are US$51. The privileges attached to Retired membership include the ASL newsletter and the right to vote in ASL elections, but do not include subscriptions to the ASL journals. Retired membership is offered to retired individuals who have been members of the Association for 20 years and is free. For more information about both options, visit http://aslonline.org/membership/individual-membership/.
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• Free Individual ASL Membership Program for Individuals in Developing Economies. The ASL invites applications for an initial 2-year free membership in the Association for new and lapsed members from countries classified as developing economies. The list includes Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, India, South Africa, and other countries classified as “upper middle income” or below on the World Bank’s annual list for four of the last 5 years. To apply, please send an email to the ASL Committee on Membership at asl-membership@googlegroups.com. Include your name, full mailing address, and your academic affiliation. For information about the ASL and membership benefits, visit http://aslonline.org/membership/individual-membership/. After the initial 2-year period, new members under this program will pay the reduced membership dues, currently US$18, as long as their country of residence is on the ASL’s list of developing economies. (The most recent list is available at http://aslonline.org/membership/world-bank-list-as-of-october-2020-for-2021-memberships/.)
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• Reduced Dues for Individuals and Institutions in Developing Economies. The ASL offers reduced dues for individuals and institutions in developing economies. For 2021, the reduced dues are US$18 for individuals, US$130 for basic institutional membership, and US$180 for full institutional membership. These dues apply to individuals and institutions residing in countries whose economies are classified as “upper middle income” or below on the World Bank’s annual list for four of the last 5 years. For more information, see http://aslonline.org/membership/individual-membership/ or http://aslonline.org/membership/institutional-membership/ or contact the ASL Business Office: ASL, Department of Mathematics, University of Connecticut, 341 Mansfield Road, U-1009, Storrs, CT 06269-1009, USA. Tel: 1-860-486-3989; Fax: 1-860-486-4238; email: asl@uconn.edu.
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• Member Directory. To create space for publishing abstracts of Ph.D. theses in logic, the member directory will no longer be published in the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic. The member directory is still available online at https://aslonline.org/membership/.