Prizes
From The P Systems Webpage
WMC9 - Important Contribution to Membrane Computing Award
July 31st, 2008
The Important Contribution to Membrane Computing Award at the 9th Workshop on Membrane Computing,
[1], WMC9, went to
Prof. Mario J. Perez-Jimenez
for "his continuous and successful enrichment of this field through his exemplary work".
The award consists of one year subscription to
[2] The International Journal on Natural Computing.
WMC9 - Best Paper Award
July 31st, 2008
The Best Paper Award at the 9th Workshop on Membrane Computing,
[3], WMC9, went to
P. A. Abdulla, G. Delzanno, L. Van Begin
On the qualitative analysis of conformon P systems
The award consists of one copy of the book Computing with Cells. Advances in Membrane Computin, written by P. Frisco and published by Oxford University Press, that should come out towards the end of 2008.
P Prizes
October 21, 2004: The M/2 P Prize!
M here has the Roman meaning of 1000, because, incidentally, all the winners are of a Latin origin. And, of course, the prize is awarded to the authors of the 500th paper from the P bibliography.
Actually, this paper is not so easy to identify, because ...four titles were sent to Claudio at the same time.
These papers are the following:
- V. Manca, L. Bianco, F. Fontana, Evolution and oscillation in P systems: Applications to biological phenomena, Membrane Computing, International Workshop, WMC5, Milano, Italy, 2004, Selected Papers (G. Mauri, Gh. P\u aun, M.J. Perez-Jimenez, G. Rozenberg, A. Salomaa,
eds.), LNCS, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2005, to appear.
- F. Bernardini, M. Gheorghe, V. Manca, On P systems and almost periodicity, Fundamenta Informaticae, 2005, to appear.
- M. Cavaliere, S. Sburlan, Time and synchronization in membrane systems, Fundamenta Informaticae, 2005, to appear.
- Gh. Paun, J. Pazos, M.J. Perez-Jimenez, A. Rodriguez-Paton, Symport/antiport P systems with three objects are universal, Fundamenta Informaticae, 2005, to appear.
In these circumstances, the only correct decision is to consider as winners all the 10 (co)authors of these papers.
The prize will consists of a carved wooden "membrane" traditionally used in Romania for carrying tzuica (plum brandy) and called plosca. Of course, the best idea is to have also some contents in the membrane -- but probably this will raise some problems when crossing the border: having 10 ploscas full with tuica in the luggage will look strange for any custom officer, even knowing that the luggage belongs to a mathematician... Thus, first the dry prize (we have to agree how), and tuica remains to be tasted in Curtea de Arges.
Congratulations (actually, thanks) to all winners!
George.
July 17, 2003: The first P prize was awarded!
The first P prize announced since several years in the P page -- referring to a problem open since the beginnings of membrane computing -- was awarded during WMC 2003, Tarragona, July 17-22, 2003.
The prize asked for an infinite hierarchy on the number of membranes, for a class of P systems defined in a natural way (without restrictions which would "visibly enforce" the desired result). Partial solutions to this problem were previously given by R. Freund (Vienna, Austria) and S.N. Krishna (Madras, India), which however were based on definitions which were considered as too restrictive (hence not "completely innocent").
The solution considered as convincingly answering the problem is provided by Oscar H. Ibarra (Department of Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA) in the paper:
"The Number of Membranes Matters"
Actually, the paper provides several related infinite hierarchies on the number of membranes, for several classes of P systems with the computation based on communication. Details can be found in the pre-proceedings volume, available also through our web page.
Warm P congratulations to Oscar!
May 10, 2001: The second P prize was awarded!
The winners are Petr Sosik (Opava, Czech Republic) and Rudi Freund (Vienna, Austria), the authors of the paper:
"String rewriting sequential P systems and regulated rewriting"
and the reasons are clear after decrypting the motivation given below: "for the 100th paper about P systems".
Here are the criptographic explanations: the text is ...in Romanian:
and it was transcribed according to "Abecedario criptonumerografico" used by Jesus Hernandez Fernandez to pay an homage to Cervantes by handwriting a criptonumerografico version of "Don Quijote" (122 months of work, 20.000 hours of work, etc). Details can be found (the "Dictionario" included) in Cervantes museum from Alcala de Henares, near Madrid.
Warm P congratulations to Petr and Rudi!
Two prizes will be awarded by Gheorghe Paun, each of them consisting in one week stay in Curtea de Arges (in his house, with a scientific and touristical program alike, at a date to be agreed with him), for the following two achievements:
- [Prize won by Oscar H. Ibarra]
For finding an infinite hierarchy of languages (in the case of string-objects) or of sets of vectors of natural numbers (in the case of symbol-objects) induced by the number of membranes of used P systems. Up to now, most hierarchies on the number of membranes were shown to collapse at rather low levels, while several hierarchies are not known to be finite or infinite. Because in the case of universal classes of P systems the hierarchy on the number of membranes will always collapse, due of the existence of universal type-0 grammars, it is necessary to look for classes of P systems which are not computationally universal. It is expected that the prize will be claimed for a nontrivial solution, in the sense that a class of systems will be considered which will not be defined in such a way to lead in a trivial way to an infinite hierarchy on the number of membranes...
- [Prize won by P. Sosik and R. Freund]
9220881957507620102720106050191084507657105720
10605092571092603060192086844057
The text has been twice encrypted (in a rather old and simple manner, which will probably make the decryption difficult...) in order not to handle the matter in such a way that the prize would be won in a non-fair manner. After having a winner of the prize, the decryption will be publicized, in order to check the correctness of the contest.
The competition is open without any time limit (without any deadline for claiming the prizes) -- in the reasonable sense related to our human being status...