The Philippe Flajolet Lecture Prize for outstanding contributions to analytic combinatorics and analysis of algorithms is awarded every two years by the Analysis of Algorithms (AofA) community that owes its existence to Philippe Flajolet.

Previous Flajolet Lectures were presented by

• D. E. Knuth at AofA 2014 (Paris, France);
• Bob Sedgewick at AofA 2016 (Krakow, Poland);
• Luc Devroye at AofA 2018 (Uppsala, Sweden);
• Wojciech Szpankowski at AofA 2022 (Philadelphia, USA) (delayed by Covid);
• Svante Janson at AofA 2022 (Philadelphia, USA).

The prize is named in honor and recognition of the extraordinary accomplishments of late Philippe Flajolet, who spent most of his scientific life at INRIA, France. Philippe is best known for fundamental advances in mathematical methods for the analysis of algorithms. His research laid the foundation of a subfield of mathematics now known as analytic combinatorics.

Analytic combinatorics is a modern basis for the quantitative study of combinatorial structures (such as words, trees, mappings, and graphs), with applications to probabilistic study of algorithms that are based on these structures. It also strongly influences research in other scientific domains, such as statistical physics, computational biology, and information theory. Flajolet’s work takes the field forward by introducing original approaches in combinatorics based on two types of methods: symbolic and analytic. The symbolic side is based on the automation of decision procedures in combinatorial enumeration to derive characterizations of generating functions. The analytic side treats those functions as functions in the complex plane and leads to precise characterization of limit distributions. Beyond these foundational contributions, Philippe’s research opened new avenues in various domains of applied computer science, including streaming algorithms, communication protocols, database access methods, data mining, symbolic manipulation, text-processing algorithms, and random generation.

The next Flajolet Lecture will be delivered at the 2024 AofA Conference. Nominations are due on June 09, 2023. The winner will be selected by a Prize Committee specially appointed for this. For this edition, the committee is formed of Svante Janson, Mihyun Kang, and Wojciech Szpankowski.

The nomination letter should summarize the nominee’s contributions in one or two pages. All nominations should be sent to Bruno Salvy at bruno.salvy@inria.fr.

In selecting the Flajolet Prize winner, the Committee will pay particular attention to a sustained record of high-impact, seminal contributions to the research areas most directly impacted by the work of Flajolet: the foundations of analysis of algorithms and/or analytic combinatorics. The selection may also be based partly on educational accomplishments and contributions such as fundamental textbooks and high-quality students. The final selection will be approved by the Steering Committee of the AofA conference.