ICFP

Welcome to the 16th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming -- ICFP'11.

The picture, on the front cover, is of Mount Fuji, seen from the 20th floor of the National Institute of Informatics (NII). It was taken by Sebastian Fischer in January 2011. In Japanese, the characters "human" and "lambda" have a similar shape, and the text is a combination of famous Japanese proverbs where all occurrences of "human" have been replaced by "lambda". It translates as follows:

• Lambda has a history

• Lambda exists in the place where virtue is

• Respect heaven and love lambda

• One lambda is worth a thousand (things)

This bouquet of proverbs was composed by Zhenjiang Hu and the local organizers at NII, and has benefited from the kind assistance of Kenichi Asai and Jacques Garrigue. It was written by Isao Sasano's calligraphy teacher, Keigai Nukata.

There were 112 submissions this year: 92 research papers, 8 functional pearls, and 12 experience reports. The Program Committee selected 33 research papers (1/3), 2 functional pearls (1/4), and 3 experience reports (1/4). Out of the 112 submissions, 8 were "forces majeures" (acts of God) related to the earthquake in Japan. Among those, 4 were selected. In addition to this selection, the PC also chose to invite Andrzej Filinski and Makoto Takeyama. For simplicity, there were no submissions by PC members.

Each submission was reviewed by at least 3 PC members. In addition, we consulted 113 external reviewers. All PC members attended the PC meeting, which took place on May 26-27, Avenue d'Italie, in Paris, courtesy of the PPS Laboratory (Preuves, Programmes et Systèmes) at the University of Paris 7. Notifications were sent within hours of the completion of the PC meeting, and updated reviews in the course of the following week.