Dear all,
We are pleased to invite you to submit your posters for the 8th edition of the international conference Creative Mathematical Sciences Communication, to be held in Padova, Italy, from October 12 to October 15, 2026.
The CMSC conference series, initiated in 2013, aims to explore new ways of communicating the rich mathematical ideas fundamental to computer science. There’s a need and an appetite among mathematicians and computer scientists for outreach and engagement at all levels. Bringing together researchers, educators, and communicators, the conference aims to explore new approaches to mathematical and computational thinking and lay the groundwork for innovative teaching and research engagement methods at all educational levels.
The organizers of CMSC believe that engaging in mathematical science goes in two directions. Certain areas of research, such as algorithms and combinatorics, are accessible even to elementary-age children, while conversely, interaction with non-specialists, including young learners, can spark new research questions. Creating opportunities for broad, inclusive engagement in the mathematical sciences not only enriches researchers but also brings lasting benefits to society as a whole.
Therefore, we invite both researchers (working in areas such as mathematics, computer science, engineering, and education) and teachers (working at any level) to contribute and attend the conference. Any participant who submits a contribution (i.e., a standard paper or a poster) that passes the reviewing process will have the opportunity to present their work during the conference.
DEADLINES FOR POSTER SUBMISSIONS:
Posters are contributions with up to 3 pages for work in progress or a short description of published work. Please see the Submission Guidelines at the bottom or on the website: https://cmsc2026.github.io/call/
Poster deadline submission: August 15th, 2026
Notification of acceptance: September 4th, 2026
All inquiries about submissions should be sent to cmsc2026@dei.unipd.it.
REGISTRATION IS OPEN: https://www.unismart.it/en/cmsc-2026/
Early registration deadline: September 8th, 2026
Late registration deadline: September 18th, 2026
GRANTS: As part of diversity and inclusion efforts, CMSC 2026 is happy to provide some grants to lower barriers of access to the conference. The grants are intended for students or postdocs for whom attending the conference would cause a financial burden. We will give priority, in order, to: authors of accepted papers, presenters of posters, attendees. Please send us an email to cmsc2026@dei.unipd.it by August 25th, 2026. We will notify grant assignment by September 2nd.
PLENARY SPEAKERS:
Timothy C. Bell, University of Canterbury. Reflections on 30+ years of CS Unplugged
Vanesa Guerrero Lozano, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Mathematics beyond the classroom: two experiences in science communication
Neeldhara Misra, Indian Institute of Technology. Building Joyful Interactives
TEACHERS’ DAY SPEAKERS:
Centro Montessori SPES Padova, Italy
Maria Francesca Carfora, Italian National Research Council, Institute for Applied Computing “Mauro Picone”
Lorella Carimali, Liceo Scientifico Vittorio Veneto, Milan
Frances Rosamond, University of Bergen
Selected presentations from the accepted papers.
LIST OF ACCEPTED PAPERS (in alphabetical order by first author):
Valeria Andriano, Monica Barbero, Matteo Bramardi, and Walter Dambrosio. Integrating Immersive Technologies into Secondary Mathematics: from AR Applications to Teachers’ Training
Laura Antonelli and Maria Francesca Carfora. Genius: Enhancing Mathematical Discovery through Teamwork and Play
Smitha Balakrishnan, Deepali Navghane, and Vipul Shah. Songs and Other Pedagogical Modes to Teach Computational Thinking in Primary School: An Experience Report
Pietro Belotti, Francesca Fumero, and Federico Malucelli. A practical activity on the shortest path problem with theoretical and algorithmic implications
Philip Bille and Inge Li Gørtz. Data Stream Algorithms Unplugged
Alessandro Bogliolo. CodyRoby: An Embodied Programming Environment for Computational Thinking
Laura Cesaro, Amy Eguchi, Amber Jones, Emanuele Menegatti, and Thomas Deneux. From Logic Gates to Hidden Layers: a hands-on introduction to Neural Networks for young learners
Laura Cesaro, Anna Polato, and Emanuele Menegatti. Making CS Education more accessible through creative robot personalisation
Neha Garg and Jyothi Krishnan. Playing the Odds: Bids, Beliefs and Probabilistic Reasoning in Indian Classrooms
Christoph Greger and Gregor Porsch. TuringViz: Teaching Turing Machines with Configuration Graphs and Computation Trees
Juraj Hromkovič and Regula Lacher. Teaching Error Detection and Correction by Card Magic
Andreas Imhof and Matthias Müller. Strategies in Geometry Problem Solving supported by Dynamic Geometric Software
Adithi Iyer and Jyothi Krishnan. From Cards to Conversations: Tracing Participation Through a Mathematics Game Introduced Online
Sonja Klein, Lukas Lehner, Klaus Nigsch, and René Röpke From Pantomime to Bitomime – A CS Unplugged Approach to Binary Encoding & Decoding in Primary Education
Daranee Lehtonen, Esa Satomaa, Valentina Dagienė, Javier Bilbao, Tuğba Öztürk, and Marika Parviainen Interrelations and Overlaps between Computational and Algebraic Thinking: A Cross-National Study in Schools
Michael Lodi. Hangers and Straws: Designing Low-Cost Unplugged Activities for Primary-School Algorithms
Lucas Lorieau and Nicolas Schivre. From Problem Solving to Research Thinking: A Graph-Theoretic Whodunit
Cosimo Perini Brogi. Mapping Abstract Reasoning: A Freinet-Inspired Approach to Creative Logic Communication in Secondary Schools
Antonio Rodà. The Fairness Puzzle: Unplugged Activities for Discovering Why Fair AI Is Hard
Christophe Stammet. Hands-On Methods for Teaching about Generative AI
OTHER EVENTS
On Friday, October 16th, 2026, interested participants of CMSC will be welcome to join an informal algorithms colloquium focusing on geometric parameterized complexity, hosted on the same campus. More details will follow on the website.
If you would like to know more or have questions, you can write to us at cmsc2026@dei.unipd.it or visit our website https://cmsc2026.github.io for more details.
Looking forward to seeing you in Padova!
CMSC 2026 Organizers
Maarten Löffler, Utrecht University (program co-chair)
Alice Raffaele, University of Padova (organizing co-chair)
Francesco Silvestri, University of Padova (organizing and program chair)
Program Committee
Tim Bell, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Sergio Canazza, University of Padua, Italy
Sarah Carruthers, Vancouver Island University, Canada
Valentina Dagiene, Vilnius University, Lithuania
Henning Fernau, University of Trier, Germany
Bernd Gärtner, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Henry Hickman, University of New South Wales, Australia
Thore Husfeldt, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Jyothi Krishnan, IT Gandhinagar, India
Martina Landman, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Lukas Lehner, TU Wien, Austria
Michael Lodi, University of Bologna, Italy
Zuzana Masárová, ISTA / Grow Trails, Austria
Monica Mattei, International School of Turin, Italy
Valia Mitsou, Université Paris Cité, France
Matthias Mnich, Hamburg University of Technology, Germany
Elena Mumford, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Rüdiger Reischuk, ITCS, Universität zu Lübeck, Germany
Giovanni Righini, University of Milan, Italy
Inge Schwank, University of Cologne, Germany
Jacqueline Staub, University of Trier, Germany
Jay Thakkar, IIT Gandhinagar, India
Josef Tkadlec, Charles University, Czechia
Sebastian Wild, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany
Steering Committee
Frances Rosamond, University of Bergen, Norway (Chair)
Małgorzata Bednarska-Bzdęga, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań, Poland
Tim Bell, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Sarah Carruthers, Vancouver Island University, Canada
Valentina Dagiene, Vilnius University, Lithuania
Michael Fellows, University of Bergen, Norway
Valia Mitsou, IRIF, Paris Diderot University, France
Jam Ramanujam, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India
Rüdiger Reischuk, University of Lübeck, Germany
Eljakim Schrijvers, Eljakim IT, Netherlands (International Chair)
Matt Skoss, The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, Australia
Verena Specht-Ronique, HLTM Marburg, Germany
Brett Stephenson, University of Tasmania, Australia
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Submission Guidelines
Conference Scope
The main topics of the conference include, but are not limited to:
Teaching Computer Science in early childhood, primary, secondary, and higher education
CS Unplugged
Computational Thinking / Algorithmic Thinking
Broadening engagement and diversity for the exact sciences
Teacher education in Mathematics and Computer Science
Teaching CS in relation to other subjects
Linking mathematical and computational content for fundamental competency development
Contests and competitions
Education for students with special needs
Education within resource-limited environments
Education in conflict-affected areas
All contributions (papers and posters) must be submitted through the Microsoft CMT platform, using LNCS templates. More details will be posted soon. Submissions must be formatted according to the Springer LNCS style guidelines using LaTeX. The maximum length of the paper (including references, but excluding the optional appendix) is 12 pages.
To prepare a poster submission (up to 3 pages), authors are also asked to use the Springer LNCS style and to use LaTeX. The purpose of the poster is to stimulate discussion with conference participants about your presented activity during the conference. During the poster session, the poster presenters should be present at their booth to give short presentations to interested participants.
The final poster of an accepted poster submission should have the following requirements:
Size and orientation: A1 portrait (594 × 841 mm)
Minimum information required: title, author(s), institution(s), contact information, problem statement, description of work, gained results, future work, and primary references. Please bring a printed poster of the correct size to the conference.
The Microsoft CMT service was used to manage the peer-review process for this conference. This service was provided free of charge by Microsoft, which covered all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services, as well as software development and support.