Newsletter 115 April 1, 2008 ******************************************************************* * Past issues of the newsletter are available at http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/lics/newsletters/ * Instructions for submitting an announcement to the newsletter can be found at http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/lics/newsletters/inst.html * To unsubscribe, send an email with "unsubscribe" in the subject line to lics@informatik.hu-berlin.de ******************************************************************* TABLE OF CONTENTS * LICS 2008 MATTERS Call for Short Talks Affiliated Workshops - Submission Deadlines Preliminary Program Invited Talks - Title and Abstracts * AWARDS Beth Dissertation Prize - Call for Submissions * CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS FCS-ARSPA-WITS 2008 - Call for Papers LFMTP 2008 - Call for Papers PCC 2008 - Call for Papers FORMATS'08 - Second Call for Papers FMCAD 2008 - Call for Papers PerMIS'08 - Call for Papers DDBP 2008 - Call for Papers ICLP'08 - Call for Workshop Proposals * BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT Principles of Model Checking - Christel Baier and Joost-Pieter Katoen * POSITIONS POSTDOCTORAL POSITION IN DATABASE THEORY AT OXFORD UNIVERSITY FULLY FUNDED PhD STUDENTSHIPS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS AT OXFORD LOGIC IN COMPUTER SCIENCE (LICS) 2008 Call for Short Talks Submission Deadline: April 21, 2008 * Following a now established tradition, there will be two short talk sessions during LICS 2008. You may submit a 1-2 page abstract to give a 5-10 minute talk during one of two sessions described below. You must clearly indicate which session you would like to speak at. Short talks may be trailers for longer presentations at one of the affiliated workshops, or stand entirely on their own. Abstracts are made available on the LICS website but are not published in the conference proceedings. Provocative and programmatic presentations are welcome! Note that speakers in either session must be registered for LICS or CSF. * Session 1 (Tue Jun 24): Logic and Security (joint session with CSF) Talks should be of interest to the security and logic communities, ideally building bridges or proposing new points of intersection or applications of one area in the other. * Session 2 (Thu Jun 26): Logic in Computer Science (LICS-only session) Talks can be of any topic related to logic in computer science as summarized in the LICS call for papers. * Abstracts can be submitted at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=3Dlicscsfshorts2008 Please check the appropriate box, if you would like your talk to be considered for the joint CSF/LICS session. * Important Dates Submission: April 21, 2008 Notification: April 28, 2008 * Paper submission site The URL for submitting papers is http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=3Dlicscsfshorts2008. This link will bring you to a page labelled Submission Page for LICS/CSF Shorts 2008. * There are two zones: (1) Registered User and (2) New User. The first time you use the system you will have to use the New User fields. Shortly after that a password will be emailed to you. You can use this password to access the system thereafter as a registered user. * On this page you can enter the title, authors, contact author information and plain text abstract. The plain text abstract has to be under 300 words. It can be typed in directly or pasted in with a browser. You can upload your talk abstract using the web page. Using this submission system you can manage your short talk abstract submitted to LICS 2008. You can submit new papers, resubmit previously submitted papers, or change information about authors. * Abstracts for proposed short talks must be in pdf format and should be 1-2 pages long. LOGIC IN COMPUTER SCIENCE 2008 - AFFILIATED WORKSHOPS Deadlines for Submissions See http://www2.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~lics/lics08/ for links to the workshop homepages and call for papers. * FCS-ARSPA-WITS Foundations of Computer Security, Automated Reasoning for Security Protocol Analysis and Issues in the Theory of Security (L.Bauer, S.Etalle, J.den Hartog, L.Vigano) Submission deadline: April 10, 2008 (Deadline extended) * Security and Rewriting, SecRet2008 (Dan Dougherty, Santiago Escobar) Abstract Submission=09 March 31, 2008 (passed) Full Paper Submission=09 April 6, 2008 * Proof-Carrying Code (PCC08) (Ian Stark, David Aspinall) Abstract submission:=0918=09April=092008 Paper submission:=0925=09April=092008 * Intuitionist Modal Logics and Applications (IMLA08) (Valeria de Paiva, Aleks Nanevski) Paper submission: April 25, 2008 * LFMTP International Workshop on Logical Frameworks and MetaLanguages (Andreas Abel, Christian Urban) Abstracts: 14 April Submission: 21 April LOGIC IN COMPUTER SCIENCE 2008 - PRELIMINARY PROGRAM The preliminary propgram for LICS 2008 is now available at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/lics08/program.txt LOGIC IN COMPUTER SCIENCE 2008 - INVITED TALKS Title and abstracts of the invited talks at LICS 2008 are now available at http://www2.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~lics/lics08/invited08.h= tml E. W. BETH DISSERTATION PRIZE: 2008 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS * Since 2002, FoLLI (the European Association for Logic, Language, and Information, www.folli.org) awards the E. W. Beth Dissertation Prize to outstanding dissertations in the fields of Logic, Language, and Information. We invite submissions for the best dissertation which resulted in a Ph.D. degree in the year 2007. The dissertations will be judged on technical depth and strength, originality, and impact made in at least two of the three fields of Logic, Language, and Computation. Inter-disciplinarity is an important feature of the theses competing for the E. W. Beth Dissertation Prize. * Who qualifies Nominations of candidates are admitted who were awarded a Ph.D. degree in the areas of Logic, Language, or Information between January 1st, 2007 and December 31st, 2007. There is no restriction on the nationality of the candidate or the university where the Ph.D. was granted. After a careful consideration, FoLLI has decided to accept only dissertations written in English. Dissertations produced in 2007 but not written in English or not translated will be allowed for submission, after translation, also with the call next year (for 2008). Respectively, nominations of full English translations of theses originally written in other language than English and defended in 2006 and 2007 will be accepted for consideration this year, too. * Prize The prize consists of: - a certificate - a donation of 2500 euros provided by the E. W. Beth Foundation. - an invitation to submit the thesis (or a revised version of it) to the new series of books in Logic, Language and Information to be published by Springer-Verlag as part of LNCS or LNCS/LNAI. (Further information on this series is available on the FoLLI site) * How to submit Only electronic submissions are accepted. The following documents are required: 1. the thesis in pdf or ps format (doc/rtf not accepted); 2. a ten page abstract of the dissertation in ascii or pdf format; 3. a letter of nomination from the thesis supervisor. Self-nominations are not admitted: each nomination must be sponsored by the thesis supervisor. The letter of nomination should concisely describe the scope and significance of the dissertation and state when the degree was officially awarded; 4. two additional letters of support, including at least one letter from a referee not affiliated with the academic institution that awarded the Ph.D. degree. * All documents must be submitted electronically to bethaward2008@gmail.com. Hard copy submissions are not admitted. In case of any problems with the email submission or a lack of notification within three working days after submission, nominators should write to goranko@maths.wits.ac.za or policriti@dimi.uniud.it. * Important dates Deadline for Submissions: April 30th, 2008. Notification of Decision: July 15th, 2008. * Committee : - Anne Abeill?? (Universit?? Paris 7) - Natasha Alechina (University of Nottingham) - Didier Caucal (IGM-CNRS) - Nissim Francez (The Technion, Haifa) - Valentin Goranko (chair) (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) - Alexander Koller (University of Edinburgh) - Alessandro Lenci (University of Pisa) - Gerald Penn (University of Toronto) - Alberto Policriti (Universit?? di Udine) - Rob van der Sandt (University of Nijmegen) - Colin Stirling (University of Edinburgh) FOUNDATIONS OF COMPUTER SECURITY, AUTOMATED REASONING FOR SECURITY PROTOCOL ANALYSIS AND ISSUES IN THE THEORY OF SECURITY (FCS-ARSPA-WITS 2008= ) Call for Papers * Background, aim and scope Computer security is an established field of computer science of both theoretical and practical significance. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in logic-based foundations for various methods in computer security, including the formal specification, analysis and design of security protocols and their applications, the formal definition of various aspects of security such as access control mechanisms, mobile code security and denial-of-service attacks, and the modeling of information flow and its application to confidentiality policies, system composition, and covert channel analysis. * WITS is the official annual workshop organised by the IFIP WG 1.7 on "Theoretical Foundations of Security Analysis and Design", established to promote the investigation on the theoretical foundations of security, discovering and promoting new areas of application of theoretical techniques in computer security and supporting the systematic use of formal techniques in the development of security related applications. This is the eighth meeting in the series. * The workshop FCS continues a tradition, initiated with the Workshops on Formal Methods and Security Protocols (FMSP) in 1998 and 1999, then with the Workshop on Formal Methods and Computer Security (FMCS) in 2000, and finally with the LICS satellite Workshop on Foundations of Computer Security (FCS) in 2002 through 2005, of bringing together formal methods and the security community. * ARSPA is a series of workshops on Automated Reasoning for Security Protocol Analysis, bringing together researchers and practitioners from both the security and the formal methods communities, from academia and industry, who are working on developing and applying automated reasoning techniques and tools for the formal specification and analysis of security protocols. The first two ARSPA workshops were held as satellite events of the 2nd International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning (IJCAR'04) and of the 32nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP'05), respectively. * FCS and ARSPA have been joining forces since 2006: FCS-ARSPA'06 was affiliated with LICS'06, in the context of FLoC'06, and FCS-ARSPA'07 was affiliated with LICS'07 and ICALP'07. * The aim of the joint workshop FCS-ARSPA-WITS'08 is to provide a forum for continued activity in different areas of computer security, bringing computer security researchers in closer contact with the LICS community and giving LICS attendees an opportunity to talk to experts in computer security, on the one hand, and contribute to bridging the gap between logical methods and computer security foundations, on the other. * Possible topics include, but are not limited to: Automated reasoning techniques Composition issues Formal specification Foundations of verification Information flow analysis Language-based security Logic-based design Program transformation Security models Static analysis Statistical methods Tools Trust management=09for=09Access control and resource usage control Authentication Availability and denial of service Covert channels Confidentiality Integrity and privacy Intrusion detection Malicious code Mobile code Mutual distrust Privacy Security policies Security protocols * Submission Submissions should be at most 15 pages (a4paper, 11pt), including references. The cover page should include title, names of authors, co-ordinates of the corresponding author, an abstract, and a list of keywords. Submissions that are clearly too long may be rejected immediately. Additional material intended for the referees but not for publication in the final version - for example details of proofs - may be placed in a clearly marked appendix that is not included in the page limit. Authors are invited to submit their papers electronically, as portable document format (pdf) or postscript (ps); please, do not send files fomatted for work processing packages (e.g., Microsoft Word or Wordperfect files). * The only mechanism for paper submissions is via the electronic submission web-site powered by easychair. Please, follow the instructions given there. * Important dates Papers due:=09April 10, 2008 (extended) Notification of acceptance: May 16, 2008 Final papers:=09June 01, 2008 INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON LOGICAL FRAMEWORKS AND META-LANGUAGES: THEORY AND PRACTICE (LFMTP'08) http://www4.in.tum.de/~lfmtp Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 23 June 2008 Affiliated with Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2008) CALL FOR PAPERS * Important dates: Abstract submission: 14 April 2008 Paper submission: 21 April 2008 Author notification: 19 May 2008 Final version: 2 June 2008 Workshop day: 23 June 2008 * The LFMTP workshop continues the International workshop on Logical Frameworks and Meta-languages (LFM) and the MERLIN workshop on MEchanized Reasoning about Languages with variable BIndingIN. * Logical frameworks and meta-languages form a common substrate for representing, implementing, and reasoning about a wide variety of deductive systems of interest in logic and computer science. Their design and implementation on the one hand and their applications in for example proof-carrying code have been the focus of considerable research over the last two decades. This workshop will bring together designers, implementors, and practitioners to discuss all aspects of logical frameworks and variable binding. * The broad subject areas of LFMTP'08 are: - The automation and implementation of the meta-theory of programming languages and related calculi, particularly work which involves variable binding and fresh name generation. - The theoretical and practical issues concerning the encoding of variable binding and fresh name generation, especially the representation of, and reasoning about, datatypes defined from binding signatures. - Case studies of meta-programming, and the mechanization of the (meta)theory of descriptions of programming languages and other calculi. Papers focusing on logic translations and on experiences with encoding programming languages theory are particularly welcome. * Topics include, but are not limited to - logical framework design - meta-theoretic analysis - applications and comparative studies - implementation techniques - efficient proof representation and validation - proof-generating decision procedures and theorem provers - proof-carrying code - substructural frameworks - semantic foundations - methods for reasoning about logics - formal digital libraries * Program Committee: Andreas Abel (LMU Munich) Peter Dybjer (Chalmers University of Technology) Alberto Momigliano (University of Edinburgh) Brigitte Pientka (McGill University) Randy Pollack (University of Edinburgh) Carsten Schuermann (IT University of Copenhagen) Peter Sewell (University of Cambridge) Aaron Stump (Washington University) Christian Urban (TU Munich) * Three categories of papers are solicited: - Category A: Detailed and technical accounts of new research: up to fifteen pages including bibliography. - Category B: Shorter accounts of work in progress and proposed further directions, including discussion papers: up to eight pages including bibliography and appendices. - Category C: System descriptions presenting an implemented tool and its novel features: up to six pages. A demonstration is expected to accompany the presentation. * Submission is electronic. Authors are required to submit a paper title and a short abstract of about 100 words before submitting the paper. * Papers are to be submitted in postscript or PDF format and must conform to the ENTCS style preferably using LaTeX2e. For further information and submission instructions, see the LFMTP web page: http://www4.in.tum.de/~lfmtp * The organizers: Andreas Abel Christian Urban Theoretical Computer Science Institute for Computer Science Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich Technical University of Munich Email: andreas.abel@ifi.lmu.de Email: urbanc@in.tum.de SECOND INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON PROOF-CARRYING CODE (PCC 2008) Call for Papers 22 June 2008 Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA http://workshops.inf.ed.ac.uk/pcc08/ * PCC 2008 is a joint LICS and CSF affiliated workshop on Proof-Carrying Code. * Proof-carrying code is an important and distinctive approach to enhancing trust in programs. It provides a practical framework for independent assurance of program behaviour; especially where source code is not available, or the code author and user are unknown to each other. * The workshop will address theoretical foundations of proof-carrying code as well as practical examples and work on alternative application domains. Here "proof" is construed broadly, to include not just mathematical derivations but any formal evidence that supports the static analysis of programs. That is, evidence about an intrinsic property of code and its behaviour that can be independently checked by any user, intermediary, or third party. These manifest guarantees mean that PCC raises trust in the code itself, distinct from and complementary to any existing trust in the creator of the code, the process used to produce it, or its distributor. * Topics include: - PCC addressing properties of safety, security, and correctness such as: Memory safety, information flow, declassification, resource management, access control, protocol enforcement, functional correctness. - Examples of PCC in application domains, including but not limited to: Mobile code, mobile devices, operating systems, grid computing, peer-to-peer computing, active networks, embedded systems, cloud computing, databases, e-Science. - Probabilistically-checkable proofs, zero-knowledge proofs, proof-on-demand. - Trust and policy frameworks; supporting modular and extensible systems; compositionality in code and proofs. - Certifying compilation, proof-transforming compilation, certified verifiers. - Logics and notions of certificate specific to proof-carrying frameworks. * Programme Committee * David Aspinall, University of Edinburgh (co-chair) * Gilles Barthe, INRIA Sophia-Antipolis / IMDEA Software, Madrid * Nick Benton, Microsoft Research Cambridge * Adriana Compagnoni, Stevens Institute of Technology * Karl Crary, Carnegie Mellon University * Ewen Denney, NASA Ames * Hans-Wolfgang Loidl, LMU Munich * George Necula, UC Berkeley / Rinera Networks * Ian Stark, University of Edinburgh (co-chair) * Stephanie Weirich, University of Pennsylvania * Important Dates Abstract submission:=0918=09April=092008 Paper submission:=0925=09April=092008 Author notification:=0923=09May=092008 Final versions:=097=09June=092008 Workshop:=09=0922=09June=092008 Submission * Papers should be in the form of a PDF file using the ENTCS style and must not exceed 15 pages. Submission is via the EasyChair system. Links: ENTCS style http://www.entcs.org/ EasyChair submission page http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=3Dpcc08 * All submissions will be reviewed by the programme committee. There will be an informal proceedings distributed at the workshop, with final proceedings to appear as a volume of ENTCS. * Organisers David Aspinall and Ian Stark Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science School of Informatics The University of Edinburgh 6TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FORMAL MODELLING AND ANALYSIS OF TIMED SYSTEMS (FORMATS'08) Saint-Malo, France, September 15--17, 2008 (Co-Located with QEST'08 : www.qest.org) http://formats08.inria.fr * Submission Deadline : **May 12th**, 2008 Submission is now open http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=3Dformats08 * Objectives and Scope of the Conference Timing aspects of systems from a variety of computer science domains have been treated independently by different communities. Researchers interested in semantics, verification and performance analysis study models such as timed automata and timed Petri nets. The digital design community focuses on propagation and switching delays while designers of embedded controllers have to take account of the time taken by controllers to compute their responses after sampling the environment. Timing related questions in these separate disciplines do have their particularities. However, there is a growing awareness that there are basic problems that are common to all of them. In particular, all these sub-disciplines treat systems whose behaviour depends upon combinations of logical and temporal constraints; namely, constraints on the temporal distances between occurrences of events. The aim of FORMATS is to promote the study of fundamental and practical aspects of timed systems, and to bring together researchers from different disciplines that share interests in modelling and analysis of timed systems. Typical topics include (but are not limited to): - Foundations and Semantics: Theoretical foundations of timed systems and languages; comparison between different models (timed automata, timed Petri nets, hybrid automata, timed process algebra, max-plus algebra, probabilistic models). - Methods and Tools: techniques, algorithms, data structures, and software tools for analyzing timed systems and resolving temporal constraints (scheduling, worst-case execution time analysis, optimisation, model-checking, testing, constraint solving, etc). - Applications: adaptation and specialization of timing technology in application domains in which timing plays an important role (real-time software, hardware circuits, and problems of scheduling in manufacturing and telecommunication). * Submission and Publication: The proceedings of FORMATS'08 will be published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Scienceseries. Papers must contain original contributions, be clearly written, and include appropriate references to and comparison with related work. Simultaneous submission to other conferences with published proceedings is not allowed. Submissions should not exceed 15 pages, and should be formatted according to Springer LNCS guidelines. If necessary, the submission may be supplemented with a clearly marked appendix, which will be reviewed at the discretion of the program committee. * Program Committee: - Eug=C3=A8ne Asarin, LIAFA, Univ. Paris 7 and CNRS, France - Patricia Bouyer, CNRS, LSV, France - Ed Brinksma, ESI, Univ. of Twente & Eindhoven Univ. of Technology, The Netherlands - Franck Cassez, CNRS/IRCCyN, Nantes, France - Flavio Corradini, Univ. Camerino, Italy - Deepak D'Souza, CSA, IISc, Bangalore, India - Martin Fr=C3=A4nzle, Univ. of Oldenbourg, Germany - Goran Frehse, Univ. Grenoble 1, Verimag, France - Claude Jard, ENS Cachan/IRISA, Rennes, France - Joost-Pieter Katoen RWTH Aachen Univ., Germany - Bruce Krogh, CMU, USA - Salvatore La Torre, Univ. of Salerno, Italy - Insup Lee, Univ. of Pennsylvania, USA - Rupak Majumdar, UCLA, USA - Brian Nielsen, CISS & Aalborg Univ., Denmark - Jo=C3=ABl Ouaknine, Oxford Univ., UK - Paritosh Pandya, TIFR, Bombay, India - Paul Pettersson, M=C3=A4lardalen Univ., Sweden - Jean-Fran=C3=A7ois Raskin, ULB, Belgium - P.S. Thiagarajan, National Univ. of Singapore - Stavros Tripakis, Cadence Research Labs and Verimag/CNRS, Berkeley, USA - Frits Vaandrager, Radboud Univ. Nijmegen, The Netherlands - Farn Wang, National Taiwan Univ., Taiwan - Wang Yi, Uppsala Univ., Sweden - Tomohiro Yoneda, NII, Tokyo, Japan * Chairs: - Franck Cassez (CNRS/IRCCyN, Nantes, France) - Claude Jard (ENS Cachan/IRISA, Rennes, France) * Important Dates: - Submission Deadline: May 12th, 2008 - Notification: June 23rd, 2008 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FORMAL METHODS IN COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN (FMCAD 2008) Call for Papers http://fmcad.org/2008 November 17-18, 2008 Embassy Suites Portland--Downtown Portland, Oregon * Important Dates (firm) Paper Submission Deadline: May 12, 2008 Author Feedback: June 19-22, 2008 Acceptance Notification: July 3, 2008 Final Version Due: August 17, 2008 (To be confirmed) Early Registration Deadline: October 14, 2008 Hotel Registration Deadline: October 17, 2008 (To be confirmed) * SCOPE OF CONFERENCE FMCAD 2008 is the eighth in a series of conferences on the theory and application of formal methods in hardware and system design and verification. In 2005, the bi-annual FMCAD and sister conference CHARME decided to merge to form an annual conference with a unified community. The resulting unified FMCAD provides a leading international forum to researchers and practitioners in academia and industry for presenting and discussing groundbreaking methods, technologies, theoretical results, and tools for formally reasoning about computing systems, as well as open challenges therein. Topics of interest for the technical program include, but are not limited to: - Foundations: advancing industrial-strength technologies in model checking, theorem proving, equivalence checking, abstraction and refinement techniques, property-preserving reduction techniques, compositional methods, decision procedures, SAT- and BDD-based methods, combining deductive methods with decision procedures, and probabilistic methods. - Verification applications: tools, industrial experience reports, and case studies. We encourage the submission of materials relating to novel and challenging industrial-scale applications of formal methods, including problem domains where formal methods worked well or even fell short. We also encourage submissions relating to the development and execution of methodologies for formal and informal verification strategies. - Applications of formal methods in design: topics relating to the application and applicability of assertion-based verification, equivalence checking, transaction-level verification, semi-formal verification, runtime verification, simulation and testcase generation, coverage analysis, microcode verification, embedded systems, software verification, concurrent systems, timing verification, and formal approaches to performance and power. - Model-based approaches: modeling and specification languages, system-level design and verification, design derivation and transformation, and correct-by-construction methods. - Formal methods for the design and verification of emerging and novel technologies: nano, quantum, biological, video, gaming, and multimedia applications. * Paper Submission Submissions must be made electronically in PDF format through the FMCAD'08 web site, http://fmcad.org/2008. The proceedings will be published by ACM and will be available online in the ACM Digital Library and the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. Two categories of papers can be submitted: regular papers (8 pages), containing original research that has not been previously published, nor concurrently submitted for publication; and short papers (4 pages), describing applications, case studies, industrial experience reports, emerging results, or implemented tools with novel features. Regular and short papers must use the IEEE Transactions format on letter-size paper with a 10-point font size (see http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/pubs/transactions/stylesheets.html). We recommend that self-citations be written in the third person, though authors will be required to identify themselves on their submissions. Submissions must contain original research that has not been previously published, nor concurrently submitted for publication. Any partial overlap with any published or concurrently submitted paper must be clearly indicated. If experimental results are reported, authors are strongly encouraged to provide adequate access to their data so that results can be independently verified. A small number of accepted papers will be considered for a distinguished paper award. * Program Committee - Mark Aagaard, University of Waterloo, Canada - Jason Baumgartner, IBM Corporation, USA - Valeria Bertacco, University of Michigan, USA - Armin Biere, Johannes Kepler University, Austria - Per Bjesse, Synopsys, USA - Roderick Bloem, TU Graz, Austria - Dominique Borrione, Grenoble University, France - Gianpiero Cabodi, Politecnico di Torino, Italy - Alessandro Cimatti (co-chair), FBK-irst, Trento, Italy - Koen Claessen, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden - Ganesh Gopalakrishnan, University of Utah, USA - Aarti Gupta, NEC Laboratories America, USA - Alan J. Hu, University of British Columbia, Canada - Robert Jones (co-chair), Intel Corp., USA - Daniel Kroening, ETH Zurich, Switzerland - Andreas Kuehlmann, Cadence Laboratories, USA - Wolfgang Kunz, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany - Shuvendu Lahiri, Microsoft, USA - Jeremy Levitt, Mentor Graphics, USA - Panagiotis Manolios, Northeastern University, USA - Andy Martin, IBM Research Division, USA - Tom Melham, Oxford University, UK - Ken McMillan, Cadence Labs, USA - John O'Leary, Intel Corp., USA - Lee Pike, Galois Inc., USA - Rajeev Ranjan, Jasper Design Automation, USA - Sandip Ray, University of Texas at Austin, USA - Fei Xie Portland State U., USA - Alper Sen, Freescale Austin, USA - Natasha Sharygina, University of Lugano, Switzerland - Eli Singerman, Intel Corp., USA - Karen Yorav, IBM Haifa Research Laboratory, Israel PERFORMANCE METRICS FOR INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS WORKSHOP (PERMIS'08) Call for Papers August 19-21, 2008 http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/PerMIS_2008 Washington DC, U.S.A. * PerMIS'08 will be the eighth in the series that started in 2000, targeted at defining measures and methodologies of evaluating performance of intelligent systems. The workshop has proved to be an excellent forum for discussions and partnerships, dissemination of ideas, and future collaborations in an informal setting. Attendees usually include researchers, graduate students, practitioners from industry, academia, and government agencies. * PerMIS'08 aims at identifying and quantifying contributions of functional intelligence towards achieving success. Our working definition of functional intelligence is the ability to act appropriately in an uncertain environment, where appropriate action is that which increases the probability of success, and success is the achievement of behavioral goals (J. Albus, 1991). In addition to the main theme, as in previous years, the workshop will focus on applications of performance measures to practical problems in commercial, industrial, homeland security, and military applications. * Topic areas include, but are not limited to: - Defining and measuring aspects of a system: The level of autonomy Human-robot interaction Collaboration & Coordination Taxonomies - Evaluating components within intelligent systems: Sensing and perception Knowledge representation, world models, ontologies Planning and control Learning and adapting Reasoning - Infrastructural support for performance evaluation: Testbeds and competitions for intercomparisons Instrumentation and other measurement tools Simulation and modeling support - Technology readiness measures for intelligent systems - Applied performance measures in various domains, e.g., Intelligent transportation systems Emergency response robots (search and rescue, bomb disposal) Homeland security systems De-mining robots Defense robotics Hazardous environments (e.g., nuclear remediation) Industrial and manufacturing systems Space/Aerial robotics Medical Robotics & assistive devices * Submission Information Prospective authors are requested to submit a draft paper (max. 8 pages) or an extended abstract (1-2 pages) for review. Invited session proposals can also be submitted as draft papers but should contain 1) a session title and a brief statement of purpose, 2) name and affiliation of the organizer(s), and 3) a preliminary list of speakers. All submissions must be written in English, starting with a succinct statement of the problem, the results achieved, their significance, and a comparison with previous work. Papers are to be submitted at www.isd.mel.nist.gov/PerMIS_2008/submission.htm/ using the specified templates. * Important Dates Submission of full papers May 29, 2008 Proposal for invited sessions June 06, 2008 Notification of acceptance June 27, 2008 Final papers due July 25, 2008 * Program Committee S. Balakirsky NIST USA R. Bostelman NIST USA F. Bonsignorio Heron Robots Italy G. Berg-Cross EM & I USA J. Bornstein ARL USA P. Courtney PerkinElmer UK J. Evans USA D. Gage XPM Tech. USA J. Gunderson GammaTwo USA L. Gunderson GammaTwo USA S.K. Gupta UMD USA A. Jacoff NIST USA S. Julier Univ. College London UK M. Lewis UPitt USA T. Kalmar-Nagy Texas A& M USA A. del Pobil Univ. Jaume-I Spain S. Ramasamy UALR USA L. Reeker NIST USA C. Schlenoff NIST USA M. Shneier NIST USA E. Tunstel JHU-APL USA DDBP 2008 - 1ST INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON DYNAMIC AND DECLARATIVE BUSINESS PROCESSES Call for Papers September 15/16, 2008, Munich, Germany http://www.leduotang.com/sylvain/ddbp2008/ http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~edoc2008/ Affiliated workshop of the 12th IEEE International EDOC Conference * DESCRIPTION The capability of rapidly adapting systems and processes to an ever-changing environment to leverage existing resources has become a crucial factor of an organization's agility. The traditional approach to process management is only partially appropriate to this new context, and calls for the advent of new, dynamic business processes. Broad business policies or narrower constraints of technical nature make dynamic business process particularly suited to a declarative approach to their modelling and design. * TOPICS Topics of the workshop include but are not limited to: - Dynamic business process modelling - Implementation issues for dynamic processes - Tools for dynamic processes - Use cases of dynamic processes - Business and technical requirements for dynamic processes - Declarative model specification - Mathematical and logical foundations of declarative business processes - Formal models of declarative business processes - Monitoring of declarative business processes - Validation of declarative business processes - Tools for declarative business processes * PUBLICATION The papers accepted for the workshop will be published with their own ISBN by the IEEE in the IEEE Digital Library. * IMPORTANT DATES - Paper submission: June 13th, 2008 - Paper notification: July 18th, 2008 - Camera ready: July 28th, 2008 - Workshop: September 15th or 16th (to be confirmed) * WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRS - Dragan Gasevic, Athabasca University and Simon Fraser University, Canada - Tobias Graml, ETH Z=C3=BCrich, Switzerland - Sylvain Halle, Universit=C3=A9 du Qu=C3=A9bec =C3=A0 Montr=C3=A9al, Cana= da * PROGRAM COMMITTEE (to be completed) - Colin Atkinson, Universit=C3=A4t Mannheim, Germany - Claudio Bartolini, HP Labs Palo Alto, USA - Thomas Bauer, DaimlerChrysler Group Research and Advanced Engineering, Germany - Andrew Berry, Deontik, Australia - Kamal Bhattacharya, IBM Watson, USA - Domenico Bianculli, University of Lugano, Switzerland - Franck van Breugel, York University, Canada - Christoph Bussler, Cisco Systems, Inc, USA - Sanjay Chaudhary, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, India - Marlon Dumas, University of Tartu, Estonia - Dragan Gasevic, Athabasca University, Canada - Xiang Fu, Georgia Southwestern State University, USA - Karthik Gomadam, Wright State University, USA - Guido Governatori, University of Queensland, Australia - Reiko Heckel, University of Leicester, UK - Jana Koehler, IBM Z=C3=BCrich, Switzerland - Zoran Milosevic, Deontik, Australia - Shin Nakajima, National Institute of Informatics, Japan - Leo Orbst, The MITRE Corporation, USA - Maja Pesic, Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands - Manfred Reichert, University of Twente, The Netherlands - Stefanie Rinderle, Universit=C3=A4t Ulm, Germany - Florian Rosenberg, Technical University of Vienna, Austria - Shazia Sadiq, The University of Queensland, Australia - Jennifer Sampson, National ICT Australia - Biplav Srivastava, IBM India Research Lab * FURTHER INFORMATION * Detailed information can be found on the workshop webpage: http://www.leduotang.com/sylvain/ddbp2008/ 24RD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LOGIC PROGRAMMING (ICLP'08) Call for Workshop Proposals December 9-13, 2008 Udine, Italy http://iclp08.dimi.uniud.it/ * ICLP'08, the 24rd International Conference on Logic Programming, will be held in Udine (Italy), from December 9 to 13, 2008. * Workshops co-located with international conferences are one of the best venue for the presentation and discussion of preliminary work or novel ideas, and new open problems to a wide and interested audience. Co-located workshops also provide an opportunity for presenting specialized topics and opportunities for intensive discussions and project collaboration. The topics of the workshops co-located with ICLP'08 can cover any areas related to logic programming, (e.g., theory, implementation, environments, language issues, alternative paradigms, applications) including cross-disciplinary areas. However, any workshop proposal will be considered. * The format of the workshop will be decided by the workshop organizers, but ample time must be allowed for general discussion. Workshops can vary in length, but the optimal duration will be half a day or a full day. * Workshop Proposal: Those interested in organizing a workshop at ICLP'08 are invited to submit a workshop proposal. Proposals should be in English and about two pages in length. They should contain: - The title of the workshop. - A brief technical description of the topics covered by the workshop. - A discussion of the timeliness and relevance of the workshop. - A list of some related workshops held in the last years - The (preliminary) required number of half-days allotted to the workshop and an estimate of the number of expected attendees. - The names, affiliation and contact details (email, web page, phone, fax) of the workshop organizer(s) together with a designated contact person. - The previous experiences of the workshop organizing committee in workshop/conference organization. * Proposals are expected in ASCII or PDF format. All proposals should be submitted to the Workshop Chair (Tran Cao Son) by email (tson@cs.nmsu.edu) by June 2nd, 2008. * Workshop Organizers' Tasks: - Producing a "Call for Papers" for the workshop and posting it on the net and/or other means. Please provide a web page URL which can be linked into the ICLP'08 home page by July 15th, 2008. - Providing a brief description of the workshop for the conference program. - Reviewing/accepting submitted papers. - Scheduling workshop activities in collaboration with the local organizers and the workshop chair. - Sending workshop program and workshop proceedings in pdf format to the workshop chair for printing (deadline to be defined) - The use of the Computing Research Repository (CoRR) for the workshop proceedings is strongly suggested (see http://www.logicprogramming.org/ [Guidelines for electronic publishing of proceedings]) * Location: All workshops will take place in the city of Udine at the site of the main conference. See the ICLP'08 web site for location details. * Important Dates: June 2, 2008: Proposal submission deadline June 15, 2008: Notification July 15, 2008: Deadline for receipt of CFP and URL for workshop web page November 1, 2008: Deadline for preliminary proceedings December 9-13, 2008: ICLP'08 workshops * Workshop Chair: Tran Cao Son [tson AT cs dot nmsu dot edu] (www.cs.nmsu.edu/~tson) BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: PRINCIPLES OF MODEL CHECKING by Christel Baier and Joost-Pieter Katoen MIT Press 2008, 993 pages ISBN: 978-0-262-02649-9 * Principles of Model Checking offers a comprehensive introduction to model checking that is not only a text suitable for classroom use but also a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners in the field. * The book begins with the basic principles for modeling concurrent and communicating systems, introduces different classes of properties (including safety and liveness), presents the notion of fairness, and provides automata-based algorithms for these properties. It introduces the temporal logics LTL and CTL, compares them, and covers algorithms for verifying these logics, discussing real-time systems as well as systems subject to random phenomena. Separate chapters treat such efficiency-improving techniques as abstraction and symbolic manipulation. The book includes an extensive set of examples (most of which run through several chapters) and a complete set of basic results accompanied by detailed proofs. Each chapter concludes with a summary, bibliographic notes, and an extensive list of exercises of both practical and theoretical nature. * Complementary material such as slides and solutions to selected exercises will be made available to lecturers. * Foreword by Kim G. Larsen; endorsements by Moshe Vardi and Gerard Holzmann * Further information can be found at: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=3D2&tid=3D11481 POSTDOCTORAL POSITION IN DATABASE THEORY AT OXFORD UNIVERSITY * The Computing Laboratory has a vacancy for a postdoctoral research assistant in the area of Database Theory. The post is funded by the EPSRC Project "Schema Mappings and Services for Data Integration and Exchange" (PI Georg Gottlob). * The contract will have a duration of approximately two years, and is available from April 2008. Salary will be on the University Grade 7, (=C2=A326,666 to =C2=A332,796 p.a.) * Applicants should have, or expect shortly to obtain, a doctoral degree in computer science, mathematics, or related discipline, and should be skilled in theoretical computer science and mathematics. They should have relevant scientific publications, possess good scientific-writing skills and project management skills. * The post will require occasional travel to conferences and co-operation with partners in the EU and in America. * Application deadline: 15 April 2008. * For more details, see http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/news/10-full.html FULLY FUNDED PhD STUDENTSHIPS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS AT OXFORD * The Information Systems Research Group is offering fully-funded PhD positions in Oxford University's Computing Laboratory in Information Systems. This position is not tied to a project, and any student with a strong background in theoretical computer science and an interest in information management can apply. * Research topics available include - logic and complexity: (logic and automata on trees, tractability of graph and hypergraph algorithms), - database theory (tractability in query processing, foundational and systems issues in XML query processing, data cleaning, and data integration), and - database systems (querying of social networks, information extraction, stream processing). * The studentships are fully funded *at EU fee levels* for three years from October 2008. Each includes a stipend of =C2=A312,600 per year as w= ell as provision for travel to conferences. Students who are *not* from EU countries will need supplementary funding. * Candidates must satisfy the usual requirements http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/prospective/dphil/dphil-criteria.pdf for doing a doctorate at Oxford. For Further Information contact Michael Benedikt (http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/people/Michael.Benedikt/home.html) or Georg Gottlob (http://benner.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/staff/gottlob/), who will be happy to discuss this position on an informal basis. * The deadline for applications is April 30, 2008. Interviews for qualified candidates will take place in May of 2008. To apply you need to download the University's application form from http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/postgraduate/apply/forms/ You will need to submit references, transcript, and a statement of research interests (in the slot marked ``research proposal') with your application. Submit the form to: Mrs Julie Sheppard Secretary for Graduate Studies, Oxford University Computing Laboratory Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QD, UK for e-mail queries: Julie.Sheppard@comlab.ox.ac.uk