Call for papers - GandALF 2025

If you do research on any of the topics covered by GandALF, do consider submitting a paper to the conference and making the trip to Malta in mid-September!

Call for papers  - GandALF 2025

The Sixteenth International Symposium on Games, Automata, Logics, and Formal Verification 

will take place in Valletta, Malta, 15-18 September 2025.

Web page: https://gandalfsymposium.github.io/2025/

The aim of the symposium is to bring together researchers from

academia and industry who are actively working in the fields of

Games, Automata, Logics, and Formal Verification. The symposium covers

an ample spectrum of themes, ranging from theory to applications, and

encourages cross-fertilization. Papers focused on formal methods are

especially welcome. Authors are invited to submit original research or

tool papers on all relevant topics in these areas. Papers discussing

new ideas that are at an early stage of development are also welcome.

The topics covered by the conference include, but are not limited to,

the following:

Automata Theory

Automated Deduction

Computational aspects of Game Theory

Concurrency and Distributed Computation

Decision Procedures

Deductive, Compositional, and Abstraction Techniques for Verification

Finite Model Theory

First-order and Higher-order Logics

Formal Languages

Formal Methods for Systems Biology, Hybrid, Embedded, and Mobile Systems

Games and Automata for Verification

Game Semantics

Logical aspects of Computational Complexity

Logics of Programs

Modal and Temporal Logics

Model Checking

Models of Reactive and Real-Time Systems

Program Analysis and Software Verification

Run-time Verification and Testing

Specification and Verification of Finite and Infinite-state Systems Synthesis

## Proceedings:

The proceedings will be published by Electronic Proceedings in

Theoretical Computer Science. Authors of the best papers will be

invited to submit a revised version of their work to an special issue

of Acta Informatica. Selected papers from previous editions appeared

in special issues of the International Journal of Foundation of

Computer Science (GandALF 2010), Theoretical Computer Science (GandALF

2011 and 2012), and Information and Computation (GandALF 2013 and

2014).

## Invited Speakers:

- Radu Mardare (Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland)

- more TBA

## Submissions:

Submitted papers should not exceed fourteen (14) pages using EPTCS

format (please use the LaTeX style provided at https://style.eptcs.org),

be unpublished and contain original research. For papers reporting 

experimental results, authors are encouraged to make their data

available with their submission.

Submissions must be in PDF format and will be handled via

EasyChair Conference system at the following address:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=gandalf2025

## Important dates:

Paper submission deadline: 30 May 2025

Acceptance notification: 4 July 2025

Camera-ready deadline: 25 July 2025

## Program Committee:

Elli Anastasiadi (Aalborg University)

Giorgio Bacci (Aalborg University) co-Chair

Giovanni Bernardi (Université Paris Diderot - IRIF)

Udi Boker (Reichman Universtiy)

Laure Daviaud (University of East Anglia)

Mohammed Foughali (IRIF/Université Paris Cité)

Adrian Francalanza (University of Malta) co-Chair

Silvia Ghilezan (University of Novi Sad)

Daniele Gorla (University of Rome "La Sapienza")

Ryan Kavanagh (Université du Québec à Montréal)

Tim Lyon (Technische Universität Dresden)

Mohammad Reza Mousavi (King's College London)

Ocan Sankur (Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe)

Sarah Winkler (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano)

Sarah Winter (IRIF & Université Paris Cité)

... more to be announced

## Steering Committee:

Luca Aceto (Reykjavik University, Iceland)

Javier Esparza (University of Munich, Germany)

Salvatore La Torre (University of Salerno, Italy)

Angelo Montanari (University of Udine, Italy)

Mimmo Parente (University of Salerno, Italy)

Jean-François Raskin (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)

Martin Zimmermann (Aalborg University, Denmark)

What's your opinion on double-blind reviewing in TCS conferences?

Recent discussions with some colleagues spurred me to read again Ran Canetti's white paper on double-blind reviewing in IACR conferences. I also went back to a post by Boaz Barak and to its discussion thread, as well as to this post that motivated it. I was also reminded of the coverage of single- and double-blind reviewing in this chapter of the book "The Science of Science" (see, for instance, page 25 in that file). I recommend all those resources. 

FWIW, I share Ran Canetti's analysis of the pros and cons of double-blind reviewing. At the end of the day, evaluating scientific papers submitted to conferences and journals is largely a subjective exercise. IMHO, this is especially true for conferences where, apart from a number of clear accepts and clear rejects, a PC typically has to choose a small number of papers from a typically much larger pool of "scientifically equivalent" articles. 

Double-blind reviewing and rebuttals are two ways in which our community tries to make the process of selecting a good programme for a conference---which is, after all, the job description of a conference PC---more objective than it really is. However, I keep wondering whether those steps make a difference, especially in addressing bias, in an age where every scientific contribution should be available online in publicly accessible form before it is submitted to a conference. Shouldn't we simply trust the PC chairs of a conference to make sure that the refereeing process and the PC discussion are as thorough as possible, given the time constraints under which they take place? 

What's your opinion on double-blind reviewing as authors, PC members and PC chairs, especially in conferences in TCS, broadly construed? Do you prefer to submit to conferences that implement double-blind reviewing? If so, why?

I'd be grateful if you could post your opinions as comments to this post. 

ICE-TCS seminar by Benjamin Moore on "Smoothed analysis for graph isomorphism"

Today, the ICE-TCS seminar series at Reykjavik University hosted a talk by Benjamin Moore (Institute of Science and Technology Austria) who is visiting our postdoctoral researcher Nicolaos Matsakis. 

Benjamin presented the main results in his paper "Smoothed analysis for graph isomorphism", coauthored with his ISTA colleagues Michael Anastos and Matthew Kwan. (In passing, I just saw that Matthew Kwan received the main prize of the Austrian Mathematical Society last year. Congratulations!) 

To my mind, Benjamin did an excellent job in presenting the context for their exciting (but very technical) contribution and the main ideas that underlie it. Kudos! The work by Benjamin and his collaborators provides another explanation of the effectiveness of the colour refinement algorithm (also known as the one-dimensional Weisfeiler-Leman algorithm) in checking whether two graphs are isomorphic. I encourage you to read at least the introduction of their paper, which will be presented at STOC 2025, and the ISTA news article here, which does a much better job at putting their work in context than an interested, but ignorant, observer like me ever could. FWIW, I find results like theirs, which offer some explanation as to why theoretically hard problems are seemingly easy in practice, fascinating and I feel like that paper might be a strong candidate for a best paper award. 

It was also fitting to see recent work on smoothed analysis being presented at our seminar series since Daniel Spielman and Shang-Hua Teng received the 2008 Gödel Prize at ICALP 2008, which was held at Reykjavik University. Time flies, but great work is timeless. 

Interview with Magnús Már Halldórsson on Reykjavik University's website

Magnús Már Halldórsson, the director of ICE-TCS, was interviewed by the Communication Department at Reykjavik University to mark the 20th anniversary of ICE-TCS on April 29, 2025. The interview appeared last Friday on the Reykjavik University web site. In my biased opinion,  Magnús hit all the right notes. I hope that some of our students and colleagues, as well as the staff at Icelandic funding agencies and politicians, read it. 

I am also pleased to see theoretical computer science at the Department of Computer Science at Reykjavik University get some visibility on the university's website after twenty years. It leave the job of determining the level of contribution and the visibility ICE-TCS has given to the department and to computer science research in Iceland to others. 

In case anyone is interested in having a look at them, our annual reports from June 2007 till the whole of 2024 are available here. (Thanks to Tarmo Uustalu for reviving the centre's website and for keeping up to data!)

Dagstuhl Publishing – Highlights of 2024

On behalf of Dagstuhl Publishing, Michael Wagner has posted the highlights for 2024. IMHO, the computer-science research community owes the team at Dagstuhl Publishing and Schloss Dagstuhl a lot for its sustained support of research and open-access publication activities. I encourage any readers I might have to read the highlights for 2024 and share them within their networks. This is the least we can do to thank everyone at Dagsthul for their work. 

If you are a PC chair or an SC member of a high-quality conference that publishes its proceedings with a commercial publisher, and you care about open-access publication of research results and artefacts, consider suggesting that your conference apply for publishing its proceedings in LIPIcs. 

Last, but not least, consider submitting some of your best work to the journal Transaction on Graph Data and Knowledge, if it is in the areas covered by that diamond-open-access journal!

27th Estonian Winter School in Computer Science, EWSCS 2025 Viinistu, Estonia, 3-6 March 2025

I received the following announcement from my colleague Tarmo Uustalu. Spread the news of this excellent winter school for young researchers!

The 2025 edition of the Estonian Winter School in Computer Science (EWSCS) will be held in Viinistu, Estonia, in the period 3-6 March 2025. Editions of EWSCS are general TCS schools with topics from both Theory A and B. EWSCS is a long-running series; the first school happened in 1996 and this is its 27th edition. The schools are mostly intended for PhD students as well as ambitious MSc and BSc students, but are open for anyone.

This year's programme features the following four courses on combinatorics, modern database theory, concurrency connected to topology, and provable cybersecurity.

• Anders Claesson, University of Iceland, Reykjavik. Combinatorial species. 
• Uli Fahrenberg, EPITA Rennes. Discrete and continuous models for concurrent systems: from Petri nets to directed spaces. 
• Miika Hannula, University of Tartu. Conjunctive query evaluation. 
• Marino Miculan, University of Udine. Provable security, ProVerif.

Check the school webpage for abstracts and the timetable. 

Participation fee is 490 EUR. Covered in the fee are accommodation for three nights in twin rooms, with full board, and transportation from Tallinn to the school venue and back.

Application deadline: 12 Feb 2025.

Faculty positions in Computer Science at Reykjavik University

The Department of Computer Science at Reykjavik University invites applications for full-time, permanent faculty positions at any rank, in particular in the fields of data science, software engineering, theoretical computer science (see the ICE-TCS web page for information on our TCS group), as well as visual computing, games, and interactive media.

The deadline for applications is January 30, 2025. The review of the applications will begin in early January 2025 and will continue until the positions are filled.

See https://jobs.50skills.com/ru/is/32303 for details on how to apply.