SIROCCO 2019 - Second Call for Papers

Michele Flammini, PC co-chair of this year's SIROCCO conference, asked me to post the second CFP for that event. Submit your paper and win a trip to the Abruzzo region this summer! (In case you need them, here are ten reasons why you should. In my biased opinion, there are many more.)

SIROCCO 2019 - Second Call for Papers

 

 

26th International Colloquium on Structural Information and Communication Complexity (SIROCCO 2019)

http://cs.gssi.it/sirocco2019

July 1-4, 2019, L’Aquila, Italy

 

OVERVIEW. SIROCCO is devoted to the study of the interplay between structural knowledge, communication, and computing in decentralized systems of multiple communicating entities. Special emphasis is given to innovative approaches leading to better understanding of the relationship between computing and communication. SIROCCO has a tradition of interesting and productive scientific meetings in a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere, attracting leading researchers in a variety of fields in which communication and knowledge play a significant role. This year, SIROCCO will be held in L’Aquila, a beautiful historical city in the mountain side, 100km away from Rome.

 

SCOPE. Original papers are solicited from all areas of study of local structural knowledge, global communication, and computational complexities. Among the typical areas are distributed computing, communication networks, game theory, parallel computing, social networks, mobile computing (including autonomous robots), peer to peer systems, communication complexity, fault tolerant graphs, and probability in networks. Keeping up with the tradition of SIROCCO, new areas are always welcome.

 

SUBMISSIONS. Papers are to be submitted electronically through EasyChair at the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sirocco2019.

 

Authors are invited to submit their work in one of the two acceptable formats: regular papers and brief announcements. First, abstracts should be registered and later the full papers are due. A regular submission must report on original research and must contain results that have not previously appeared, and have not been concurrently submitted to a journal or a conference with published proceedings. It must be no longer than 12 single-column pages on letter-size paper using at least 11-point font, including tables and references. Up to 4 additional pages of figures may be included with the submission. Additional details may be included in a clearly marked appendix, which will be read at the discretion of the program committee. Full Proofs omitted for lack of space should appear in an appendix.

A submission for a brief announcement must be no longer than 3 single-column pages on letter-size paper using at least 11-point font. The title of a submission for a brief announcement must begin with “Brief announcement:”. Such submissions may describe work in progress or work presented elsewhere. A submission that is not selected for regular presentation may be invited for a brief announcement.

 

PUBLICATION. Regular papers and brief announcements will be included in the conference proceedings that will be published by Springer. Regular papers receive up to 15 pages, brief announcements receive up to 2 LNCS-style pages.

 

BEST STUDENT PAPER AWARD. A prize will be given to the best student regular paper. A paper is eligible if at least one author is a full-time student at the time of submission, and the contribution of the student is significant. This must be noted on the cover page. The program committee may decline to give the award or may split it.

 

INVITED SPEAKERS

Susanne Albers, TU München, Germany

Pierre Fraigniaud, CNRS and University Paris Diderot, France

Stefano Leonardi, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

Merav Parter, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

 

SIROCCO 2019 will also feature a talk by Paola Flocchini, University of Ottawa, Canada – Recipient of the 2019 Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing

 

KEY DATES (all in 2019)

Abstract registration: April 1

Full paper submission: April 7

SIROCCO notification: May 17

Proceedings version: TBD

Early registration: June 1

 

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Dan Alistarh, IST Austria, Austria

James Aspnes, Yale University, USA

Alkida Balliu, Aalto University, Finland

Vittorio Bilò, University of Salento, Italy

Lelia Blin, Sorbonne University, France

Ioannis Caragiannis, University of Patras, Greece

Keren Censor-Hillel, Technion, Israel (co-chair)

Michele Flammini, GSSI & University of L’Aquila, Italy (co-chair)

Luisa Gargano, University of Salerno, Italy

Chryssis Georgiou, University of Cyprus, Cyprus

Magnús Halldórsson, Reykjavik University, Iceland

Tomasz Jurdzinski, University of Wroclaw, Poland

Fabian Kuhn, University of Freiburg, Germany

Toshimitsu Masuzawa, Osaka University, Japan

Alessia Milani, University of Bordeaux, France

Ivan Rapaport, Universidad de Chile, Chile

Dror Rawitz, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Mordechai Shalom, Tel-Hai College, Israel

Jennifer Welch, Texas A&M University, USA

Prudence W.H. Wong, University of Liverpool, UK

Yukiko Yamauchi, Kyushu University, Japan

        

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Guido Proietti, University of L'Aquila, Italy (chair)

Gianlorenzo D’Angelo, GSSI, Italy

Mattia D’Emidio, University of L'Aquila, Italy

Michele Flammini, GSSI & University of L'Aquila, Italy

Luciano Gualà, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy

Ludovico Iovino, GSSI, Italy

Cosimo Vinci, University of L'Aquila, Italy

 

STEERING COMMITTEE

Shantanu Das, Aix-Marseille University, France

Rastislav Kralovic, Comenius University, Slovakia

Zvi Lotker, Ben Gurion University, Israel

Boaz Patt-Shamir, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Andrzej Pelc, University of Québec, Canada

Nicola Santoro, Carleton University, Canada

Sebastien Tixeuil, University Paris 6, France

Jukka Suomela, Aalto University, Finland

GRUNDFOS ASSOCIATE PROFESSORSHIP IN COMPUTER SCIENCE, AALBORG UNIVERSITY

Kim G. Larsen asked me to distribute this call for a very attractive associate professorship at Aalborg University. I trust that this might be of interest to some of the readers of this blog.

GRUNDFOS ASSOCIATE PROFESSORSHIP IN COMPUTER SCIENCE, AALBORG UNIVERSITY

ASSOCIATE PROFESSORSHIP AT AALBORG UNIVERSITY
At the Technical Faculty of IT and Design, Department of Computer Science, an Associate Professorship in Computer Science is open for appointment starting August 1, 2019 or soon thereafter. The position is enabled by a generous grant from the Poul Due Jensen Foundation and supports the focus areas “Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems”.

APPLICATION DEADLINE
15/03/2019

JOB DESCRIPTIONThe objective of the position is to strengthen the department’s activities in the broad range from theory to applications in the area of distributed, embedded, and intelligent systems. Here, current research and teaching span topics such as semantic theories; algorithms and tools for verification and validation; model-driven development, analysis and optimization; and probabilistic models and algorithms for decision making and machine learning.

The position includes funding to recruit an assistant researcher within the research field of the successful applicant. The assistant researcher position is for four man-years and is also funded by the Poul Due Jensen Foundation.

We are seeking ambitious and talented applicants aiming at forming their own research group. Both the Foundation and the Technical Faculty will support the successful applicant with guidance on research and funding strategies etc. in the pursuit of a Full Professorship.

The formal announcement including information about qualification requirements may be found athttps://www.vacancies.aau.dk/show-vacancy/?vacancy=1020716

You may obtain further professional information from Professor Kim Guldstrand Larsen, phone +4522171159,          email: kgl@cs.aau.dk.

CS AT AALBORG UNIVERSITY
The Department of Computer Science at Aalborg University is ranked #1 in Denmark according to the Leiden Ranking.

The research at the department features a broad range of synergistic activities within research and education in the general area of computer science, including curiosity-driven research and targeted research in collaboration with industrial partners, as well as traditional university education, with a unique problem- and project-based focus, and continued education and knowledge dissemination. For more information seewww.cs.aau.dk.

Call for Prize Nominations: Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing 2020

Michele Flammini asked me to distrbute this call for nominations. Sharpen your pencils and nominate one of the many worthy candidates from the SIROCCO community!

Call for Prize Nominations:
Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing 2020
----------------------------------

Awarded by the Colloquium on Structural Information and Communication Complexity (SIROCCO).

Deadline for nominations: April 30, 2019.

Nominations are requested for the Prize for Innovation In Distributed Computing. This prize was established to recognize individuals whose research contributions expanded the collective investigative horizon in SIROCCO's area of interest. That is, they formulated new problems, or identified new research areas, that were at the time of their introduction, unorthodox and outside the mainstream, but later attracted the interest of the SIROCCO community.

This community is interested in the relationships between information and efficiency in decentralized computing. The prize recognizes originality, innovation, and creativity -- the qualities that reflect the spirit of the SIROCCO conference.

The winner of the Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing 2020 is expected to give an invited talk at SIROCCO 2020. The winner of the 2019 edition of the prize (Paola Flocchini) will give a talk at SIROCCO 2019 which is going to be held on July 1-4, in L’Aquila, Italy.

Past prize winners are Nicola Santoro, Jean-Claude Bermond, David Peleg, Roger Wattenhofer, Andrzej Pelc, Pierre Fraigniaud, Michel Raynal, Masafumi Yamashita, Shmuel Zaks,  Zvi Lotker and Paola Flocchini.

The prize may not necessarily be awarded every year.


Eligibility
-----------

The following conditions must be met by the nominees to be eligible for the prize. It is requested that a nomination letter explains and demonstrates how the nominee matches these conditions.

(1) The original innovative contribution was introduced by the nominee(s) for the first time in a publication at least five years before the nomination deadline, and the publication must have appeared in a conference proceedings or a scientific journal.

(2) At least one paper (co)authored by the nominee(s), either the original
paper, or a paper closely related to the innovative contribution, must have
appeared in a SIROCCO proceedings.

A nomination letter should identify the paper(s) that make(s) the nominee eligible according to conditions (1) and (2) above, as well as explain the contribution, its originality, and its significance.

Past SIROCCO papers and authors can be found at indexing sites, e.g. Google Scholar or http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/conf/sirocco/index.html.

Selection process
------------------

The prize winners are selected by the Award Committee composed of the current Steering Committee (SC) Chair of the SIROCCO conference, the PC chairs, including co-chairs, of the three SIROCCO conferences immediately preceding the nominations deadline, plus one additional member of the Advisory Board, or one past winner, selected by the Steering Committee for the current year.

The Award Committee of the Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing 2020 consists of: Shantanu Das (Aix-Marseille Université),
Zvi Lotker (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), Boaz Patt-Shamir (Tel Aviv University), Andrzej Pelc - chair (Université du Québec en Outaouais), Michel Raynal (IRISA), Jukka Suomela (Aalto University) and Sébastien Tixeuil (Sorbonne Université).

Nominations can be made by any member of the scientific community.

DEADLINE : The deadline for nominations is April 30, 2019.
Please send the nomination to the prize committee chair, Andrzej Pelc, by e-mail pelc@uqo.ca

Three questions to three junior female computer scientists for the International Day of Women in Science

Last Monday, 11 February, was the International Day of Women in Science. I planned to post the answers I received from three junior female computer scientists to three questions I asked them. However, being a computer scientist who is short of time like everyone else, I asked for a one-week deadline extension to do so.

The questions were

1. When did you become interested in science?
2. Why did you choose computer science?
3. Which advice would you give to a high-school student who is thinking about pursuing a career in science?  

Here are the (unedited) answers in the order in which I received them, in case they might be of interest to (female) students of all ages. I have anonymized the answers as the message is more important than the messengers.

Colleague #1

1. I never had a sentence like "I am interested in science" in my mind, it was just that I always in one way or another enjoyed learning about things, school and education, and I wanted to continue being in that type of surroundings after graduating from university. 
2. I actually studied mathematics, I was not interested in computer science. I had some algorithms and programming classes during my studies, which I found cute but not much more than that. I started being seriously interested in computer science only when I took a class on mathematical theory of computation. This class combined the mathematical/theoretical/
   philosophical approach I liked so much with (for me) a new and refreshing set of questions.
3. Try it and see how it goes.

Colleague #2

1. My interest in science started when visiting the SMAU that is an event where companies, investors and startups aim to promote the Made in Italy Research and Innovation. It was simply amazing to learn about startups, laboratories, research centres, universities and small companies showing so many novel ideas and technologies in one day, it really impressed me a lot. 
2. Computer science was the alternative to Math (my preferred subject at the scientific high school) but I thought it was too abstract and full of theories, demonstrations and proofs, maybe too much. Computer science has the theoretical part that is fascinating but it also has some more practical implications, it is somehow more concrete, and I like both sides. 
3. Don't be afraid to fail, be afraid not to try. I think it is worthwhile to try if you have any inclination to science because you are exposed to problem solving reasoning, and these efforts can be helpful for building a better society.

Colleague #3

1. From the junior secondary school, scientific subjects were my favorites, together with history.
2. During the high school, I started to study computer science and also laboratory of computer science where it was applied to other subjects such as Math and Business Economics. I was really passionate of this subject, which was among my favorite. When it was time to choose for the University, computer science was naturally the first in the list. I also had other alternatives but in the end I quickly decided to apply for computer science.
3. My advice is simply to do whatever he/she really likes and for which he/she is good and has obtained good results, without thinking too much about work opportunities or what other people (e.g., parents) want for them. For each career, in science or not, passion is the main ingredient to reach good results. Then, I also think that one can change his/her mind and do something completely different after the university. The important is to study what one really likes.

Two awards at HICSS’19 for CS@GSSI student Roberto Verdecchia

Roberto Verdecchia, a third-year Ph.D. student of the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) has received two distinct prizes at the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’19; http://hicss.hawaii.edu/) for his research paper “DecidArch: Playing Cards as Software Architects”, which is co-authored with Patricia Lago, Jia F. Cai (both at VU Amsterdam), Remco C. de Boer (ArchiXL) and Philippe Kruchten (University of British Columbia). Out of over 780 papers presented at HICCS within 11 different research tracks, the study was presented with the “Best Paper award” of the Software Education and Training track. Additionally, the article was also selected as one of the five “ISSIP-IBM-CBA Student Paper Award for Best Industry Studies Paper” of HICCS’19.

The study presents a novel educational game conceived to train students and practitioners in concepts related to software architecture and decision making. The game is currently used as an interactive session of the course “Software Architecture”, taught at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

The two prizes were adjudicated independently by two distinct committees.

 

Congratulations to Roberto!

Let me close by adding that I expect that Roberto will deliver his PhD thesis in the autumn 2019 and will soon be on the job market. If you have a postdoc or tenure-track  position in SE, keep him mind.

One postdoc position available at Reykjavik University

Open Problems in the Equational Logic of Processes

School of Computer Science, Reykjavik University

One Postdoc Position

Applications are invited for one post-doctoral position at the School of Computer Science, Reykjavik University.  The position is part of a three-year research project funded by the Icelandic Research Fund, under the direction of Luca Aceto (Gran Sasso Science Institute and Reykjavik University) and Anna Ingolfsdottir (Reykjavik University) in cooperation with Bas Luttik (TU Eindhoven) and Alexandra Silva (University College London). The overarching goal of this project is to solve some of the challenging open problems in the equational axiomatization of behavioural equivalences over process calculi. Interested applicants can contact Luca Aceto (email: luca@ru.is) for further details on the research proposal.

The successful candidate will benefit from, and contribute to, the research environment at the Icelandic Centre of Excellence in Theoretical Computer Science (ICE-TCS). For information about ICE-TCS and its activities, see

http://www.icetcs.ru.is/.

Moreover, she/he will cooperate with Bas Luttik and Alexandra Silva  during the project work and will benefit from the interaction with their research groups at TU Eindhoven and University College London. The postdoc will also have a chance to interact with Clemens Grabmayer and the CS group at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (http://cs.gssi.it/), L'Aquila, Italy. 

Qualification requirements
Applicants for the postdoctoral position should have, or be about to hold, a PhD degree in Computer Science or closely related fields. Previous knowledge of at least one of concurrency theory, process calculi, (structural) operational semantics and logic in computer science is highly desirable.

Remuneration
The wage for the postdoctoral position is 530,000 ISK (roughly 3,830  € at the present exchange rate) per month before taxes. (See http://payroll.is/en/ for information on what the wage will be after taxes.) The position is for two years, starting as soon as possible, and is renewable for another year, based on good performance and mutual satisfaction.

Application details

Interested applicants should send their CV, including a list of publications, in PDF to all the addresses below, together with a statement outlining their suitability for the project and the names of at least two referees.

Luca Aceto
email: luca@ru.is

Anna Ingolfsdottir
email: annai@ru.is

We will start reviewing applications as soon as they arrive and will continue to accept applications until the position is filled. We strongly encourage interested applicants to send their applications as soon as possible and no later than 8 February 2019.

Thirty-five years of "Testing Equivalences for Processes" (TCS edition)

Thirty-five years ago, Rocco De Nicola and Matthew Hennessy published the archival paper introducing the notions of testing equivalence over concurrent processes in the journal Theoretical Computer Science. These testing equivalences embody in a natural and mathematically elegant way the intuitive idea that two processes should be equated unless they behave differently when subjected to some ‘experiment’ or ‘test’. The origin of this notion of equivalence can be traced back to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), who stated that two mathematical objects are equal if there is no test to distinguish them. In the semantics of programming languages, its earliest precursor is, to the best of my  knowledge, the notion of contextual equivalence proposed by Morris in his doctoral dissertation.

In general, given a set of processes, a set of tests and a relation between processes and tests that describes when a process passes a test, one can apply Leibniz’s motto and declare two processes to be equivalent if if they pass exactly the same set of tests. In the work of De Nicola and Hennessy, processes are states in some labelled transition system. A test is itself a process, which interacts with a concurrent system under observation by hand-shake synchronisation and uses a distinguished action to report success in its observation. Since both processes and tests may be nondeterministic, the interaction between a process and a test may lead to different outcomes depending on how the two systems resolve their nondeterministic choices in the course of a computation. This led De Nicola and Hennessy to define three notions of testing semantics, which are naturally expressed in terms of preorders over processes.

In the so-called may semantics, a process q is at least as good as some process p if the set of tests that p may pass is included in the set of tests that q may pass. In may semantics, possible failure under a test is immaterial and therefore nondeterminism is angelic. On the other hand, one may take the view that failure in the testing effort is catastrophic, in the sense that a process that may fail some test is just as bad as one that always fails it. The notion of testing semantics that captures this viewpoint is the so-called must semantics, according to which a process q is at  least as good as some process p if the set of tests that p must pass is included in the set of tests that q must pass. Finally, a third testing preorder over processes is obtained as the intersection of the may and must preorders described above. According to this more refined view of process behaviour, a process that always fails a test is worse than one that may pass that test, which in turn is worse than one that always passes it.

De Nicola and Hennessy explored the rich theory of the testing semantics in their seminal TCS paper (see this monograph for a classic, book-length treatment), where each of these semantics is given operational, denotational and axiomatic accounts that are in agreement one with the other. Their ideas and the accompanying technical results have had an enormous impact on further research, as witnessed, among other things, by the 1,640 citations to the TCS paper published in 1984 (source: Google Scholar today).

Happy 2019 to everyone.

Two recent achievements by CS@GSSI researchers

This week has seen two more achievements by some of my colleagues in the CS group at the GSSI. 

 

Omar Inverso, postdoctoral researcher in the Computer Science group at the GSSI, has won a Silver Medal at the 2019 8th International Competition on Software Verification (SV-COMP 2019). Quoting from the paper at https://www.sosy-lab.org/research/pub/2017-TACAS.Software_Verification_with_Validation_of_Results.pdf, 

"Software verification is an increasingly important research area, and the annual Competition on Software Verification (SV-COMP) is the showcase of the state of the art in the area, in particular, of the effectiveness and efficiency that is currently achieved by tool implementations of the most recent ideas, concepts, and algorithms for fully-automatic verification."

As can be seen from the results of the competition at 

 

https://sv-comp.sosy-lab.org/2019/results/results-verified/, 

Omar Inverso's Lazy-CSeq, a software tool for the automated analysis of complex concurrent programs, came second in the category ConcurrencySafety and was beaten only by a tool developed by a Chinese team from Tsinghua University, which is widely considered the best technical university in China. This is a remarkable achievement and continues Omar Inverso's success in that competition, where he won Gold and Silver medals in 2016, and Silver and Bronze medals in 2017, in the Concurrency category. It is also worth noting that Omar Inverso is developing Lazy-CSeq and related software-analysis tools alone, whereas competing tools are largely the result of a team effort.

Third-year Computer Science students  Emilio Cruciani and  Roberto Verdecchia have done it again! They have followed up on their ICSE 2018 paper with  Breno Miranda(UFPE, Brazil) and Antonia Bertolino (ISTI - CNR, Italy)  (see http://processalgebra.blogspot.com/2017/12/first-year-computer-science-students-at.html for a few words on that achievement) with another paper, entitled "Scalable Approaches for Test Suite Reduction ", that has been accepted to the ICSE 2019 Technical Track (https://2019.icse-conferences.org/track/icse-2019-Technical-Papers#event-overview). To put this achievement into perspective, ICSE is the premiere conference in software engineering. ICSE 2019 had 529 submissions, out of which  109 papers were accepted (with an acceptance rate of 21%).

The ICSE 2019 paper present an approach to test-suite reduction, which aims at decreasing software-regression-testing costs by selecting a representative subset from large-size test suites. It presents a family of novel, very efficient approaches for similarity-based test suite reduction that apply algorithms borrowed from the big-data domain together with smart heuristics for finding an evenly spread subset of test cases. The results of the experimental evaluation show that the approaches yield a fault detection loss comparable to state-of-the-art techniques, while providing huge gains in terms of efficiency.

 

Congratulations to Emilio, Omar and Roberto!