Apologies if you receive multiple copies ========================================================= 3rd International ABZ 2012 Conference Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B, VDM, Z June 18-21, 2012 CNR, Pisa, Italy (in conjunction with IFM 2012) http://abzconference.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT DATES Workshop proposal submissions: October 15, 2011 Workshop proposal notifications: November 30, 2011 Paper submission: January 22, 2012 Extended abstracts submission (for short presentations): February 3, 2012 Notification of acceptance/rejection: March 1, 2012 Final Version due: March 20, 2012 Tutorial proposal submissions: to be announced Main ABZ 2012 conference: June 19-21, 2012 ----------------------------------------------------------- CONFERENCE CHAIRS For questions concerning ABZ 2012, contact: Elvinia Riccobene, University of Milan, Italy (elvinia.riccobene@unimi.it) Steve Reeves, University of Waikato, New Zealand (stever@cs.waikato.ac.nz). ----------------------------------------------------------- RATIONALE The ABZ 2012 conference is organized in Pisa (Italy) in conjunction with iFM 2012 and is being held in honor of Prof. Egon Börger's 65th birthday. The ABZ conference is dedicated to the cross-fertilization of five related state-based and machine-based formal methods, Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B, VDM and Z, that share a common conceptual foundation and are widely used in both academia and industry for the design and analysis of hardware and software systems. It builds on the success of the first ABZ conference held in London in 2008, where the ASM, B and Z conference series merged into a single event, and the success of the second ABZ conference held in Orford (Canada) where the Alloy community joined the event. The novelty of the 3rd international event is the inclusion of the VDM community in the ABZ conference series. Contributions are solicited on all aspects of the theory and applications of ASMs, Alloy, B, VDM, Z and related approaches in software/hardware engineering, including the development of tools and industrial applications. The program spans from theoretical and methodological foundations to practical applications, emphasizing system engineering methods and tools that are distinguished by mathematical rigour and have proved to be industrially viable. The main goal of the conference is to contribute to the integration of accurate state- and machine-based system development methods, clarifying their commonalities and differences to better understand how to combine different approaches for accomplishing the various tasks in modeling, experimental validation, and mathematical verification of reliable high-quality hardware/software systems. Although organized logistically as a single, integral event, editorial control of the joint conference remains vested in five separate program committees, which will respectively determine its ASM, Alloy, B, VDM and Z content, to be presented in parallel conference tracks with a schedule to allow the participants to switch between the sessions. Proposals are invited for workshops and tutorials to take place the day before the main conference. ----------------------------------------------------------- SUBMISSION POLICY, INSTRUCTIONS, CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS Two kinds of contributions are invited: * Research papers: full papers of not more than 14 pages in LNCS format, which have to be original, unpublished and not submitted elsewhere. * Short presentations of work in progress, industrial experience reports and tool demonstrations. This is an excellent opportunity for Ph.D. students to present and validate their work in progress. It is also an interesting option for industrial practitioners who sometimes face too many constraints to prepare a full paper. An extended abstract of not more than 4 pages is expected and will be reviewed. A volume of accepted extended abstracts will be made available as a Technical Report with an ISBN number, and a 1-page abstract of each presentation will be published in the Proceedings. Contributions should be submitted electronically in PDF at the ABZ 2012 conference Easy-Chair web site https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=abz2012. The papers must be prepared using the SPRINGER LNCS style http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0. All accepted papers will be published in a volume of Springer's LNCS series. The LNCS volume of the Conference Proceedings will be distributed at the conference. Journal Special Issue: an improved version of a selected number of contributions will be published in a special issue of the journal Science of Computer Programming. ----------------------------------------------------------- INVITED SPEAKERS Prof. Egon Börger, University of Pisa, Italy Prof. Muffy Calder, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom Prof. Ian J. Hayes, University of Queensland, Australia ----------------------------------------------------------- WORKSHOP AND TUTORIAL PROPOSALS Workshop/Tutorial will be associated to the main event iFM/ABZ. Proposals are solicited in areas related to the conference topics. In particular workshops on challenging new, emerging fields are sought. Proposals should be sent to the workshop chairs: Maurice ter Beek, ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy (maurice.terbeek@isti.cnr.it) Angelo Gargantini, University of Bergamo, Italy (angelo.gargantini@unibg.it) The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2011. Notifications will be sent by November 30, 2011. Tutorial proposals should be send to Jonathan P. Bowen, Museophile Limited, UK (jpbowen@gmail.com) ----------------------------------------------------------- GENERAL CHAIRS John Derrick, University of Sheffield, UK Stefania Gnesi, ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy TRACK CHAIRS Alloy Track Chair: Sarfraz Khurshid, University of Texas at Austin, USA (khurshid@ece.utexas.edu) ASM Track Chair: Elvinia Riccobene, University of Milan, Italy (elvinia.riccobene@unimi.it) B Track Chair: Michael Leuschel, University of Düsseldorf, Germany (leuschel@cs.uni-duesseldorf.de) VDM Track Chair: John Fitzgerald, Newcastle University, UK (john.fitzgerald@newcastle.ac.uk) Z Track Chair: Steve Reeves, University of Waikato, New Zealand (stever@cs.waikato.ac.nz) PROGRAM COMMITTEE Jean-Raymond Abrial, Marseille, France Yamine Ait-Ameur, IRIT-ENSEEIHT, Toulouse, France Rob Arthan, Lemma 1 Ltd., UK Nick Battle, Fujitsu Services, UK Juan Bicarregui, STFC, UK Dines Bjorner, DTU Informatics, Denmark Eerke Boiten, University of Kent, UK Jonathan P. Bowen, Museophile Limited, UK Ana Cavalcanti, University of York, UK David Deharbe, Federal University of RIo Grande do Norte, Brazil John Derrick, University of Sheffield, UK Juergen Dingel, Queen's University, Canada Andriy Dunets, Codronic GmbH, Augsburg, Germany Steve Dunne, University of Teesside, UK Kerstin Eder, University of Bristol, UK Roozbeh Farahbod, Researcher at Defence R&D Canada, Canada Kathi Fisler, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA John Fitzgerald, Newcastle University, UK Marc Frappier, University of Sherbrooke, Canada Vincenzo Gervasi, University of Pisa, Italy Uwe Glaesser, Simon Fraser University, Canada Anthony Hall, independent consultant, UK Stefan Hallerstede, University of Aarhus, Denmark Klaus Havelund, Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA, USA Ian J. Hayes, University of Queensland, Australia Rob Hierons, Brunel University, UK Thai Son Hoang, ETH Zürich, Switzerland Jeremy Jacob, University of York, UK Cliff Jones, Newcastle University, UK, Sarfraz Khurshid, University of Texas at Austin, USA Régine Laleau, Univesity of Paris-Est, France Peter Gorm Larsen, Aarhus School of Engineering, Denmark Daniel Le Berre, Université d'Artois, France Thierry Lecomte, ClearSy, France Michael Leuschel, University of Düsseldorf, Germany Darko Marinov, University of Illinois, USA Christophe Métayer, Systerel, France José Oliveira, Minho University, Portugal Marie-Laure Potet, IMAG Grenoble, France Andreas Prinz, Agder University College, Norway Alexander Raschke, University of ULM, Germany Steve Reeves, University of Waikato, New Zealand Burkhardt Renz, THM, Gießen, Germany Elvinia Riccobene, University of Milan, Italy Ken Robinson, Univ. of New South Wales, Australia Shin Sahara, SCSK Corporation and Hosei University, Japan, Japan Thomas Santen, European Microsoft Innovation Center, Aachen, Germany Patrizia Scandurra, University of Bergamo, Italy Gerhard Schellhorn, University of Augsburg, Germany Klaus-Dieter Schewe, SCCH, Linz, Austria Steve Schneider, University of Surrey, UK Colin Snook, University of Southampton, UK Kevin Sullivan, University of Virginia, USA Mana Taghdiri, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany Bernard Thalheim, University of Kiel, Germany Margus Veanes, Microsoft Research, USA Marcel Verhoef, CHESS BV, Netherlands Kirsten Winter, University of Queensland, Australia ----------------------------------------------------------- VENUE The conference will take place in Pisa at the Auditorium of the CNR Research Area. Address: Via Moruzzi, 1, 56124 Pisa, Tuscany, Italy Further details on the venue will be announced on the workshop site http://ifm-abz.isti.cnr.it/page21/indexifm.html ---------------------------------------------------------- SUPPORTED BY ASM User Group Alloy User Community Association de Pilotage des Conférences B Overture Community (VDM) Z User Group