FM 2006

 
August 21 - 27, 2006
McMaster University
Hamilton ON, Canada

Submission Dates

Technical Papers, Workshops and Tutorials

Friday February 24, 2006

Posters and Tools, Doctoral Symposium

Friday May 26, 2006

 

Notification Dates

Technical Papers

Friday April 28, 2006

Workshops and Tutorials

Friday March 10, 2006

Doctoral Symposium

Wednesday June 14, 2006

Posters and Research Tools

Monday June 12, 2006


Contact Information

General Inquiries

General Chair

Emil Sekerinski

Program Chairs

Jayadev Misra,
Tobias Nipkow

Workshops Chair

Tom Maibaum

Tutorials Chair

Jin Song Dong

Tools & Poster Chair

Marsha Chechik

Industry Day Chairs

Volkmar Lotz,
Asuman Suenbuel

Doctoral Symposium Chairs

Ana Cavalcanti

Augusto Sampaio

Jim Woodcock

Sponsorship Chair

Jürgen Dingel


Invited Talks

Ernie Cohen: Validating the Microsoft Hypervisor

I'll describe a number of ways in which we're using formal methods to specify and validate the Microsoft Hypervisor (a small software layer that partitions a PC into a number of virtual machines). These methods include automatic test generation, an "optimal" form of stateless search, and correctness proofs for MMU virtualization.

About the speaker: Ernie Cohen is a Test Architect at Microsoft, where he develops formal methods for system software and security. Since his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, he has worked as a Senior Scientist at Bellcore/Telcordia, and a Visiting Researcher and Software Architect at Microsoft.

Nicholas Griffin: Bertrand Russell: A Philosophy for Formal Methods and a Formal Method for Philosophy

This is a general and informal talk about Russell's work in logic and the foundations of mathematics in the early years of the twentieth century. It will focus on the philosophical views which underlay his attempts to solve the Russell paradox (and several others) which culminated in the ramified theory of types. It will also argue that one of his most important contributions to philosophy, was his forcing philosophers to take the new mathematical logic seriously - something that previous practitioners had been unable to do. I will also draw attention to the wealth of material related to Russell's work in logic and philosophy in the Bertrand Russell Archives.

About the speaker: Nicholas Griffin is Director of the Bertrand Russell Research Centre at McMaster University where he holds a Canada Research Chair in Philosophy. He has written extensively on most aspects of Russell's life and work, most recently editing The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell (2003). He is the general editor of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell.


Thomas A. Henzinger: Embedded Systems Design Challenge

We summarize some current trends in embedded systems design and point out some of their characteristics, such as the chasm between analytical and computational models, and the gap between safety-critical and best-effort engineering practices. We call for a coherent scientific foundation for embedded systems design, and we discuss a few key demands on such a foundation: the need for encompassing several manifestations of heterogeneity, and the need for constructivity in design. We believe that the development of a satisfactory Embedded Systems Design Science provides a timely challenge and opportunity for reinvigorating computer science.
(Joint work with Joseph Sifakis.)


About the speaker: Tom Henzinger is a Professor of Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL in Switzerland. He holds a PhD degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. He was an Assistant Professor of Computer  Science at Cornell University, a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California in Berkeley, and a Director of the Max-Planck Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrüecken. His research focuses on modern systems theory, especially formalisms and tools for the design and verification of software and embedded systems. His HyTech tool was the first model checker for mixed discrete-continuous systems.



Peter Lindsay: Distributed Control in Network-Based Systems

Complex computer-based systems play a critical role in the modern world. Thanks to advances in Information and Communications Technology, the world is becoming one huge interlinked system. But as the systems get larger and increasingly distributed, it is getting increasingly difficult to understand how they work, and what causes them to fail. It is now increasingly common to hear talk of "emergent properties" - that is, properties of systems which are difficult, if not impossible, to predict simply from the properties of their components. An increasingly important issue for software and system engineers is, what methods and tools can be used to help understand, manage and/or design such systems.

Biologists, economists and sociologists have been studying these kinds of problems for a long time, and have built up a substantial body of knowledge. Complex Systems Science is the discipline concerned with understanding how macro-level system properties and behaviours emerge from relatively simple micro-level interactions. The challenge is how to capture this knowledge in a form suitable for engineered systems.

This talk will describe new research in modelling and simulation of complex systems in areas including genetics, plant growth and air traffic control.


About the speaker: Professor Peter Lindsay is Boeing Chair in Systems Engineering in the School of Information Technology & Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland in Brisbane Australia, and Director of the ARC Centre for Complex Systems (www.accs.edu.au). Professor Lindsay joined the University of Queensland in 1991 after holding academic and research positions at the University of New South Wales  and the University of Manchester. He holds an MSc from University of  Melbourne and a PhD in mathematical logic from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has twenty years experience in formal aspects of systems and software engineering. He is co-author of two books on formal specification and verification of software systems, and many refereed papers. In recent years he has provided system safety expertise to government and  industry on a large number of safety-critical applications in the areas of defence, aerospace and transport. He is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society.



George Necula: Data Structure Specifications via Local Equality Axioms

We describe a program verification methodology for specifying global shape properties of data structures by means of axioms involving arbitrary predicates on scalar fields and pointer equalities in the neighborhood of a memory cell. We show that such local invariants are both natural and sufficient for describing a large class of data structures. We describe a complete decision procedure for such a class of axioms. The decision procedure is not only simpler and faster than in other similar systems, but has the advantage that it can be extended easily with reasoning for any decidable theory of scalar fields.

About the speaker: George Necula is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include programming languages, verification methods and security with an emphasis towards use of programming language and logic-based technologies for security and for improving software quality. George Necula has received his BS in 1993 from Polytechnic University of Bucharest in Romania, and his PhD in Computer Science in 1998 from Carnegie Mellon University, where he developed the technique of Proof-Carrying Code, jointly with Peter Lee. George Necula is an Okawa Fellow, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, a recipient of the NSF Career Award and of the 2001 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award.