[Past issues of the newsletter are available at http://www.bell-labs.com/topic/conferences/lics/ and ftp://ftp.research.bell-labs.com/dist/lics/newsletters.] LOGIC COLLOQUIUM 97 European Summer Meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic University of Leeds UK, 6 - 13 July 1997 * Main topics: Computability Theory, Model Theory, Proof Theory, Set Theory, Philosophy and Psychology of Proof. * Short course lecturers: R. Shore (Cornell), A. Wilkie (Oxford), M. Rathjen (Leeds), J. Steel (Berkeley). * Plenary lecturers: P. Benacerraf (Princeton), U. Berger (Munich), L. van den Dries (Urbana), S. Goncharov (Novosibirsk), R. Jensen (Berlin), N. Jones (Copenhagen), B. Kim (Fields Inst), J. Knight (Notre Dame), I. Neeman (UCLA), L. Newelski (Wroclaw), J. van Oosten (Amsterdam), D. Over (Sunderland), P. Pudlak (Prague), G. Sacks (Harvard), R. Soare (Chicago), S. Solecki (UCLA), L. Rips (North Western), L. Wallen (Oxford). * Special sessions. There will in addition be special sessions in the main topics, and sessions for short contributed talks. The following will chair the special sessions. Computability Theory: K. Ambos-Spies (Heidelberg), S. Lempp (Madison). Model Theory: A. Pillay (Urbana). Proof Theory: H. Schwichtenberg (Munich), G. Jaeger (Bern). Set Theory: S. Friedman (MIT). * Programme committee. S. Buss (San Diego), B. Cooper (Chair - Leeds), W. Hodges (London), M. Hyland (Cambridge), A. Lachlan (Simon Fraser), A. Louveau (Paris), Y. Moschovakis (UCLA), L. Pacholski (Wroclaw), H. Schwichtenberg (Munich), T. Slaman (Chicago), J. Truss (Leeds), H. Woodin (Berkeley). * Contact address: Logic Colloquium '97, School of Mathematics, The University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. e-mail: logic97@amsta.leeds.ac.uk HIGHER-ORDER ALGEBRA, LOGIC AND TERM REWRITING (HOA '97) 4th-5th September 1997, Southampton, UK Immediately following ALP '97 and PLILP '97. * Topics. The scope of the workshop includes higher-order aspects of algebra, logic and model theory; term rewriting; specification and verification languages; computational logic and theorem proving; system implementations and case studies. * Submission. Extended abstracts (up to 4 pages) of papers to be submitted should be sent to the programme committee chairman. Submission by email is preferred. Otherwise send 3 copies. Submission deadline: April 1, 1997. * Programme committee chairman: Jan Heering, CWI, Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email: jan@cwi.nl. Fax +31 20 592 4199. URL http://www.cwi.nl/~jan/ * Programme committee: Dan Dougherty, Gilles Dowek, Amy Felty, John Field, Mike Gordon, Jan Heering, Karl Meinke, Bernhard Moeller, Tobias Nipkow. 4TH WORKSHOP ON LOGIC, LANGUAGE, INFORMATION AND COMPUTATION (WoLLIC'97) Fortaleza (Ceara'), Brazil August 20-22, 1997 * Topics. Contributions are invited in the form of two-page (600 words) abstracts in all areas related to logic, language, information and computation, including: pure logical systems, proof theory, model theory, algebraic logic, type theory, category theory, constructive mathematics, lambda and combinatorial calculi, program logic and program semantics, nonclassical logics, nonmonotonic logic, logic and language, discourse representation, logic and artificial intelligence, automated deduction, foundations of logic programming, logic and computation, and logic engineering. * Invited speakers. K. Devlin (Moraga,USA), A. Edalat (London,UK), Y. Gurevich (Ann Arbor), P. Johnstone (Cambridge,UK), R. Kossak (New York), D. Lehmann (Jerusalem), M. Moortgat (Utrecht), H. Rott (Konstanz). * Submission. Two-page abstracts, preferably by e-mail to wollic97@di.ufpe.br must be received by June 1st, 1997. * Programme Committee. A. Avron (Tel-Aviv Univ., Israel), J. van Benthem (ILLC, Amsterdam), W. A. Carnielli (UNICAMP, Campinas), N. da Costa (USP, Sao Paulo), I. Hodkinson (Imperial College, London), L. Moss (Indiana Univ., Bloomington), V. de Paiva (Birmingham Univ., UK), T. Pequeno (UFC, Fortaleza), R. de Queiroz (UFPE, Recife), P. Veloso (PUC, Rio). * Further information. Ruy de Queiroz, Departamento de Informatica, Univ. Federal de Pernambuco, CP 7851, Recife, PE 50732-970, Brazil, e-mail: ruy@di.ufpe.br, tel.: +55 81 271 8430, fax: +55 81 271 8438. Tarcisio Pequeno, Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial, Univ. Federal do Ceara', CP 12166, Fortaleza, CE 60455-760, Brazil, e-mail: tarcisio@lia.ufc.br, tel.: +55 85 287 1333, fax: +55 85 288 9845. THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING (CP97) Schloss Hagenberg, Austria October 29 - November 1, 1997 * Topics. Contributions are welcome from any discipline concerned with constraints, including: artificial intelligence, combinatorial algorithms, computational logic, concurrent computation, databases, discrete mathematics, operations research, programming languages, symbolic computation. Contributions are welcome from any domain employing constraints, including: computational linguistics, configuration, decision support, design, diagnosis, graphics, hardware verification, molecular biology, planning, program analysis, qualitative reasoning, real-time systems, resource allocation, robotics, scheduling, software engineering, temporal reasoning, type inference, vision, visualization, user interfaces. Papers are especially welcome that bridge disciplines or combine theory and practice. * Submissions. The submission deadline is April 15, 1997. Submission is by email (up to exceptions). Send a message that contains a uuencoded postscript file preceded by the title page (title, authors, abstract) in plain text to cp97@ps.uni-sb.de, with "submission" as the subject line. * Call for Tutorials. Several tutorials will be held during the conference. Proposals for two-hour tutorials should be sent to the Program Chair until May 15, 1997. * Call for Workshop Proposals. There will be workshops on the last day of the conference. Proposals for one-day or half-day workshops should be sent to the Workshop Chair as soon as possible but no later than May 15, 1997. * Program Committee. Franz Baader, Frederic Benhamou, Alex Brodsky, Yves Caseau, Hoon Hong, John Hooker, Joxan Jaffar, Claude Kirchner, Michael Maher, Kim Marriott, Dave McAllester, Ken McAloon, Bernhard Nebel, Tobias Nipkow, Martin Odersky, Catuscia Palamidessi, Andreas Podelski, Jean-Francois Puget, Francesca Rossi, Thomas Schiex, Bart Selman, Gert Smolka (chair), Peter J. Stuckey, Edward Tsang, Peter van Beek, Mark Wallace. BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT Formal Methods for Industrial Applications (LNCS 1165) Editors Jean-Raymond Abrial, Egon Boerger, Hans Langmaack ISBN: 3-540-61929-1 * This book, including CD-ROM, is the documentation of a unique collaborative effort in evaluating formal methods for usage under industrial constraints: The major techniques for formally supported specification, design and verification of large programs and complex systems are applied to a non-trivial and non-academic problem which is typical for industrial informal requirements specification BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT Algebraic Semantics of Imperative Programs Joseph Goguen and Grant Malcolm MIT Press, 1996 ISBN 0-262-07172-X * This book is a novel self-contained *executable* introduction to formal reasoning about imperative programs, and can be used as a text for a standard course on the semantics of imperative programs. Its primary goal is to improve programming ability by improving intuition about what programs mean and how they run. The semantics of imperative programs is specified in a formal, implemented notation, the language OBJ; this makes the semantics both highly rigorous and simple, and also provides support for the mechanical verification of program properties. This novel approach, in our experience, greatly helps students' intuitions and motivation. The text can also be used as an introduction to universal algebra for computer scientists, and to applications of theorem proving. * The book is intended for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students, and contains many examples and exercises in program verification, all of which can be done in OBJ. The material has been extensively field tested at Oxford University. DESIGN/CPN - COMPUTER TOOL FOR COLORED PETRI NETS * Design/CPN is a tool package supporting the use of Colored Petri Nets. It is distributed free of charge to all kinds of users (including commercial companies). The package is one of the most elaborate Petri net tools available. More than 40 man-years have been used for the design and implementation. The package is used by 200 organization in 30 different countries - including 50 commercial companies. The package is available on three different platforms: Sun Sparc machines (with Solaris), Intel PCs (with Linux), and Macintosh machines (with Mac OS). WORKSHOP ON MANAGEMENT OF SEMISTRUCTURED DATA May 16, 1997, Ventana Canyon Resort, Tucson, Arizona * Topics. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to: data models, query languages, object integration and correspondence, data loading, data conversion, and implementation techniques ranging from storage management to query decomposition and processing. * Submission information. Send a postscript file by e-mail (preferred), by March 31, 1997, to suciu@research.att.com, or 8 hard-copies, 5 pages or less, to Dan Suciu, AT&T Labs, Room 2D-114A, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA. * Program Committee. Serge Abiteboul, Peter Buneman, Sophie Cluet, Alberto Mendelzon, Tova Milo, Guido Moerkotte, and Dan Suciu * Further information: Dan Suciu (see the address above). SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP on FIELD PROGRAMMABLE LOGIC and APPLICATIONS Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of London, UK September 1-3, 1997 * Submission. Contributions are invited for regular presentation, poster and discussion sessions. Prospective authors are invited to submit by 3rd March, 1997 an abstract of around 500 words or, preferably, a full paper to: FPL97 Programme Secretary Department of Computing Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine 180 Queen's Gate London SW7 2BZ United Kingdom, e-mail: fpl97@doc.ic.ac.uk. * Scope. Novel device, machine and system architectures, New software and hardware development tools, Run-time reconfigurable and partially reconfigurable designs, High-level design and compilation research, Industrial applications and experiences, Trade-offs between devices, architectures and technologies, Benchmark comparisons, Smart applications, Custom computers, Hardware/software co-design using field programmable devices, Evolvable and adaptable systems, ASIC emulators, hardware modelers and compiled accelerators, Fault modeling, testability methods and reliability issues, Educational experiences and opportunities. * Program Committee: Doug Amos, Jeff Arnold, Peter Athanas, Stephen Brown, Klaus Buchenrieder, Bernard Courtois, Keith Dimond, Carl Ebeling, Patrick Foulk, Norbert Fristacky, Herbert Gruenbacher, Reiner Hartenstein, Udo Kebschull, Andres Keevallik, Patrick Lysaght, Will Moore, Klaus Mueller-Glaser, Wolfgang Nebel, Peter Noakes, Franco Pirri, Jonathan Rose, Zoran Salcic, Mariagiovanna Sami, Michal Servit, Stephen Smith, Steve Trimberger. POSTDOC POSITION Department of Mathematics and Computing Science Eindhoven University of Technology Publication-style Programming * A postdoc is required to play a leading role in the design and implementation of a programming environment designed to encourage the practice of literate, formal development of programs. The programming environment will be based on a structure editor with the capability of on-the-fly (thus not pre-compiled) definition of abstract programming structures. * Address enquiries about this position to: Roland Backhouse, rolandb@win.tue.nl . * Applications should arrive before 20th December, 1996. POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT * A postdoctoral fellowship is available in applications of modal logic to distributed systems at the School of Computing Science, University of Technology, Sydney for a term of up to two years and six months. The project, supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council, concerns the development of a distributed systems design methodology based on logics of knowledge. Applicants should have, or be about to complete, a Ph.D. in computer science or equivalent research experience, knowledge of formal methods for distributed systems, and expertise in one or more of the following areas: logic of knowledge, temporal logic, refinement calculi, fault-tolerant protocols. For further information, contact Dr Ron van der Meyden (email: ron@socs.uts.edu.au, phone: +61 2 9514 1850, fax: +61 2 9514 1807) Closing date January 17. GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS in Logic, Computer Science, Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Amsterdam * The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam announces the opening of competition for its graduate fellowships for 1997 for interdisciplinary research training in the field of Logic, Computer Science, Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence. * Tuition, stipend. Graduate fellowships include tuition, and a cash stipend. Graduate stipends are normally renewable for four years upon satisfactory performance. Moreover, partial teaching assistant position are possible. ILLC also invites Ph.D.'s with a grant from other sources (e.g. research council) to apply for a supplementary partial ILLC-fellowship. Fellowships are intended to start on January 1, 1997, or, exceptionally, later in the year. * Selection Committee. Krzysztof Apt, Johan van Benthem, Jeroen Groenendijk, Dick de Jongh, Erik-Jan van der Linden. * More information: Dr. Dick de Jongh, tel: + 31 20 5256061, dickdj@fwi.uva.nl. THIRD NORTHEASTERN CONFERENCE ON TOPOLOGICAL METHODS IN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE SEMANTICS University of Southern Maine April 12, 1997 * The Third Northeastern Conference on Topological Methods in Programming Language Semantics will take place on the campus of the University of Southern Maine, Portland, Maine on April 12, 1997. These conferences are devoted to areas of topology which are related to the semantics of programming languages. A key goal is to provide a forum where both topologists and computer scientists can meet and exchange ideas about problems of common interest. * Invited speakers. Abbas Edalat and Regina Tix. * Submission. Titles and abstracts for 25-minute contributed talks are due by March 25, 1997. These should not exceed 18 lines of (12-point) text. Send them by e-mail (preferably) to one of the organizers at the addresses given below. * Organizers. David Briggs (briggs@usm.maine.edu), Bob Flagg (flagg@usm.maine.edu), Ralph Kopperman (rdkcc@cunyvm.cuny.edu) GOEDEL PRIZE, CALL FOR NOMINATIONS * The Goedel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science is sponsored jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computing Theory of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM-SIGACT). This award is presented annually, with the presentation taking place alternately at the International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP) and ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC). The fifth presentation will take place during the 1997 ICALP, July 7--11, 1997 in Bologna, Italy. The Prize includes an award of $5000, sponsored by a grant from PWS Publishers in cooperation with International Thomson Publishing (ITP). * Award committee. Ron Graham, Juris Hartmanis, David Johnson, Gordon Plotkin, Grzegorz Rozenberg (chair), Emo Welzl. * Eligibility. Any research paper (or a series of papers) published (not reprinted) in a recognized refereed journal (by a single author or a team of authors) in the period 1990 -- 1996 is deemed eligible. This extended period is in recognition of the fact that the value of fundamental work cannot always be immediately assessed. The research work nominated for the award should be in the area of theoretical computer science. The term "theoretical computer science" is meant in a broad sense, and encompasses, but is not restricted to, those areas covered by ICALP and STOC. The Award Committee shall have the ultimate authority to decide whether a particular paper is eligible for the Prize. * Nominations. Nominations for the award should be submitted to the Award Committee Chairman at the following address: Professor Grzegorz Rozenberg, Department of Computer Science, Leiden University, Niels Bohrweg 1, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands, email: rozenber@wi.leidenuniv.nl, telephone: +31-71-5277063. To be considered, nominations for the 1997 prize must be received by January 6, 1997. Nominations may be made by any member of the scientific community. A nomination should contain a brief summary of the technical content of the paper and a brief explanation of its significance. A copy of the research paper (or papers) should accompany the nomination. FOURTH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON DEONTIC LOGIC IN COMPUTER SCIENCE Bologna Italy 8-10 January 1998 http://www.cirfid.unibo.it/~deon98 * Topics. (a) Any theoretical aspects of the logical study of normative reasoning, including formal systems of deontic logic, logic of action, or other areas of logic, provided that their connections with deontic logic or normative reasoning are made clear, and including formal analysis of normative concepts and normative systems. (b) Any logical aspects of Artificial-Intelligence models of normative reasoning. (c) Any aspects of the application of logical systems to normative aspects of computer science and public or private administration. * Special Topic. A special workshop session is planned in honor of the late Carlos Alchourron, with an invited talk by David Makinson. * Invited speakers. Donald Nute, David Makinson, Georg Henrik von Wright. * Submission. The submission deadline is 15 May 1998. Send five hard copies or one electronic PostScript version of original, unpublished papers, written in English, and not exceeding 7500 words, to: Hard copies - Paul McNamara, Department of Philosophy, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03820, USA; Postscript version - paulm@christa.unh.edu * Program committee. Henry Prakken (Co-chair), Paul McNamara (Co-chair), Mark Brown, Daniel Bonevac, Jose Carmo, Frank Dignum, John Horty, Andrew Jones, Lars Lindahl, Tom Maibaum, John-Jules Meyer, Giovanni Sartor, Krister Segerberg, Marek Sergot, Lennart Aqvist. * Further Information. Henry Prakken, c/o Faculty of Law, Free University Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel. +31-20-44-46216 Email: henry@rechten.vu.nl; Paul McNamara, see address above.