FM 2011

=FM 2011: 17TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON FORMAL METHODS= fm2011.lero.ie

June 20–24, 2011

Lero, Limerick, Ireland

FM 2011 is the seventeenth in a series of symposia organized by Formal Methods Europe, an independent association whose aim is to stimulate the use of, and research on, formal methods for software development. The symposia have been notably successful in bringing together innovators and practitioners in precise mathematical methods for software and systems development, industrial users as well as researchers. Submissions are welcomed in the form of original papers on research and industrial experience, proposals for workshops and tutorials, entries for the exhibition of software tools and projects, and reports on ongoing doctoral work.

The FM 2011 Symposium will be based around the theme

Formal Methods Come of Age

It will have the goal of highlighting and celebrating advances and maturity in formal methods research, education, and deployment via tool support and industrial best practice, and their role in a variety of industries, domains, and in certification and assurance. FM 2011 particularly welcomes papers on experience with practical applications of formal methods in industrial and research settings, experimental validation of tools and methods as well as construction and evolution of formal methods tools.

The broad topics of interest for FM 2011 are:


 * Formal methods in practice: industrial applications of formal methods, experience with introducing formal methods in industry, tool usage reports, experiments with challenge problems. Authors are encouraged to explain how the use of formal methods has overcome problems, lead to improvements in design or provided new insights.
 * Tools for formal methods: advances in automated verification and model‐ checking, integration of tools, environments for formal methods, experimental validation of tools. Authors are encouraged to demonstrate empirically that the new tool or environment advances the state of the art.
 * Role of formal methods in software and systems engineering; development processes with formal methods, usage guidelines for formal methods, method integration. Authors are encouraged to demonstrate that process innovations lead to qualitative or quantitative improvements.
 * Theoretical foundations: all aspects of theory related to specification, verification, refinement, and static analysis. Authors are encouraged to explain how their results contribute to the solution of practical problems with methods or tools.

PAPER SUBMISSION
Papers will be evaluated by the Programme Committee according to their originality, significance, soundness, quality of presentation and relevance with respect to the main issues of the symposium. There are 2 categories of paper:


 * Regular papers not exceeding 15 pages including appendices using Springer LNCS format. Authors of papers reporting experimental work are strongly encouraged to make their experimental results available for use by reviewers.
 * Tools papers not exceeding 4 pages should describe the tool and its contribution. Authors of tools papers should make their tool available for use by reviewers.

Reviewers will be asked to take account of any available data or tools in assessing the contribution of the paper. There will be a short rebuttal phase during which authors may provide a short response to the reviews of their paper before final decisions are made.

Accepted papers will be published in the Symposium Proceedings, to appear in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (subject to confirmation by Springer). Submitted papers should have not been submitted elsewhere for publication, should be in Springer's format.

INDUSTRY DAY
FM 2011 will include an Industry Day that will be dedicated to sharing experience with using formal methods in industrial environments. The Industry Day Chairs will solicit presentations from industry. Abstracts will appear in the Symposium Proceedings.

WORKSHOPS
We welcome proposals for one‐day or one-and-a-half-day workshops in subjects related to FM 2011. In particular, but not exclusively, we encourage proposals for workshops on various application domains.

TUTORIALS
We are soliciting proposals for full‐day or half-day tutorials. The tutorial contents can be selected from a wide range of topics that reflect the conference themes and provide clear utility to practitioners. Each proposal will be evaluated on importance, relevance, timeliness, audience appeal and past experience and qualification of the instructors.

DOCTORAL SYMPOSIUM
PhD students are invited to submit papers describing their work (in progress). The authors of the accepted papers will present their work at the symposium in the presence of the members of an Examination Committee, who will act as "friendly examiners", providing detailed feedback. Students whose submissions are accepted will be able to participate in the Doctoral Symposium.

IMPORTANT DATES

 * Submission of Technical Papers: January 10th, 2011
 * Submission of Tutorial and Workshop Proposals: January 24th, 2011
 * Notification for Technical Papers: March 8th, 2011
 * Notification for Tutorial and Workshop Proposals: March 22nd, 2011
 * Information on the format of workshop and tutorial proposals and on Doctoral Symposium submissions will be made available on the Symposium website.


 * GENERAL CHAIR
 * Mike Hinchey, Lero, Ireland


 * PC CHAIRS
 * Michael Butler, University of Southampton, UK
 * Wolfram Schulte, Microsoft Research, USA

To be finalised
 * PROGRAMME COMMITTEE


 * WORKSHOP CHAIRS
 * Emil Vassev, Lero, Ireland
 * David Sinclair, Lero, Ireland


 * TUTORIALS CHAIR
 * Nico Plat, West Consulting, The Netherlands


 * INDUSTRY DAY CHAIR
 * Andrew Butterfield, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland


 * DOCTORAL CHAIR
 * Norah Power, Lero, Ireland


 * PUBLICITY CHAIR
 * Jonathan Bowen, Museophile Limited, UK