MARS 2024 - Call for Papers

             Models for Formal Analysis of Real Systems
                             (MARS 2024)

                           April 6th, 2024
                     Affiliated with ETAPS 2024
                     Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

                 http://mars-workshop.org/mars2024/

The MARS workshops bring together researchers from different
communities who are developing formal models of real systems in areas
where complex models occur, such as networks, cyber-physical systems,
hardware/software codesign, biology, etc.
The motivation and aim for MARS stem from the following two observations:

 * Large case studies are essential to show that specification formalisms
   and modelling techniques are applicable to real systems, whereas many
   research papers only consider toy examples or tiny case studies.
 * Developing an accurate model of a real system takes a large amount of
   time, often months or years. In most scientific papers, however,
   salient details of the model need to be skipped due to lack of space,
   and to leave room for formal verification methodologies and results.

The MARS workshops aim at remedying these issues, emphasising modelling
over verification, so as to retain lessons learnt from formal
modelling, which are not usually discussed elsewhere. Examples are:

 * Which formalism was chosen, and why?
 * Which abstractions have been made, and why?
 * How were important characteristics of the system modelled?
 * Were there any complications while modelling the system?
 * Which measures were taken to guarantee the accuracy of the model?
 * How can different modelling approaches be compared on this system?

We thus invite papers that present formal models of real systems, which
may lay the basis for future analysis and comparison.

In addition to the workshop proceedings, the formal models presented at
the workshop will be archived in the MARS Repository, a growing,
diverse collection of realistic benchmarks. The existence of this
repository is a unique feature that makes MARS contributions available
to the wider community, so that others can reproduce experiments,
perform further analyses, and try the same case studies using different
formal methods.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by at least three referees based
on their novelty, relevance, and technical merit. The MARS proceedings
will be published in the open-access EPTCS series (Electronic
Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science).

Submissions must be unpublished and not be submitted for publication
elsewhere. It is accepted, however, to submit a paper about a case
study already mentioned at another conference, workshop, or journal
provided that: (1) the formal model is submitted to MARS 2024 and has
not been published previously, and (2) the MARS submission adds
significant, novel material concerning the formal modelling work.

Submissions must be in English and submitted in PDF format via
EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mars2024).
Contributions are limited to 12 pages EPTCS style (not
counting references and the appendices). Appendices (of arbitrary
length, included in the proceedings) can be added to present all
details of a formal model.

We welcome submissions that come together with one or many formal
models that can be processed by some tool (e.g., timed automata for
Uppaal,  definitions and proofs for Isabelle/HOL, etc.). Such models
should be complete (i.e., self-contained) and made available under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
License. The models associated to accepted papers will be made
available in the MARS Repository. A URL to the formal models should be
provided along with the submission.

IMPORTANT DATES (AoE)

 * Submission: Monday, 15 January 2024
 * Notification: Saturday, 24 February 2024
 * Final version: Monday, 11 March 2024
 * Workshop: Saturday, 6 April, 2024

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Arnd Hartmanns (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
John Hatcliff (Kansas State University, USA)
Frédéric Lang (INRIA Grenoble Rhône-Alpes, France, co-chair)
Lina Marsso (University of Toronto, Canada)
Sjouke Mauw (University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg)
Franco Mazzanti (ISTI-CNR, Italy)
Ulrik Nyman (Aalborg University, Denmark)
Dave Parker (University of Oxford, UK)
Anne Remke (WWU Münster, Germany)
Matthias Volk (TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands, co-chair)

VENUE AND TRAVEL INFORMATION

MARS 2024 is part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and
Practice of Software (ETAPS 2024). Information about venue and
travelling in/to Luxembourg can be found at the webpage of ETAPS.

WORKSHOP ORGANISERS AND CONTACT

All questions about the workshop should be emailed to Frédéric Lang
and Matthias Volk at [email protected].