FM 2024: First Call for Papers

       International Symposium on Formal Methods

               9-13 September 2024

         Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

            https://www.fm24.polimi.it

               Twitter/X : @FMsymp

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

FM 2024 is the 26th international symposium on Formal Methods in a series organized by Formal Methods Europe (FME), an independent association whose aim is to stimulate the use of, and research on, formal methods for software development. The FM symposia have been successful in bringing together researchers and industrial users around a program of original papers on research and industrial experience, workshops, tutorials, reports on tools, projects, and ongoing doctoral research. FM 2024 will be both an occasion to celebrate and a platform for enthusiastic researchers and practitioners from a diversity of backgrounds to exchange their ideas and share their experiences.

IMPORTANT DATES

Abstract Submission:   April 15th, 2024

Full Paper Submission: April 19th, 2024

Paper Notification:    June 10th, 2024

Final Version:         July 1st, 2024

Conference: September 9th – 13th, 2024   

TOPICS OF INTEREST

FM 2024 will highlight the development and application of formal methods in a wide range of domains including trustworthy AI, software, computer-based systems, systems-of-systems, cyber-physical systems, security, human-computer interaction, manufacturing, sustainability, energy, transport, smart cities, healthcare and biology. We particularly welcome papers on techniques, tools, and experiences in interdisciplinary settings. We also welcome papers on experiences of applying formal methods in industrial settings, and on the design and validation of formal method tools.

The topics of interest for FM 2024 include, but are not limited to:

Interdisciplinary formal methods:

Techniques, tools, and experiences demonstrating the use of formal methods in interdisciplinary settings. Formal methods in practice include: industrial applications of formal methods, experience with formal methods in industry, tool usage reports, experiments with challenge problems. The authors are encouraged to explain how formal methods overcame problems, led to improved designs, or provided new insights.

Tools for formal methods:

Advances in automated verification, model checking, and testing with formal methods, tools integration, environments for formal methods, and experimental validation of tools. The authors are encouraged to demonstrate empirically that the new tool or environment advances the state of the art.

Formal methods in software and systems engineering: Development processes with formal methods, usage guidelines for formal methods, and method integration. The authors are encouraged to evaluate process innovations with respect to qualitative or quantitative improvements. Empirical studies and evaluations are also solicited.

Theoretical foundations of formal methods:

All aspects of theory related to specification, verification, refinement, and static and dynamic analysis. The authors are encouraged to explain how their results contribute to the solution of practical problems with formal methods or tools.

Embedded Systems Track:

FM 2024 will feature a special track on Embedded Systems organized in collaboration with ACM SIGBED. This track will focus on theories, methods, and tools that are formal in nature and applied in the embedded, real-time, and cyber-physical systems.

We are particularly interested in submissions that apply formal methods on autonomous systems, including AI- and non-AI-based perception, decision, and control algorithms, compilers, middleware, operating systems, virtual machines, communication protocols, and hardware. Example application domains are increasingly automated vehicles, robots, and drones.

We solicit various categories of papers

- Regular Papers (max 15 pages)

- Long tool papers (max 15 pages)

- Case study papers (max 15 pages)

- Tool demonstration papers (max 6 pages)

- Tutorial papers (max 22 pages)

All page limits are in LNCS format and do not include references and appendices.

For all papers, an appendix can provide additional material such as details on proofs or experiments. The appendix is not part of the page count and is not guaranteed to be read or taken into account by the reviewers. Thus, it should not contain information necessary for the understanding and evaluation of the presented work. Papers will be accepted or rejected in the category in which they were submitted and will not be moved between categories.

At least one author of an accepted paper is expected to present the paper at the conference as a registered participant.

SOLICITING: TUTORIAL PAPERS

Tutorial papers present ideas with a focus on pedagogy over technical innovation. By being written in a broadly-accessible way, a tutorial will clarify important ideas, bring new researchers into the community, and serve as a bridge to practitioners. A good tutorial paper is not expected to have any technical innovation at all. Instead, we will evaluate it on its pedagogy: Is it crisp and clear? Is it readable? Does it help build good intuitions? Is it comfortable to follow? Will it help useful ideas reach a much broader audience?

While tutorials about tools are a canonical fit, tutorials about techniques are also welcome. Prospective authors who want to suggest tutorials of other kinds are welcome to contact the chairs to get guidance. In general, we are very open-minded about what tutorials are about, provided they are about topics of interest to the formal methods community.

Tutorial papers can be at most 22 pages in LNCS format. There is no minimum length; the tutorial should be as long as necessary to be effective, but should avoid filler. Tools should include links and descriptions of how to run them. Papers are welcome to include an appendix, which reviewers will read at their discretion. (We understand that detailed screen-shots, tool descriptions, etc., are best relegated to an appendix, and reviewers will make a good-faith effort to examine these.) Authors of a paper need not be the creators of the technical concepts it describes. The paper must provide clear references to the original technical content. The presentation must be novel relative to the published literature.

Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Authors of accepted papers will be given a presentation slot in the tutorials period preceding the main conference. The tutorial paper submission should specify the desired length of the presentation, which can be a half or full day. They will also be invited (but are not required) to give a five-minute presentation during the main conference, to give their tutorial wider notice.

Authors can also request a tutorial presentation slot without an accompanying paper by submitting a short tutorial proposal instead. Priority will be given, however, to tutorials accompanied by full tutorial papers.

ORGANIZERS:

* General Chairs:

Matteo Pradella

Matteo Rossi

* PC Chairs:

André Platzer

Kristin-Yvonne Rozier

* Embedded Systems Track Chairs:

Wanli Chang

Alessandro Cimatti

* Tutorial Papers Chairs:

Shriram Krishnamurthi

Luigia Petre

* Industry Day Chairs:

Oksana Tkachuk

Tim Willemse

(partial) List of PC Members:

Erika Abraham    RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Dalal Alrajeh    Imperial College London, UK

Luis Soares Barbosa    University of Minho, Portugal

Gilles Barthe    Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy, Germany

Dirk Beyer    LMU Munich, Germany

Pablo Castro    Universidad Nacional de Rio Cuarto, Argentina

Ana Cavalcanti    University of York, UK

Milan Česka    Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic

Marsha Chechik    University of Toronto, Canada

Alessandro Cimatti    Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy

Alexandre Duret-Lutz    EPITA’s Research Lab (LRDE), France

Marie Farrell    The University of Manchester, UK

Arie Gurfinkel    University of Waterloo, Canada

Anne E. Haxthausen    Technical University of Denmark, Denmark

Marieke Huisman    University of Twente, Netherlands

Reiner Hähnle    TU Darmstadt, Germany

Peter Höfner    Australian National University, Australia

Einar Broch Johnsen    University of Oslo, Norway

Joost-Pieter Katoen    RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Peter Lammich    University of Twente, Netherlands

Martin Leucker    University of Luebeck, Germany

Mieke Massink    CNR-ISTI, Italy

Anastasia Mavridou    SGT Inc. / NASA Ames Research Center, USA

Annabelle McIver    Macquarie University, Australia

Claudio Menghi    University of Bergamo, Italy

Stefan Mitsch    Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Zvonimir Rakamaric    Amazon Web Services (AWS), USA

Philipp Rümmer    University of Regensburg, Germany

Cristina Seceleanu    Mälardalen University, Sweden

Jun Sun    Singapore Management University, Singapore

Stefano Tonetta    Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy

Virginie Wiels    ONERA / DTIS, France

Huan Xu    University of Maryland, USA

Naijun Zhan    Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Shufang Zhu    University of Oxford, UK