Call for Papers: 2013 Refinement Workshop at IFM 2013 in Turku

11 June 2013, colocated with IFM 2013 at Turku

Refinement is one of the cornerstones of a formal approach to software engineering: the process of developing a more detailed design or implementation from an abstract specification through a sequence of mathematically-based steps that maintain correctness with respect to the original specification.

The aim of this BCS FACS Refinement Workshop, is to bring together people who are interested in the development of more concrete designs or executable programs from abstract specifications using formal notations, tool support for formal software development, and practical experience with formal refinement methodologies.

The purpose of the workshop is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, and discussion of common ground and key differences.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Simulation techniques
• Foundations and semantics
• Case studies (specification and verification)
• Compositional and modular reasoning
• Object-orientation
• Time, Probability, Hybrid Systems
• Specification notations
• Programming models
• Verification and tool support

Proceedings

Submissions will be reviewed, workshop proceedings will be published in Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, like the 2011 edition.

A special issue of Formal Aspects of Computing, consisting of developments and extensions of the 2013 workshop papers, has been agreed. Papers will be invited for a later submission deadline (tentatively: 15 Sep 2013). These will be refereed in the usual fashion prior to acceptance by the journal.

Key Dates

• Abstract Submission: 21 March 2013
• (updated:) Paper Submission: 28 March 2013
• Notification: 18 April 2013
• Workshop: 11 June 2013
• Formal Aspects of Computing submissions: 15 September 2013

Submissions

History of the workshop

This 16th Refinement Workshop continues a long tradition in refinement workshops run under the auspices of the British Computer Society (BCS) FACS special interest group. Running since 1988, previous refinement workshops have been held at Cambridge, London, Bath etc.

In 1998 the BCS refinement workshop was combined with the Australasian Refinement Workshop to form the International Refinement Workshop, hosted alongside Formal Methods Pacific 1998 at The Australian National University. In 2002, the Refinement Workshop was held as an FME workshop in Copenhagen. This and six subsequent editions (Surrey, Macau, Oxford, Turku, Eindhoven, Limerick) have had proceedings in ENTCS or EPTCS and a subsequent journal special issue (most in Formal Aspects of Computing, one in Science of Computer Programming). For more details, see here.

The Workshop Webpage is available from www.refinenet.org.uk

Program committee

• Eerke Boiten, University of Kent, UK (co-chair)
• John Derrick, University of Sheffield, UK (co-chair)
• Steve Reeves, University of Waikato, NZ (co-chair)
• Richard Banach, University of Manchester, UK
• Luis Barbosa, University of Minho, PT
• Ana Cavalcanti, University of York, UK
• Steve Dunne, UK
• Lindsay Groves, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ
• Stefan Hallerstede, Aarhus University, DK
• Wim Hesselink, University of Groningen, NL
• Stephan Merz, Inria Nancy and LORIA, France
• Marcel Oliveira, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil
• Gerhard Schellhorn, Augsburg University, Germany
• Steve Schneider , University of Surrey, UK
• Emil Sekerinski, McMaster University, Canada
• Graeme Smith, University of Queensland, Australia
• Helen Treharne, University of Surrey, UK
• Heike Wehrheim, University of Paderborn, Germany