Call for Papers
Important Dates

Deadlines are 4pm EST.

Abstract submission: January 24, 2016 (Sunday)
Paper submission: January 29, 2016 (Friday)
Author response period: March 23-25, 2016 (Wednesday-Friday)
Author Notification: April 15, 2016 (Friday)
Conference: July 17-23, 2016
Submission URL

http://cav16.cs.toronto.edu/cav16/
Scope

CAV 2016 is the 28th in a series dedicated to the advancement of the theory and practice of computer-aided formal analysis methods for hardware and software systems. CAV considers it vital to continue spurring advances in hardware and software verification while expanding to new domains such as biological systems and computer security. The conference covers the spectrum from theoretical results to concrete applications, with an emphasis on practical verification tools and the algorithms and techniques that are needed for their implementation. The proceedings of the conference will be published in the Springer LNCS series. A selection of papers will be invited to a special issue of Formal Methods in System Design and the Journal of the ACM.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

Algorithms and tools for verifying models and implementations
Algorithms and tools for system synthesis
Mathematical and logical foundations of verification and synthesis
Specifications and correctness criteria for programs and systems
Deductive verification using proof assistants
Hardware verification techniques
Program analysis and software verification
Software synthesis
Hybrid systems and embedded systems verification
Compositional and abstraction-based techniques for verification
Probabilistic and statistical approaches to verification
Verification methods for parallel and concurrent systems
Testing and run-time analysis based on verification technology
Decision procedures and solvers for verification and synthesis
Applications and case studies in verification and synthesis
Verification in industrial practice
New application areas for algorithmic verification and synthesis
Formal models and methods for security
Formal models and methods for biological systems

Paper Submission

NEW this year: Double-blind submissions

Submissions on a wide range of topics are sought, particularly ones that identify new research directions. CAV 2016 is not limited to topics discussed in previous instances of the conference. Authors concerned about the appropriateness of a topic may communicate by electronic mail with the conference chairs prior to submission.

As explained below, CAV 2016 will follow a lightweight double-blind review process. Submissions that are not “blinded” will be rejected without review.

Submissions will be in two categories: Regular Papers and Tool Papers.

Regular Papers should not exceed 15 pages in LNCS format, not counting references and appendices. Authors can include a clearly marked appendix at the end of their submissions, that is exempt from the page limit restrictions. However, the reviewers are not obliged to read the contents of these appendices. These papers should contain original research and sufficient detail to assess the merits and relevance of the contribution. Papers will be evaluated on basis of a combination of correctness, technical depth, significance, novelty, clarity, and elegance. We welcome papers on theory, case studies and comparisons with existing experimental research, as well as combinations of new theory with experimental evaluation. A strong theoretical paper is not required to have an experimental component. On the other hand, strong papers reproducing and comparing existing results experimentally do not require new theoretical insights.
Tool Papers should not exceed 6 pages, not counting references. These papers should describe system and implementation aspects of a tool with a large (potential) user base (experiments not required, rehash of theory strongly discouraged). Papers describing tools that have already been presented (in any conference) will be accepted only if significant and clear enhancements to the tool are reported and implemented.

Unlike last year, there is no separate Short Paper category.

Prior to the registration deadline, the authors will register their paper by uploading information on the submission title, abstract (of at most 300 words), authors, topics, and conflicts to the conference web site. Papers that are not registered on time will be rejected.

We encourage authors to provide any supplementary material that is required to support the claims made in the paper, such as detailed proofs or experimental data. These materials should be uploaded at submission time, as a single pdf or a tarball, not via a URL. It will be made available to reviewers only after they have submitted their
first-draft reviews and hence need not be anonymized. Reviewers are under no obligation to look at the supplementary material but may refer to it if they have questions about the material in the body of the paper.

Simultaneous submission to other conferences with proceedings or submission of material that has already been published elsewhere is not allowed.

The review process will include a feedback/rebuttal period where authors will have the option to respond to reviewer comments. The PC chairs may solicit further reviews after the rebuttal period.

Papers must be submitted in PDF format here.

Lightweight Double-Blind Reviewing Process

CAV 2016 will employ a lightweight double-blind reviewing process. This means that committee members will not have access to authors’ names or affiliations as they review a paper; however, authors’ names will be revealed once reviews have been submitted and online discussion has begun.

To facilitate this, submitted papers must adhere to two rules:

author names and institutions must be omitted, and
references to authors’ own related work should be in the third person (e.g., not “We build on our previous work …” but rather “We build on the work of …”).

The purpose of this process is to help the PC and external reviewers come to an initial judgement about the paper without bias, not to make it impossible for them to discover the authors if they were to try. Nothing should be done in the name of anonymity that weakens the submission or makes the job of reviewing the paper more difficult (e.g., important background references should not be omitted or anonymized). In addition, authors should feel free to disseminate their ideas or draft versions of their paper as they normally would. For instance, authors may post drafts of their papers on the web or give talks on their research ideas.

A document answering frequently asked questions about submissions and the double-blind review process can be found here.
Artifact Evaluation

Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit their artifacts for evaluation by a special committee.
Organizers

Chairs
Swarat Chaudhuri, Rice University, USA
Azadeh Farzan, University of Toronto, Canada

CAV Award Committee
Ahmed Bouajjani (Chair), Univ. Paris Diderot (Paris 7)
Tom Ball , Microsoft Research
Kim G. Larsen, Aalborg University
Natarajan Shankar, SRI International

Program Committee
Rajeev Alur, University of Pennsylvania
Christel Baier, Technische Universität Dresden
Clark Barrett, New York University
Roderick Bloem, Graz University of Technology
Pavol Cerny, University of Colorado, Boulder
Adam Chlipala, MIT
Alessandro Cimatti, Fondazione Bruno Kessler
Loris D’Antoni, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Constantin Enea, Univ. Paris Diderot (Paris 7)
Javier Esparza, Technische Universität München
Kousha Etessami, University of Edinburgh
Susanne Graf, VERIMAG
Orna Grumberg, Technion
Franjo Ivancic, Google
Somesh Jha, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Ranjit Jhala, University of California, San Diego
Joost-Pieter Katoen, RWTH Aachen University
Zachary Kincaid, University of Toronto
Laura Kovacs, Chalmers University of Technology
Viktor Kuncak, EPFL
Marta Kwiatkowska, Oxford University
Shuvendu Lahiri, Microsoft Research
Akash Lal, Microsoft Research
Pete Manolios, Northeastern University
Kenneth McMillan, Microsoft Research
David Monniaux, VERIMAG
Kedar Namjoshi, Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent
David Parker, University of Birmingham
Corina Pasareneau, Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley/NASA Ames
Ruzica Piskac, Yale University
Andreas Podelski, University of Freiburg
Shaz Qadeer, Microsoft Research
Andrey Rybalchenko, Microsoft Research
Mooly Sagiv, Tel Aviv University
Sriram Sankaranarayanan, University of Colorado, Boulder
Sanjit Seshia, University of California, Berkeley
Natasha Sharygina, University of Lugano
Sharon Shoham, Academic College of Tel-Aviv Yaffo
Armando Solar-Lezama, MIT
Fabio Somenzi, University of Colorado, Boulder
Serdar Tasiran, Koç University
Mahesh Viswanathan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Bow-Yaw Wang, Academia Sinica
Thomas Wies, New York University
Lenore Zuck, University of Illinois, Chicago

External Review Committee
Aws Albarghouthi, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Jade Alglave, University College London
Sagar Chaki, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
Hana Chockler, King’s College London
Byron Cook, University College London and Amazon
Thao Dang, CNRS
Cezara Dragoi, INRIA
Deepak D’Souza, Indian Institute of Science
Pierre Ganty, IMDEA
Ganesh Gopalakrishnan, University of Utah
Arie Gurfinkel, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
Jan Hoffman, Carnegie Mellon University
William Hung, Synopsys
Joxan Jaffer, National University of Singapore
Naoki Kobayashi, The University of Tokyo
Igor Konnov, Vienna University of Technology
Hillel Kugler, Bar-Ilan University
Rupak Majumdar, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems
Sayan Mitra, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Peter Müller, ETH Zurich
Tim Nelson, Brown University
Jan Otop, University of Wrocław
Gennaro Parlato, University of Southampton
Madhusudan Parthasarathy, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Doron Peled, Bar Ilan University
Pavithra Prabhakar, Kansas State University
Arjun Radhakrishna, University of Pennsylvania
Zvonimir Rakamaric, University of Utah
Nishant Sinha, IBM Research, Bangalore
Ana Sokolova, University of Salzburg
Viktor Vafeiadis, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems
Martin Vechev, ETH, Zurich
Helmut Veith, Vienna University of Technology
Willem Visser, Stellenbosch University
Tomas Vojnar, Brno University of Technology
Thomas Wahl, Northeastern University
Eran Yahav, Technion
Karen Yorav, IBM Haifa Research Lab
Greta Yorsh, Queen Mary University of London
Florian Zuleger, Vienna University of Technology

Workshop Chair
Zachary Kincaid, University of Toronto, Canada

Artifact Evaluation Chair
Aws Albarghouthi, University of Wisconsin, USA

Publicity Chair
Roopsha Samanta, IST, Austria

Sponsorship Chair
Pavol Cerny, University of Colorado, Boulder

Steering Committee
Michael Gordon, University of Cambridge, UK
Orna Grumberg, Technion, Israel
Aarti Gupta, Princeton University, USA
Kenneth McMillan, Microsoft Research, USA