Fourth Workshop on Hot Topics in Autonomic Computing (HotAC IV)
June 15, 2009, Barcelona, Spain
http://www.aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/HotACIV

The fourth Workshop on Hot Topics in Autonomic Computing (HotAC IV) will
bring together a broad range of researchers from computer systems,
databases, networking, machine learning, and other fields to discuss new
ideas and developments in managing complex large-scale systems. The goal
of the workshop is to promote community-wide discussion of potentially
high-impact ideas in improving the manageability and reliability of
computing systems. HotAC IV will be held on June 15, 2009, the first day
of the 6th International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC 2009).

The focus of this year's workshop is on experimentation in autonomic
computing. Through a highly interactive workshop, our goal is to define
the critical role that experimentation can play in shaping the young and
evolving field of autonomic computing, and to outline promising research
directions.

Attendance at the workshop is limited and will be by invitation only. If
you are interested in attending, please submit a high-quality abstract on
one of the listed themes or some other theme related to experimentation in
autonomic computing. The abstract should summarize the challenging and
important problem being addressed, your ideas or findings, and the
potential implications to the evolving field of autonomic computing.
Abstracts are limited to two pages in length. Topics of interest include
(but are not limited to):

* Measurement methodology and best practices for complex systems
* Methodology and best practices for empirical modeling of complex
systems (including self-managing systems)
* Testing and validating self-managing systems
* Metrics for evaluating the performance, reliability, and adaptivity
of self-managing systems
* Benchmarks for self-managing systems
* Foundations of experimental autonomic computing (design of
experiments, active learning, and others)
* Automation of trial-and-error approaches for system management
* Lessons from experimental computer science that can be applied to
self-managing systems
* New real-world data and observations about self-managing systems
* Empirical studies that give a deeper understanding of the
manageability needs of complex systems
* Empirical studies that strengthen or contradict previous studies or
established theory in autonomic computing

Rather than publishing workshop proceedings, the attendees will contribute
to a written report on the key research challenges in this field, to be
published in one of the main computer science magazines (such as the
Communications of the ACM, IEEE Computer, or USENIX ;login), and to a
discussion summary that will be presented at ICAC 2009.

Important Dates
---------------
Abstract submission: March 26, 2009, 11:59 CST (GMT-6)
Notification of acceptance: April 20, 2009
Workshop: June 15, 2009

Workshop Co-Chairs
------------------
Shivnath Babu, Duke University
Fabian Bustamante, Northwestern University

Program Committee
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Ricardo Bianchini, Rutgers University
Surajit Chaudhuri, Microsoft Research
Raj Jain, Washington University in St. Louis
Jeff Kephart, IBM Research
Ratul Mahajan, Microsoft Research
Daniel Menasce, George Mason University
Karsten Schwan, Georgia Institute of Technology
Charles Sutton, University of California, Berkeley