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Call for Papers
===================

Sixth international Workshop on
Programming Multi-Agent Systems (ProMAS'09)
(http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/agents/PROMAS2009/)

ProMAS'09 is a satellite workshop at AAMAS 2009
Budapest, Hungary, 10-15 May 2009
(http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/)


Even though the contributions of the multi-agent systems (MAS)
community can make a significant impact in the development of open
distributed systems, the techniques resulting from such contributions
will only be widely adopted when suitable programming languages and
tools are available. Furthermore, such languages and tools must
incorporate those techniques in a principled but practical way, so as
to support the ever more complex task of professional programmers, in
particular when the systems have to operate in dynamic environments.

The ProMAS workshop series aims to address the practical programming
issues related to developing and deploying multi-agent systems. In
particular, ProMAS aims to address how multi-agent systems designs or
specifications can be effectively implemented. In its previous
editions, ProMAS constituted an invaluable occasion bringing together
leading researchers from both academia and industry to discuss issues
on the design of programming languages and tools for multi-agent
systems. In particular, the workshop promotes the discussion and
exchange of ideas concerning the techniques, concepts, requirements,
and principles that are important for multi-agent programming
technology.

We encourage the submission of proposals for programming languages and
tools that provide specific programming constructs to facilitate the
implementation of the essential concepts used in multi-agent system
analysis and specifications (e.g., mental attitudes, distribution, and
social interaction). We also welcome submissions describing
significant multi-agent applications, as well as agent programming
tools that allow the integration of agents with legacy systems.
Further, we are particularly interested in approaches or applications
that show clearly the added-value of multi-agent programming, and
explain why and how this technology should be adopted by designers and
programmers both in academia and industry.


Specific topics for this workshop include, but are not limited to:

- Programming Languages for multi-agent systems
- Programming models and abstractions for multi-agent systems
- Extensions of traditional languages for multi-agent programming
- Theoretical and practical aspects of multi-agent programming
- Computational complexity of MAS
- Semantics for multi-agent programming languages
- High-level executable multi-agent specification languages
- Algorithms, techniques, or protocols for multi-agent issues
(e.g., coordination, cooperation, negotiation)
- Agent communication issues in multi-agent programming
- Implementation of social and organisational aspects of MAS
- Formal methods for specification and verification of MAS
- Verification tools for implementations of MAS
- Agent development tools and platforms
- Generic tools and infrastructures for multi-agent programming
- Interoperability and standards for MAS
- Programming mobile agents
- Safety and security for mobile MAS deployment
- Fault tolerance and load balancing for mobile MAS
- Application areas for multi-agent programming languages
- Applications using legacy systems
- Programming MAS for Grid-based applications
- Programming MAS for the Semantic Web
- Deployed (industrial-strength) MAS
- Benchmarks and testbeds for comparing MAS languages and tools
- Integration of agent and mainstream technology

Important Dates:
----------------

** IMPORTANT: These are prospective dates only... **
** Exact dates will be soon finalized by AAMAS Conference **

Paper submission deadline: 25 January, 2009
Notifications of acceptance/rejection: 25 February, 2009
Camera-ready copies due: 12 March, 2009
Workshop Date: 10th/11th May, 2009 (TBA)


Submission Details:
-------------------

Authors should submit their papers via a conference management system.
Papers should be formatted using Springer LNCS style
(http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html) and have a maximum
of 15 pages.

Accepted papers will be published as a technical report and
distributed among participants during the workshop. As was the case
for previous editions of the ProMAS workshop, we are planning to publish
extended versions of selected papers as a volume of the Lecture
Notes in Computer Science series by Springer-Verlag.


Programme Committee:
--------------------

** NOTE: PC Member list incomplete **
** Responses to some invitations still pending **

Matteo Baldoni (University of Torino, Italy)
Juan Botia Blaya (University of Murcia, Spain)
Guido Boella (University of Torino, Italy)
Olivier Boissier (Ecole des Mines de St Etienne, France)
Keith Clark (Imperial College, UK)
Ian Dickinson (HP Labs, UK)
Michael Fisher (University of Liverpool, UK)
Dominic Greenwood (Whitestein Technologies, Switzerland)
James Harland (RMIT, Australia)
Koen Hindriks (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)
Benjamin Hirsch (Technical University of Berlin, Germany)
Jomi Hubner (State University of Blumenau, Brazil)
Joao Leite (University Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
Viviana Mascardi (Genova University, Italy)
John-Jules Meyer (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
David Morley (SRI, USA)
Jorg Muller (Clausthal University of Technology, Germany)
Peter Novak (Clausthal University of Technology, Germany)
Andrea Omicini (University of Bologna, Italy)
Frederic Peschanski (LIP6, France)
Michele Piunti (CNR, Italy)
Alexander Pokahr (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Alessandro Ricci (University of Bologna, Italy)
Birna van Riemsdijk (Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Germany)
Munindar Singh (North Carolina State University, USA)
Kostas Stathis (City University London, UK)
Leon van der Torre (University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg)
Cao-Son Tran (New Mexico State University, USA)
Yingqian Zhang (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)


Organising Committee:
---------------------

Lars Braubach (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Jean-Pierre Briot (LIP6, France)
John Thangarajah (RMIT University, Australia)

Steering Committee:
---------------------

- Rafael Heitor Bordini, University of Durham, United Kingdom
- Dr. Mehdi Dastani, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
- Prof. Jurgen Dix, Clausthal University of Technology, Germany
- Prof. Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni, University of Paris VI, France

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