3rd International ABZ 2012 Conference
Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B, VDM, Z

June 18-22, 2012
CNR, Pisa, Italy
(in conjunction with IFM 2012)


http://abzconference.org/
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IMPORTANT DATES
Workshop proposal submissions: October 15, 2011
Workshop proposal notifications: November 30, 2011
Paper submission: January 14, 2012
Extended abstracts submission (for short presentations): February 3, 2012
Notification of acceptance/rejection: March 1, 2012
Final Version due: March 20, 2012
Tutorial proposal submissions: to be announced
Main ABZ 2012 conference: June 19-22, 2012

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CONFERENCE CHAIRS
For questions concerning ABZ 2012, contact:

Elvinia Riccobene, University of Milan, Italy (elvinia.riccobene@unimi.it)
Steve Reeves, University of Waikato, New Zealand (stever@cs.waikato.ac.nz).

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RATIONALE

The ABZ 2012 conference is organized in Pisa (Italy) in
conjunction with iFM 2012 and is being held in honor of Prof.
Egon Börger's 65th birthday.

The ABZ conference is dedicated to the cross-fertilization of
five related state-based and machine-based formal methods,
Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B, VDM and Z, that share
a common conceptual foundation and are widely used in both
academia and industry for the design and analysis of hardware
and software systems. It builds on the success of the first ABZ
conference held in London in 2008, where the ASM, B and Z
conference series merged into a single event, and the success of
the second ABZ conference held in Orford (Canada) where the
Alloy community joined the event. The novelty of the 3rd
international event is the inclusion of the VDM community in the
ABZ conference series.

Contributions are solicited on all aspects of the theory and
applications of ASMs, Alloy, B, VDM, Z and related approaches in
software/hardware engineering, including the development of
tools and industrial applications. The program spans from
theoretical and methodological foundations to practical
applications, emphasizing system engineering methods and tools
that are distinguished by mathematical rigour and have proved to
be industrially viable. The main goal of the conference is to
contribute to the integration of accurate state- and
machine-based system development methods, clarifying their
commonalities and differences to better understand how to
combine different approaches for accomplishing the various tasks
in modeling, experimental validation, and mathematical
verification of reliable high-quality hardware/software systems.

Although organized logistically as a single, integral event,
editorial control of the joint conference remains vested in five
separate program committees, which will respectively determine
its ASM, Alloy, B, VDM and Z content, to be presented in
parallel conference tracks with a schedule to allow the
participants to switch between the sessions. Proposals are
invited for workshops and tutorials to take place the day before
the main conference.

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SUBMISSION POLICY, INSTRUCTIONS, CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Two kinds of contributions are invited:

* Research papers: full papers of not more than 14 pages in LNCS
format, which have to be original, unpublished and not
submitted elsewhere.

* Short presentations of work in progress, industrial experience
reports and tool demonstrations. This is an excellent
opportunity for Ph.D. students to present and validate their
work in progress. It is also an interesting option for
industrial practitioners who sometimes face too many constraints
to prepare a full paper. An extended abstract of not more than 4
pages is expected and will be reviewed. A volume of accepted
extended abstracts will be made available as a Technical Report
with an ISBN number, and a 1-page abstract of each presentation
will be published in the Proceedings.

Contributions should be submitted electronically in PDF at the
ABZ 2012 conference Easy-Chair web site
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=abz2012
The papers must be prepared using the SPRINGER LNCS style
http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0

All accepted papers will be published in a volume of Springer's
LNCS series. The LNCS volume of the Conference Proceedings will
be distributed at the conference. Journal Special Issue: an
improved version of a selected number of contributions will be
published in a special issue of the journal Science of Computer
Programming.

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INVITED SPEAKERS

Prof. Egon Börger, University of Pisa, Italy
Prof. Muffy Calder, University of Glasgow, UK
Prof. Ian J. Hayes, University of Queensland, Australia

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WORKSHOP PROPOSALS

Workshop/Tutorial will be associated to the main event iFM/ABZ.
Proposals are solicited in areas related to the conference
topics. In particular workshops on challenging new, emerging
fields are sought. Proposals should be sent to the workshop
chairs: Maurice ter Beek, ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy
(maurice.terbeek@isti.cnr.it) Angelo Gargantini, University of
Bergamo, Italy (angelo.gargantini@unibg.it)

The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2011.
Notifications will be sent by November 30, 2011.

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GENERAL CHAIRS
John Derrick, University of Sheffield, UK
Stefania Gnesi, ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy

TRACK CHAIRS
ASM Track Chair: Elvinia Riccobene, University of Milan, Italy
(elvinia.riccobene@unimi.it)

B Track Chair: Michael Leuschel, University of Düsseldorf,
Germany (leuschel@cs.uni-duesseldorf.de)

VDM Track Chair: John Fitzgerald, Newcastle University, UK
(john.fitzgerald@newcastle.ac.uk)

Z & Alloy Track Chair: Steve Reeves, University of Waikato, New
Zealand (stever@cs.waikato.ac.nz)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Jean-Raymond Abrial, Marseille, France
Yamine Ait-Ameur, IRIT-ENSEEIHT, Toulouse, France
Rob Arthan, Lemma 1 Ltd., UK
Nick Battle, Fujitsu Services, UK
Juan Bicarregui, STFC, UK
Dines Bjorner, DTU Informatics, Denmark
Eerke Boiten, University of Kent, UK
Jonathan P. Bowen, Museophile Limited, UK
Ana Cavalcanti, University of York, UK
David Deharbe, Federal University of RIo Grande do Norte, Brazil
John Derrick, University of Sheffield, UK
Juergen Dingel, Queen's University, Canada
Andriy Dunets, Universität Augsburg, Germany
Steve Dunne, University of Teesside, UK
Kerstin Eder, University of Bristol, UK
Roozbeh Farahbod, Researcher at Defence R&D Canada, Canada
Kathi Fisler, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA
John Fitzgerald, Newcastle University, UK
Marc Frappier, University of Sherbrooke, Canada
Vincenzo Gervasi, University of Pisa, Italy
Uwe Glaesser, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Anthony Hall, independent consultant, UK
Stefan Hallerstede, University of Aarhus, Denmark
Klaus Havelund, Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA, USA
Ian J. Hayes, University of Queensland, Australia
Rob Hierons, Brunel University, UK
Thai Son Hoang, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Jeremy Jacob, University of York, UK
Cliff Jones, Newcastle University, UK,
Sarfraz Khurshid, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Régine Laleau, Univesity of Paris-Est, France
Peter Gorm Larsen, Aarhus School of Engineering, Denmark
Daniel Le Berre, Université d'Artois, France
Thierry Lecomte, ClearSy, France
Michael Leuschel, University of Düsseldorf, Germany
Darko Marinov, University of Illinois, USA
Christophe Métayer, Systerel, France
José Oliveira, Minho University, Portugal
Marie-Laure Potet, IMAG Grenoble, France
Andreas Prinz, Agder University College, Norway
Alexander Raschke, University of ULM, Germany
Steve Reeves, University of Waikato, New Zealand
Burkhardt Renz, University of Applied Sciences Gieben-Friedberg, Germany
Elvinia Riccobene, University of Milan, Italy
Ken Robinson, Univ. of New South Wales, Australia
Shin Sahara, TAO Bears LLC and CSK, Japan
Thomas Santen, European Microsoft Innovation Center, Aachen, Germany
Patrizia Scandurra, University of Bergamo, Italy
Gerhard Schellhorn, University of Augsburg, Germany
Klaus-Dieter Schewe, SCCH, Linz, Austria
Steve Schneider, University of Surrey, UK
Colin Snook, University of Southampton, UK
Kevin Sullivan, University of Virginia, USA
Mana Taghdiri, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Bernard Thalheim, University of Kiel, Germany
Margus Veanes, Microsoft Research, USA
Marcel Verhoef, CHESS BV, Netherlands
Kirsten Winter, University of Queensland, Australia

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VENUE

The conference will take place in Pisa at the Auditorium of the
CNR Research Area. Address: Via Moruzzi, 1, 56124 Pisa,
Tuscany, Italy Further details on the venue will be announced on
the workshop site
http://ifm-abz.isti.cnr.it/page21/indexifm.html

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SUPPORTED BY
ASM User Group
Alloy User Community
Association de Pilotage des Conférences B
Overture Community (VDM)
Z User Group