Important dates

Submission deadline 8 January 2016 (Anywhere on Earth)
Notification of acceptance / rejection 12 February 2016
Final version due 24 February 2016
Symposium 7-8 April 2016
Aims and scope

The 23rd edition of the SPIN symposium aims at bringing together practitioners and researchers interested in symbolic and state space-based techniques for the validation and analysis of software systems. Techniques and empirical evaluations based on explicit representations of state spaces, as implemented in the SPIN model checker or other tools, or techniques based on the combination of explicit representations with other representations, are the focus of this symposium.

We particularly welcome papers describing the development and application of state space exploration techniques in testing and verifying embedded software, safety-critical software, enterprise and web applications, and other interesting software platforms. The symposium aims to encourage interactions and exchanges of ideas with all related areas in software engineering.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Formal verification techniques for automated analysis of software
Algorithms and storage methods for explicit-state model checking
Theoretical and algorithmic foundations of model checking
Model checking for programming languages and code analysis
Directed model checking using heuristics
Parallel or distributed model checking
Verification of timed and probabilistic systems
Model checking techniques for biological systems
Formal verification techniques for concurrent software
Formal verification techniques for embedded software
Abstraction and symbolic execution techniques in relation to software verification
Static analysis for state space reduction
Combinations of enumerative and symbolic techniques
Analysis for modelling languages, such as UML/state charts
Property specification languages, including temporal logics
Automated testing using state space and/or path exploration
Derivation of specifications, test cases, or other useful material from state spaces
Combination of model checking techniques with other analyses
Modular and compositional verification techniques
Case studies of interesting systems or with interesting results
Engineering and implementation of software verification tools
Benchmark and comparative studies for formal verification tools
Insightful surveys or historical accounts on topics of relevance to the symposium

SPIN 2016 will be colocated with the 19th European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS 2016).
An overview of the previous SPIN symposia can be found at http://spinroot.com/spin/Workshops.
Paper Submission and Publication
The proceedings of SPIN will be published in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. A selection of papers will be invited to a special issue of the International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT).

With the exception of survey and history papers, the papers should contain original work which has not been submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere. Submissions should adhere to the LNCS format.


LNCS Information for Authors
We solicit three kinds of papers:

Technical Research Papers: At most 18 pages in LNCS format. All accepted technical papers will be included in the proceedings.
Idea Papers: At most 6 pages in LNCS format that describe novel research directions in software model checking. New idea submissions are intended to describe well-defined research ideas that are at an early stage of investigation and may not be fully validated.
Tool Presentations: This kind of submission should consist of two parts: the first part is at most a 6-page description of the tool. If accepted, this part will be published in the symposium proceedings. The second part should describe an informal plan for an oral presentation of the tool. This part will not be included in the proceedings and may also be in the form of a five minute video. Tools must be available online for reviewers to inspect.

All papers that conform to submission guidelines will be peer-reviewed by members of the program committee. Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of originality, importance of contribution, soundness, evaluation, quality of presentation, and appropriate comparison to related work.

At least one author of each accepted paper must attend the symposium and present the paper.