[fg-arc] Joint Call for Contributions to Satellite Events of STAF 2016: Doctoral Symposium, Projects Showcase, Workshops - Deadlines Extended

[Mayerhofer Tanja]

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2nd Joint Call for Contributions to STAF 2016 Satellite Events 
Extended Deadlines
STAF 2016 - Software Technologies: Applications and Foundations
July 4-8, 2016 
TU Wien, Vienna, Austria 
http://staf2016.conf.tuwien.ac.at
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Software Technologies: Applications and Foundations (STAF) is a federation of leading conferences on software technologies. In 2016, STAF brings together five top conferences ECMFA, ICGT, ICMT, SEFM, TAP, as well as the Transformation Tool Contest (TTC), and will host eight workshops, a doctoral symposium, and a projects showcase event.

Now we are calling for contributions to the satellite events of STAF 2016, in particular, the STAF 2016 Doctoral Symposium, Projects Showcase Event, and Workshops. The submission deadlines of several of these events have been extended to May 2, 2016.

Furthermore, we announce the availability of student registration grants that will (partially) cover the registration fees of students for participating in STAF 2016. More details on the student registration grants may be found on the STAF 2016 website http://staf2016.conf.tuwien.ac.at/student-registration-grants.

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STAF 2016 Doctoral Symposium
http://staf2016.conf.tuwien.ac.at/call-doctoral-symposium/
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***** Extended submission deadline: May 2, 2016 *****
***** Award for the best Doctoral Symposium paper *****
***** Availability of student registration grants *****

The goal of the Doctoral Symposium is to provide a forum in which PhD students can present their work in progress. The symposium supports students by providing independent and constructive feedback about their already completed and, more importantly, planned research work. The symposium will be accompanied by prominent experts who will actively participate in critical discussions.

Relevant fields within Software Engineering include (but are not limited to):
- Models: reasoning, execution, management, testing and validation
- Model transformations: paradigms, algorithms, development, applications, tools
- Graph theories
- Domain Specific Languages
- Proofs and Testing: debugging, frameworks, experiments, case studies
- Model-Driven Engineering

Any topic of interest for the conferences that will take place within STAF 2016 is highly welcomed.

--- Submission
Submissions exclusively authored by the PhD student are invited from students who have settled on a PhD topic. We do accept papers on both initial stage (first or second year) and mature stage (third year, or later) of research. The authors shall clearly indicate their stage of research maturity in a footnote to be added to the paper title.

Each submission will be reviewed by at least 3 experts based on originality, significance, correctness and clarity. Submissions should describe research-in-progress that is meant to lead to a PhD dissertation, using the following structure:
  - Problem: The problem the research intends to solve, the target audience of this research, and a motivation of why the problem is important and needs to be solved.
  - Related work: A review of the relevant related work with an emphasis of how the proposed approach is different and what advantages it has over the existing state of the art.
  - Proposed solution: A description of the proposed solution and which other work (e.g., in the form of methods or tools) it depends on.
  - Preliminary work: A description of the work to-date and results achieved so far.
  - Expected contributions: A list of the expected contributions to both theory and practice.
  - Plan for evaluation and validation: A description of how it will be shown that the work does indeed solve the targeted problem and is superior to the existing state of the art (e.g., prototyping, industry case studies, user studies, experiments).
  - Current status: The current status of the work and a planned timeline for completion.

Contributions must not exceed 10 pages in Springer LNCS format (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0) and must be submitted via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dsstaf16

All accepted submissions to the Doctoral Symposium at STAF 2016 will be published in a post-conference volume of CEUR (http://ceur-ws.org/) and will be submitted for inclusion in DBLP (http://dblp.uni-trier.de/).

--- Best Paper Award
The best Doctoral Symposium paper will be awarded at the STAF 2016 conference.

--- Important Dates
Paper submission: May 2, 2016 	
Author notification: June 1, 2016 	
STAF 2016 Doctoral Symposium: July 4, 2016

--- Chairs
- Catherine Dubois (ENSIIE, France)
- Francesco Parisi Presicce (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)

--- Program Committee
- Luciano Baresi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
- Sandrine Blazy, Université de Rennes 1, France
- Achim D. Brucker, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
- Catherine Dubois, ENSIIE, France (co-chair)
- Martin Gogolla, University of Bremen, Germany
- Reiko Heckel, University of Leicester, United Kingdom
- Dimitris Kolovos, University of York, United Kingdom
- Francesco Parisi Presicce, University of Rome, Italy (co-chair)
- Antonio Vallecillo, Universidad de Malaga, Spain
- Manuel Wimmer, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

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STAF 2016 Projects Showcase
http://staf2016.conf.tuwien.ac.at/call-projects-showcase/
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The Projects Showcase event at STAF 2016 provides an opportunity for researchers and practitioners (from both academia and industry) involved in ongoing or completed research projects related to foundations and applications of software technologies to share results, experiences, ideas, on-going work, and knowledge that can lead to fruitful inter-project collaboration.

The Projects Showcase welcomes contributions disseminating the objectives and results of national and international research projects, including outcomes of specific deliverables, advances beyond the state of the art, overall innovation potential, exploitation approach and (expected) impact, marketing value, barriers and obstacles.

--- Paper Organization
Each submission should follow the structure below and clearly indicate:
  - name and acronym of the project;
  - source and amount of funding as well as overall total budget (if possible);
  - consortium of the project or involved people;
  - link to the official project web site (if available);
  - current status of the project and its duration;
  - objectives of the project;
  - final (expected) outcomes of the project overall;
  - the following information (or part of):
	o description of the (expected) outcomes of specific work package(s);
	o description of the (expected) outcomes of specific task(s);
	o description of the (expected) outcomes of specific deliverable(s);
	o (expected) advances beyond the state of the art;
	o overall (expected) innovation potential;
	o exploitation approach and (expected) impact;
	o barriers and obstacles, and (expected) marketing value;
  - references to related work and related projects.

--- Paper Format
Submitted papers must be formatted according to  Springer's LNCS template (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0), must be in PDF format, must not exceed 8 pages in length, and must include the authors' names, affiliations and contact details.

All submissions must be in English. All submissions will be peer reviewed by three members of the international Program Committee of the Projects Showcase track. The reviewers will assess the completeness, the quality, and the relevance of the submissions for the target audience.

--- Submission
Submissions will be managed via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=staf2016projectsshow 

Accepted submissions will be included in the Projects Showcase proceedings, which will be published as a DPLP-indexed CEUR Workshop Proceedings (http://ceur-ws.org/) volume. At least one author of each accepted submission needs to register for STAF and present the paper during the Projects Showcase track.

--- Important Dates
Paper submission: May 2, 2016
Author notification: May 30, 2016
Camera-ready version: June 20, 2016
STAF 2016 Projects Showcase: July 7, 2016

--- Chairs
- Dimitris Kolovos (University of York, UK)
- Nicholas Matragkas (University of Hull, UK)

--- Program Committee
- Alessandra Bagnato (Softeam, France)
- Goetz Botterweck (Lero, Ireland)
- Giuliano Casale (Imperial College London, UK)
- Antonio Cicchetti (Malardalen University, Sweden)
- Anthony Cleve (University of Namur, Belgium)
- Antonio Garcia-Dominguez (University of York, UK)
- Pedro Malo (Uninova, Portugal)
- Istvan Rath (Budapest University of Technology and Economics and IncQuery Labs, Hungary)
- Tom Ritter (Fraunhofer, Germany)
- Tijs Van Der Storm (CWI, Netherlands)

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STAF 2016 Workshops
http://staf2016.conf.tuwien.ac.at/workshops/
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This year, STAF is proud to feature the following interesting workshops. For more information on the individual workshop including the call for papers, please visit their websites.

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BigMDE: Scalable Model Driven Engineering
http://www.big-mde.eu
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As Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is increasingly applied to larger and more complex systems, the current generation of modelling and model management technologies are being pushed to their limits in terms of capacity and efficiency. As such, additional research and development is imperative in order to enable MDE to remain relevant with industrial practice and to continue delivering its widely-recognised productivity, quality, and maintainability benefits. The aim of this workshop is to provide a venue where developers and users of modelling and model management languages and tools can present problems and solutions related to topics such as working with large models, collaborative modelling (version control, collaborative editing), transformation and validation of large models, model fragmentation and modularity mechanisms, efficient model persistence and retrieval, models and model transformations on the cloud, and visualization techniques for large models. 

Organizers:
- Dimitris Kolovos (University of York, England)
- Davide Di Ruscio (University of L'Aquila, Italy)
- Nicholas Matragkas (University of Hull, England)
- Jesús Sánchez Cuadrado (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain)
- István Ráth (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary)
- Massimo Tisi (Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France)

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DataMod: From Data to Models and Back
http://pages.di.unipi.it/datamod/edition-2016/
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DataMod 2016 aims at bringing together practitioners and researchers from academia, industry and research institutions interested in the combined application of computational modelling methods with data-driven techniques from the areas of knowledge management, data mining and machine learning. Modelling methodologies of interest include automata, agents, Petri nets, process algebras and rewriting systems. Application domains include social systems, ecology, biology, medicine, smart cities, governance, education, software engineering, and any other field that deals with complex systems and large amounts of data. Papers can present research results in any of the themes of interest for the symposium as well as application experiences, tools and promising preliminary ideas. Papers dealing with synergistic approaches that integrate modelling and knowledge management/discovery or that exploit knowledge management/discovery to develop/syntesise system models are especially welcome.

Organizers:
- Luca Tesei (University of Camerino, Italy)
- Roberto Trasarti (ISTI-CNR, Italy)

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FORECAST: FORmal methods for the quantitative Evaluation of Collective Adaptive SysTems
http://forecast.disia.unifi.it/
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 Collective Adaptive Systems (CAS) consist of a large number of spatially distributed heterogeneous entities with decentralised control and varying degrees of complex autonomous behaviour that may be competing for shared resources even when collaborating to reach common goals. It is important to carry out thorough quantitative modelling and analysis and verification of their design to investigate all aspects of their behaviour before they are put into operation. This requires combinations of formal methods and applied mathematics which moreover scale to large-scale CAS. The primary goal of this workshop is to raise awareness in the software engineering and formal methods communities of the particularities of CAS and the design and control problems which they bring.

Organizers:
- Maurice H. ter Beek (ISTI-CNR Pisa, Italy)
- Michele Loreti (University of Florence, Italy)

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GCM: Graph Computation Models
http://gcm2016.inf.uni-due.de/
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 Graphs are common mathematical structures which are visual and intuitive. They constitute a natural and seamless way for system modeling in science, engineering and beyond, including computer science, life sciences, business processes, etc. Graph computation models constitute a class of very high level models where graphs are first-class citizens. They generalize classical computation models based on strings (e.g., Chomsky grammars) or on trees (e.g., term rewrite systems). Their mathematical foundation, in addition to their visual nature, facilitates the specification, validation and analysis of complex systems. A variety of computation models have been developed using graphs and rule-based graph transformation. These models include features of programming languages and systems, paradigms for software development, concurrent calculi, local computations and distributed algorithms, and biological or chemical computations. The aim of GCM 2016 is to bring together researchers interested in all aspects of computation models based on graphs and graph transformation techniques.

Organizer:
- Barbara König (Universität Duisburg-Essen, Germany)

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HOFM: Human-Oriented Formal Methods: From Readability to Automation
http://hofm2016.wordpress.com/
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 While designing and applying formal methods, computer scientists have dominantly focused on two factors, only: firstly, the method must be precise and sound and secondly, it must be mathematically concise and aesthetic. Other important characteristics such as simplicity or learnability are ignored too often. These nonfunctional properties, however, are key attributes of usability and user satisfaction. If usability is compromised, methods are not fit for the purpose of documenting, reproducing and communicating key design and realization decisions, or analysis results. For these reasons, many engineers and practitioners largely reject formal methods and formal specification languages as "too hard to understand and use in practice" while admitting that they are powerful and precise. Practitioners across numerous domains are increasingly interested in formal domain-specific modelling, simulation and validation. While there are many applications of formal methods to analyze human-machine interaction and to construct user interfaces, the field of application of human factors to the analysis and to the optimization of formal methods area is almost unexplored. This workshop aims to bring together researchers, engineers and practitioners from academia and industry to baseline the state of the art in this increasingly important domain.

Organizers:
- Heinz Schmidt (RMIT University, Australia)
- Maria Spichkova (RMIT University, Australia)

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MELO: Model-Driven Engineering, Logic and Optimization
http://www.disim.univaq.it/melo16/
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 The widespread application of MDE in all kinds of domains has triggered the need of new techniques to solve optimization, visualization, verification, or configuration problems at the model level. Instead of reinventing the wheel, most of these problems could be solved by re-expressing the modeling problem as a logic programming problem, an optimization or a search problem. For instance, verification (satisfiability) of large static models can be addressed by re-expressing the model as a constraint satisfaction problem to be solved by state-of-the-art constraint solvers. Similarly, logic programming can benefit from the integration of MDE to raise the abstraction level at which the problem is described, improve the separation of concerns by using different model-based views at different levels of detail, achieve tool independence, and increase reusability. As well, optimization techniques can benefit from closer connections to MDE principles, e.g., to help develop generic solutions to optimization problems The main goal of this workshop is to bring together three different communities: the MDE community, the logic programming community, and the optimization community, to explore how each community can benefit from the techniques of the other.

Organizers:
- Jordi Cabot (Open University of Catalonia, Spain)
- Richard Paige (University of York, England)
- Alfonso Pierantonio (University of L'Aquila, Italy)

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SEMS: Software Engineering Methods in Spreadsheets
http://spreadsheetlab.org/sems-16/
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 Spreadsheets are heavily used in industry as they are easy to create and evolve through their intuitive visual interface. They are often initially developed as simple tools, but, over time, spreadsheets can become increasingly complex, up to the point they become too complicated to maintain. Indeed, in many ways, spreadsheets are similar to "professional" software: both concern the storage and manipulation of data, and the presentation of results to the user. But unlike in "professional" software, activities like design, implementation, and maintenance in spreadsheets have to be undertaken by end-users, not trained professionals. This makes applying methods and techniques from other software technologies a challenging task. The role of SEMS is to explore the possibilities of adopting successful methods from other software contexts to spreadsheets. Some, like testing and modeling, have been tried before and can be built upon. For methods that have not yet been tried on spreadsheets, SEMS will serve as a platform for early feedback.

Organizers:
- Jácome Cunha (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
- Daniel Kulesz (University of Stuttgart, Germany)
- Sohon Roy (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands)

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VeryComp: Formal to Practical Software Verification and Composition
http://verycomp2016.disim.univaq.it
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Nowadays, modern applications are increasingly realized as distributed systems composing existing pieces of software that autonomically cooperates to achieve a common goal. As a matter of fact, this calls for new software composition paradigms, and patterns, modeling and verification methods that are practical and usable on one hand and formal on the other. Despite the great interest in practical Software Composition and Formal Verification in their isolation, no common and integrated approaches have been established yet. VeryComp 2016 aims at attracting contributions related to the subject at different levels, from modelling to verification and analysis, from componentization to composition. Foundational contributions, as well as concrete application experiments are sought.

Organizers:
- Marco Autili (University of L'Aquila, Italy)
- Massimo Tivoli (University of L'Aquila)
- Luca Ferrucci (ISTI-CNR, Italy)
- Manuel Mazzara (Innopolis University, Russia)
- Davide Bresolin (University of Bologna, Italy)
- Marcello Bersani (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
- Marisol Garcia-Valls (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)