From dale at lix.polytechnique.fr Mon Mar 9 10:47:02 2009 From: dale at lix.polytechnique.fr (Dale Miller) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 15:47:02 +0100 Subject: [POPLmark] possible INRIA post doc in mechanizing meta-theory Message-ID: <74ed3c9f0903090747x18da0e86o9d0491531256a78a@mail.gmail.com> As part of INRIA's 2009 campaign for recruiting postdocs, the Parsifal team is looking to hire someone on the following topic: Mechanizing the meta-theory of programming and logics Research Context: Inference rules are commonly used in the specification of the dynamic and static semantics of programming languages: in particular, both structural operational semantics and typing are commonly defined via inference rules over relational judgments. Traditional approaches to reasoning about such specifications first encode them into a functional or denotational setting and then reason with the encodings via theorem provers designed for (constructive) mathematics. The Parsifal team has been developing an alternative approach to reasoning about such specifications that does not encode them: instead, reasoning is done directly on the relational specifications. Many of the intensions aspects of computation, such as bound variables and resources, can then be handled directly using basic notions from proof theory. Activities for the Post Doc: The postdoc will work with prototype interactive and automatic provers currently underdevelopment within the team and their colleagues (see links below). These provers range from model checkers to general purpose theorem provers for logics that involve induction, coinduction, and elements of higher-order quantification. The postdoc will be expected to develop sizable examples within the general area of mechanized meta-theory, to help in justifying or redesigning the meta-logics, and to construct a comprehensive methodology for dealing with mechanized meta-theory. Required knowledge and background: Computational logic; basic background in sequent calculus and lambda-calculus; and programming skills in high-level languages such as ML, OCaml, Prolog, and lambda Prolog. For more specifics on the prototype systems mentioned above, see: http://slimmer.gforge.inria.fr/bedwyr/ http://slimmer.gforge.inria.fr/tac/ http://abella.cs.umn.edu/ Further particulars: Duration: 12 month Starting date: Between 1 Oct 2009 and 1 Dec 2009 Working place: Ecole Polytechnique, LIX, Equipe Parsifal The position is an INRIA-postdoc position and candidate must fulfill the formal requirements found at http://www.inria.fr/travailler/opportunites/postdoc/postdoc.en.html. In particular, the candidate must have held a doctorate or Ph.D. for less than one year before the recruitment date. If the Ph.D. is not defended at the application date, you should clearly point out the defense date and the composition of thesis jury. Applications should be made via this web site and by sending all application material also to Dale Miller (dale at lix.polytechnique.fr) before 22 May 2009. (Late applications may also be considered if the position is not filled.) See also: http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/parsifal/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/pipermail/poplmark/attachments/20090309/cea26f3d/attachment.htm From francesco.zappa_nardelli at inria.fr Tue Mar 10 06:30:31 2009 From: francesco.zappa_nardelli at inria.fr (Francesco Zappa Nardelli) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:30:31 +0000 Subject: [POPLmark] locally-nameless and the Ott tool Message-ID: <690088B9-9023-4786-B32F-C2FE124BD802@inria.fr> Dear all, we recently released a new version of the Ott tool ( http:// www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/ott/ ). This version includes a new experimental backend that supports alpha-equivalence for a subset of the Ott metalanguage (single binders only, no auxiliary functions, for the Coq theorem prover only). Terms and relations are compiled in locally-nameless style with cofinite quantification, as popularised in Engineering formal metatheory by Aydemir, Chargu?raud, Pierce, Pollack and Weirich. Documentation and examples (including STLC, Fsub, and the nu-calculus of Pitts and Stark) are available from http://moscova.inria.fr/~zappa/ projects/ln_ott/ and the project web-site. Feedback and comments would be very welcome. Best wishes Peter and Francesco From baydemir at cis.upenn.edu Wed Mar 11 15:58:06 2009 From: baydemir at cis.upenn.edu (Brian Aydemir) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:58:06 -0500 Subject: [POPLmark] LNgen: Tool support for locally nameless representations Message-ID: Dear all, Stephanie Weirich and I would like to announce LNgen, a prototype tool for generating Coq code for the infrastructure associated with a locally nameless representation. This work builds upon our work with Chargu?raud, Pierce, and Pollack on Engineering Formal Metatheory, where we described a locally nameless strategy for representing languages with binding. LNgen uses a subset of the Ott specification language [1] as its input language. Currently, it supports the definition of syntax with single binders. Compared to the recently announced locally nameless backend for Ott [2], LNgen does not handle the definition of relations, but it does generate a large collection of "infrastructure" lemmas and their proofs, e.g., facts about substitution. You can read more about the tool and download it from http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~baydemir/papers/lngen/ Cheers, Brian and Stephanie [1] http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/ott/ [2] http://moscova.inria.fr/~zappa/projects/ln_ott/ From urban at mathematik.uni-muenchen.de Wed Mar 25 15:28:17 2009 From: urban at mathematik.uni-muenchen.de (urban@mathematik.uni-muenchen.de) Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:28:17 +0100 Subject: [POPLmark] WMM'09 call for papers Message-ID: <20090325202817.8ewfbbu18g0oksgc@webmail.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de> Call for Papers 4rd Informal ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Mechanizing Metatheory Edinburgh, Scotland Co-located with ICFP'09. http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~sweirich/wmm/ Important Dates * Submission deadline: 19 June 2009 * Author Notification: 24 July 2009 * Workshop: 4 September 2009 Workshop Description Researchers in programming languages have long felt the need for tools to help formalize and check their work. With advances in language technology demanding deep understanding of ever larger and more complex languages, this need has become urgent. There are a number of automated proof assistants being developed within the theorem proving community that seem ready or nearly ready to be applied in this domain-yet, despite numerous individual efforts in this direction, the use of proof assistants in programming language research is still not commonplace: the available tools are confusingly diverse, difficult to learn, inadequately documented, and lacking in specific library facilities required for work in programming languages. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers who have experience using automated proof assistants for programming language metatheory, and those who are interested in using tool support for formalizing their work. One starting point for discussion will be the obstacles that hinder mechanization (whether they be pragmatic or technical), and what users and developers can do to overcome them. Format The workshop will consist of presentations by the participants, selected from submitted abstracts. It will focus on providing a fruitful environment for interaction and presentation of ongoing work. Participants are invited to submit working notes, source files, and abstracts for distribution to the attendees, but as the workshop has no formal proceedings, contributions may still be submitted for publication elsewhere. (See the SIGPLAN republication policy for more details.) Scope The scope of the workshop includes, but is not limited to: * Tool demonstrations: proof assistants, logical frameworks, visualizers, etc. * Libraries for programming language metatheory. * Formalization techniques, especially with respect to binding issues. * Analysis and comparison of solutions to the POPLmark challenge. * Examples of formalized programming language metatheory. * Proposals for new challenge problems that benchmark programming language work. Submission Guidelines Email submissions to urbanc AT in.tum.de. Submissions should be no longer than two pages in PDF and printable on A4 sized paper. Persons for whom this poses a hardship should contact the program chair. Conference Organization Program Committee * Nick Benton, Microsoft Research Cambridge * Olivier Danvy, University of Aarhus * Daniel Licata, Carnegie Mellon University * Francois Pottier, INRIA Paris-Rocquencourt * Christian Urban, TU Munich (chair) Workshop Organizers * Karl Crary, Carnegie Mellon University * Michael Norrish, National ICT Australia * Stephanie Weirich, University of Pennsylvania Previous Workshops * Victoria, 2008 * Freiburg, 2007 * Portland, 2006 ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.