[TYPES/announce] CFP: Mathematically Structured Functional Programming

[Conor McBride]

[The following CFP is relevant to types-announce as types provide a
 key language in which to express the mathematical structure of
 functional programs. Moreover, the workshop is affiliated to the
 EU TYPES project.]

                      CALL FOR PAPERS

                        Workshop on
      Mathematically Structured Functional Programming
                         MSFP 2006                                

              Kuressaare, Estonia, 2 July 2006

             http://cs.ioc.ee/mpc-amast06/msfp/


              a satellite workshop of MPC 2006  
          a "small workshop" of the TYPES project


Background

Something wonderful happened when monads arrived in Haskell: some
human mathematics explaining the structure of certain computational
phenomena became a mechanical means to implement those phenomena. It's
a good way to go about functional programming - to dig out the
mathematical structure underlying a problem and set it to work!
There's more where monads came from, and we want it. This new workshop
is about getting it.

In recent years, a diverse array of mathematical structures has
appeared in our programs: monads dualise to comonads and generalise to
Freyd categories aka 'arrows'; 'container' types have a generalised
polynomial structure supporting generic programming, not to mention a
differential calculus; isomorphisms from 'high school algebra' are
used to search libraries and repair type errors; coalgebras give
structure to recursion; the list goes on... MSFP is broad in scope,
covering the extraction of functionality from structure wherever it
can be found. It complements the remit of its host conference,
Mathematics of Program Construction, by seeking to enrich the language
and toolset available for specifications and programs alike. It is
also a "small workshop" of the FP6 IST coordination action TYPES.



Invited speakers

Andrzej Filinski, Københavns Universitet
John Power, University of Edinburgh


Important dates

    * Submission of papers: 10 April 2006
    * Notification of authors: 8 May 2006
    * Camera-ready version: 5 June 2006


Topics

Submissions are welcome on, but by no means restricted to, topics from
the following partially computed coinductive list:

    * structured effectful computation
    * structured recursion
    * structured tree and graph operations
    * structured syntax with variable binding
    * structures for datatype-genericity
    * structures for search
    * structured representations of functions
    * structured manipulation of mathematical structure
    * structured <thunk> in functional programming

Authors concerned about the suitability of a topic are very welcome to
contact Conor McBride, ctm(at)cs.nott.ac.uk.


Submission and publication

Papers in pdf not exceeding 15 pages and adhering to the eWiC style
must be submitted by 10 April 2006 via an online submission webpage.

Papers must report previously unpublished work and not be submitted
concurrently to another conference with refereed proceedings. Accepted
papers must be presented at the workshop by one of the authors.

The proceedings of MSFP 2006 will be published in the Electronic
Workshops in Computing (eWiC) series of the British Computer Society,
http://ewic.bcs.org/.

After the workshop, the authors of the best papers will be invited to
submit revised and expanded versions to a special issue of the Journal
of Functional Programming from Cambridge University Press.



Programme committee

Yves Bertot, INRIA Sophia Antipolis
Marcelo Fiore, University of Cambridge
Masahito Hasegawa, Kyoto University
Graham Hutton, University of Nottingham
Paul Levy, University of Birmingham
Andres Löh, Universitt Bonn
Christoph Lüth, Universitt Bremen
Conor McBride, University of Nottingham (co-chair)
Marino Miculan, Università degli Studi di Udine
Randy Pollack, University of Edinburgh
Amr Sabry, Indiana University
Tarmo Uustalu, Institute of Cybernetics (co-chair)


Main conferences

MSFP 2006 is a satellite workshop of the 8th International Conference
on Mathematics on Program Construction, MPC 2006, to take place 3-5
July.

Co-located with MPC 2006, the 11th International Conference on
Algebraic Methodology and Software Technology, AMAST 2006, will follow
5-8 July.


Venue

Kuressaare (pop. 16000) is the main town on Saaremaa, the
second-largest island of the Baltic Sea. Kuressaare is a charming
seaside resort on the shores of the Gulf of Riga highly popular with
Estonians as well as visitors to Estonia.

The scientific sessions of MPC/AMAST 2006 will take place at Saaremaa
Spa Hotel Meri, one among the several new spa hotels in the town. The
social events will involve a number of sites, including the
14th-century episcopal castle. Accommodation will be at Saaremaa Spa
Hotels Meri and Rüütli.

To get to Kuressaare and away, one must pass through Tallinn
(pop. 402000), Estonia's capital city. Tallinn is famous for its
picturesque medieval Old Town, inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage
List.


TYPES support

MSFP 2006 is an official workshop of the EU FP6 IST coordination
action TYPES. Participants from TYPES sites/subsites may use project
funds to cover their travel and participation.


Local organizers

MPC/AMAST 2006 is organized by Institute of Cybernetics, a research
institute of Tallinn University of Technology.

The local organizers are Tarmo Uustalu (chair), Monika Perkmann, Juhan
Ernits, Ando Saabas, Olha Shkaravska, Kristi Uustalu.

Contact email address of the local organizers: mpc06(at)cs.ioc.ee.