[TYPES/announce] 6th International PhD School in Formal Languages andApplications

Wed Sep 6 17:49:22 EDT 2006

Apologies for multiple posting!

Please, forward the announcement to whoever may be interested in it.

Thanks.

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6th INTERNATIONAL PhD SCHOOL IN FORMAL LANGUAGES AND APPLICATIONS 2006-2008

Rovira i Virgili University
Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics
Tarragona, Spain

http://www.grlmc.com

Awarded with the Mark of Quality (Mención de Calidad) by the Spanish Ministry for Education and Science, MCD2003-00820

With the support of Xerox Corporation

Courses and professors 1st term (March–July 2007)

Languages - Alexander Okhotin (Turku)
Combinatorics on Words - Tero Harju (Turku)
Regular Grammars - Masami Ito (Kyoto)
Context-Free Grammars - Manfred Kudlek (Hamburg)
Context-Sensitive Grammars - Victor Mitrana (Tarragona)
Mildly Context-Sensitive Grammars - Henning Bordihn (Potsdam)
Finite Automata - Sheng Yu (London ON)
Pushdown Automata - Hendrik Jan Hoogeboom (Leiden)
Turing Machines - Holger Petersen (Stuttgart)
Varieties of Formal Languages - Jean-Éric Pin (Paris)
Semigroups for the Working Theoretical Computer Scientist - Stuart Margolis (Ramat Gan)
Computational Complexity - Markus Holzer (Munich)
Descriptional Complexity of Automata and Grammars - Detlef Wotschke (Frankfurt)
Communication Complexity - Carsten Damm (Göttingen)
Patterns - Kai Salomaa (Kingston ON)
Infinite Words - Juhani Karhumäki (Turku)
Partial Words - Francine Blanchet-Sadri (Greensboro NC)
Two-Dimensional Languages - Kenichi Morita (Hiroshima)
Grammars with Regulated Rewriting - Jürgen Dassow (Magdeburg)
Contextual Grammars - Carlos Martín-Vide (Tarragona)
Parallel Grammars - Henning Fernau (Trier)
Grammar Systems - Erzsébet Csuhaj-Varjú (Budapest)
Automata Networks - Pál Dömösi (Debrecen)
Tree Automata and Tree Languages - Magnus Steinby (Turku)
Tree Adjoining Grammars - James Rogers (Richmond IN)
Term Rewriting Systems - Nachum Dershowitz (Tel Aviv)
Automata and Logic - Franz Baader (Dresden)
Formal Languages and Concurrent Systems - Jetty Kleijn (Leiden)
Petri Net Theory and Its Applications - Hsu-Chun Yen (Taipei)
Graph Grammars and Graph Transformation - Hans-Jörg Kreowski (Bremen)
Restarting Automata - Friedrich Otto (Kassel)

Courses and professors 2nd term (September–December 2007)

Parameterized Complexity - Jörg Flum (Freiburg, Germany)
Modern Complexity Theory - Mitsunori Ogihara (Rochester NY)
Fuzzy Formal Languages - Claudio Moraga (Dortmund)
Cellular Automata - Martin Kutrib (Giessen)
DNA Computing: Theory and Experiments - Natasha Jonoska (Tampa FL)
Splicing Systems - Paola Bonizzoni (Milan)
Aqueous Computing - Tom Head (Binghamton NY)
Biomolecular Nanotechnology - Max Garzon (Memphis TN)
Quantum Automata - Jozef Gruska (Brno)
Symbolic Dynamics and Automata - Christiane Frougny (Paris)
Unification Grammars - Shuly Wintner (Haifa)
Context-Free Grammar Parsing - Giorgio Satta (Padua)
Probabilistic Parsing - Mark-Jan Nederhof (Groningen)
Categorial Grammars - Michael Moortgat (Utrecht)
Grammatical Inference - Colin de la Higuera (Saint-Étienne)
Mathematical Foundations of Learning Theory - Satoshi Kobayashi (Tokyo)
Natural Language Processing with Symbolic Neural Networks - Risto Miikkulainen (Austin TX)
Weighted Automata - Manfred Droste (Leipzig)
An Introduction to the Theory of Finite Transducers - Jacques Sakarovitch (Paris)
Sequential Pattern Matching - Thierry Lecroq (Rouen)
Indexing and Query Evaluation for Text Retrieval - Justin Zobel (Melbourne)
Combinatorial Algorithms in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology - Raffaele Giancarlo (Palermo)
Mathematical Evolutionary Genomics - David Sankoff (Ottawa ON)
Cryptography - Valtteri Niemi (Nokia, Helsinki)
String Complexity - Lucian Ilie (London ON)
Data Compression - Wojciech Rytter (Warsaw)
Image Compression - Jarkko Kari (Turku)
Algebraic Techniques in Language Theory - Zoltán Ésik (Tarragona)
Topics in Asynchronous Circuit Theory - John Brzozowski (Waterloo ON)
Automata for Verification - Moshe Vardi (Houston TX)

STUDENTS

Candidate students for the programme are welcome from around the world. Most appropriate degrees include: Computer Science and Mathematics. Other students (for instance, from Linguistics, Logic or Engineering) could be accepted provided they have a good undergraduate background in discrete mathematics. At the beginning of the first term, a few lessons on discrete mathematics advanced pre-requisites will be offered, in order to homogenize the students’ mathematical background.

In order to check eligibility for the programme, the student must be certain that the highest university degree s/he got enables her/him to be enrolled in a doctoral programme in her/his home country.

TUITION FEES

2,120 euros in total, approximately.

DISSERTATION

After following the courses, the students enrolled in the programme will have to defend a research project and, later, a dissertation in English in their own area of interest, in order to get the so-called European PhD degree (which is a standard PhD degree with an additional mark of quality). All the professors in the programme will be allowed to supervise students’ dissertations, as well as any other well-reputed scientist at the discretion of the host institute.

FUNDING

The university will cover the tuition fees and full-board accommodation expenses of all admitted students during the first term. For the second one, funding opportunities will be provided, among others, by the Spanish Ministry for Education and Science, the Spanish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation (Becas MAEC-AECI), and the European Commission (Alban scheme for Latin American citizens).

Immediately after the courses and during the writing of the PhD dissertation, some of the best students will be offered 4-year research fellowships, which will allow them to work in the framework of the host institute.

PRE-REGISTRATION PROCEDURE

In order to pre-register, one should post (not fax, not e-mail) to the programme chairman:

- a xerocopy of the main page of the passport,
- a xerocopy of the university education diplomas,
- a xerocopy of the academic transcripts,
- full CV,
- letters of recommendation (optional),
- any other document to prove background, interest and motivation (optional).

SCHEDULE

Announcement of the programme: August 8, 2006
Pre-registration deadline: October 15, 2006
Selection of students: October 22, 2006
Starting of the 1st term: March 5, 2007
End of the 1st term: July 27, 2007
Starting of the 2nd term (tentative): September 3, 2007
End of the 2nd term (tentative): December 21, 2007
Defense of the research project (tentative): September 13, 2008
DEA examination (tentative): May 16, 2009

QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION

Contact the programme chairman, Carlos Martín-Vide, at carlos.martin at urv.cat

POSTAL ADDRESS

Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics
Rovira i Virgili University
Pl. Imperial Tàrraco, 1
43005 Tarragona, Spain

Phone: +34-977-559543, +34-977-554391

Fax: +34-977-559597, +34-977-554391