[TYPES/announce] 2nd Cfp: PCC09

[David Pichardie]

2nd CALL FOR PAPERS

Workshop on Proof-Carrying Code and Software Certification (PCC'09)
http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/event/pcc09/

August 15, 2009, Los Angeles, California, USA
Affiliated with LICS'09.


NEWS:
- deadline extension to June 8.
- a special issue of the journal Higher Order and Symbolic Computation
- keynote speakers: Kelly Hayhurst (NASA). A second keynote is  
pending confirmation.


IMPORTANT DATES

Papers due:     June 8, 2009
Notification of acceptance:     June 30, 2009
Final version due:    July 10, 2009


SCOPE

Software certification demonstrates the reliability, safety, or
security of software systems in such a way that it can be checked by
an independent authority with minimal trust in the techniques and
tools used in the certification process itself. It can build on
existing validation and verification (V&V) techniques but introduces
the notion of explicit software certificates, which contain all the
information necessary for an independent assessment of the
demonstrated properties. One such example is proof-carrying code (PCC)
which is an important and distinctive approach to enhancing trust in
programs. It provides a practical framework for independent assurance
of program behaviour; especially where source code is not available,
or the code author and user are unknown to each other.

The workshop will address theoretical foundations of logic-based
software certification as well as practical examples and work on
alternative application domains. Here "certificate" is construed
broadly, to include not just mathematical derivations and proofs but
also safety and assurance cases, or any formal evidence that supports
the semantic analysis of programs: that is, evidence about an
intrinsic property of code and its behaviour that can be independently
checked by any user, intermediary, or third party. These guarantees
mean that software certificates raise trust in the code itself,
distinct from and complementary to any existing trust in the creator
of the code, the process used to produce it, or its distributor.

In addition to the contributed talks, the workshop will feature two  
invited talks.


SUBMISSION

Two types of submissions are solicited:
- Standard papers (at most 10 pages) describing novel research results.
- Short papers (at most 5 pages) describing a novel idea that is work- 
in-progress.

Additional material intended for the referees but not for
publication in the final version may be placed in a clearly marked  
appendix that is not included in the
page limit.

Authors are invited to submit their papers electronically, in PDF
format. The only mechanism for paper submissions is via the dedicated
EasyChair submission web page.
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pcc09


PUBLICATION

Proceedings will be made available in electronic format as a technical
report. There will be a follow-up special issue of the Higher Order
and Symbolic Computation on the topics of proof-carrying code and
software certification (more details will be announced at the workshop).


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

David Aspinall, University of Edinburgh
Gilles Barthe, IMDEA Software
Ewen Denney, RIACS/NASA Ames, co-chair
Bernd Fischer, University of Southampton
Sofia Guerra, Adelard
Kelly Hayhurst, NASA Langley
Thomas Jensen, IRISA/CNRS, co-chair
David Pichardie, INRIA
Germán Puebla, Technical University of Madrid
Ian Stark, University of Edinburgh