[TYPES/announce] MeCBIC 2010: 4th Workshop on Membrane Computing and Biologically Inspired Process Calculi

[Gabriel Ciobanu]

                         Call for Papers

                           MeCBIC 2010
                4th Workshop on Membrane Computing
             and Biologically Inspired Process Calculi
            http://www.info.uaic.ro/~mecbic/mecbic2010/
                 Jena, Germany, 23-24 August 2010

        Affiliated to CMC11, Conference on Membrane Computing
                http://cmc11.uni-jena.de/index.html

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*** IMPORTANT DATES ***

    Title and Abstract: 	 7 June, 2010
    Paper Submission: 	12 June, 2010
    Notification: 	31 July, 2010
    Pre-EPTCS version: 	12 Aug., 2010

Biological membranes play a fundamental role in the complex reactions 
which take place in cells of living organisms. The importance of this role 
has been considered in two different types of formalisms recently 
introduced. Membrane systems were introduced as a class of distributed 
parallel computing devices inspired by the observation that any biological 
system is a complex hierarchical structure, with a flow of materials and 
information that underlies their functioning. The modeling and the 
analysis of biological systems has also attracted the interest of the 
process algebra research community. Thus the notions of membranes and 
compartments have been explicitly represented in a family of calculi, 
such as Ambients and Brane Calculi. A cross fertilization of the two 
research areas has recently started. A deeper investigation of the 
relations between these related formalisms is interesting, as it is 
important to understand the similarities and the differences.

The main aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working in 
membrane computing, in biologically inspired process calculi (ambients, 
brane calculi, etc.) and in other related fields to present recent results 
and to discuss new ideas concerning such formalisms, their properties and 
relationships. Original research papers (including significant 
work-in-progress) on the membrane systems or biologically inspired process 
calculi are sought. Papers on the relationship between membrane systems 
and biologically inspired process calculi are particularly welcome. 
Related formal approaches in which cell compartments play an important 
role are also within the scope of the workshop.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

*  Biologically inspired models and calculi;
*  Biologically inspired systems and their applications;
*  Analysis of properties of biologically inspired models and languages;
*  Theoretical links and comparison between different models/systems.


*** SUBMISSION GUIDELINES ***

Authors are invited to submit a PDF version of their papers (of about 15 
pages) using the EPTCS style (http://www.eptcs.org/). Papers must report 
previously unpublished work and not be submitted concurrently to another 
conference with refereed proceedings. Authors should submit their papers 
via EasyChair (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mecbic2010).
We also encourage the submission of short papers, limited to 8 pages, 
presenting new tools or platforms related to the topics of MeCBIC 2010.

*** DISSEMINATION ***

The workshop proceedings will be available electronically, and then 
published in the Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science.

After the workshop, extended and additionally refereed papers will be 
published in a special issue of Theoretical Computer Science including 
selected papers of both MeCBIC 2009 and MeCBIC 2010.

*** PROGRAM COMMITTEE ***

*  Joern Behre Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, DE
*  Luca Cardelli, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK
*  Matteo Cavaliere, CSIC-CNB, Madrid, Spain
*  Gabriel Ciobanu, ICS, Romanian Academy, Iasi, RO (co-chair)
*  Federica Ciocchetta, CoSBi, Trento, Italy
*  Flavio Corradini, University of Camerino, Italy
*  Erzsebet Csuhaj-Varju, CARI, Hungarian Academy, Budapest, HU
*  Erik de Vink, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, NL
*  Marian Gheorghe, University of Sheffield, UK
*  Jean-Louis Giavitto, University of Evry, France
*  Thomas Hinze, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, DE
*  Maciej Koutny, Newcastle University, UK (co-chair)
*  Paolo Milazzo, University of Pisa, Italy
*  Angelo Troina, University of Torino, Italy
*  Claudio Zandron, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
*  Gianluigi Zavattaro, University of Bologna, Italy