[TYPES/announce] Second CFP: ML 2015

[Jeremy Yallop]

[Second call for papers.  News: invited talk by David MacQueen]

Higher-order, Typed, Inferred, Strict: ACM SIGPLAN ML Family Workshop
Thursday September 3, 2015, Vancouver, Canada
(immediately following ICFP and preceding OCaml Users and Developers Workshop)

Call for papers: http://www.mlworkshop.org/ml2015/

ML is a very large family of programming languages that includes Standard
ML, OCaml, F#, SML#, Manticore, MetaOCaml, JoCaml, Alice ML, Dependent ML,
Flow Caml, and many others. All ML languages share several fundamental
traits, besides a good deal of syntax. They are higher-order, strict, mostly
pure, and typed, with algebraic and other data types. Their type systems are
derived from Hindley-Milner. The development of these languages has inspired
a significant body of computer science research and influenced the design of
many other programming languages, including Haskell, Scala and Clojure,
Rust, ATS and many others.

ML workshops have been held in affiliation with ICFP continuously since
2005. This workshop specifically aims to recognise the entire extended ML
family and to provide a forum for presenting and discussing common issues,
both practical (compilation techniques, implementations of concurrency and
parallelism, programming for the Web) and theoretical (fancy types, module
systems, metaprogramming). The scope of the workshop includes all aspects of
the design, semantics, theory, application, implementation, and teaching of
the members of the ML family. We also encourage presentations from related
languages (such as Scala, Rust, Nemerle, ATS, etc.), to exchange experience
of further developing ML ideas.

The ML family workshop will be held in close coordination with the OCaml
Users and Developers Workshop.

Scope
-----

We acknowledge the whole breadth of the ML family and aim to include
languages that are closely related (although not by blood), such as Rust,
ATS, Scala, and Typed Clojure. Those languages have implemented and
investigated run-time and type system choices that may be worth considering
for OCaml, F# and other ML languages. We also hope that the exposure to the
state of the art ML might favourably influence those related
languages. Specifically, we seek research presentations on topics including
(but not limited to)

  * Language design: abstraction, higher forms of polymorphism, concurrency,
    distribution and mobility, staging, extensions for semi-structured data,
    generic programming, object systems, etc.

  * Implementation: compilers, interpreters, type checkers, partial
    evaluators, runtime systems, garbage collectors, foreign function
    interfaces, etc.

  * Type systems: inference, effects, modules, contracts, specifications and
    assertions, dynamic typing, error reporting, etc.

  * Applications: case studies, experience reports, pearls, etc.

  * Environments: libraries, tools, editors, debuggers, cross-language
    interoperability, functional data structures, etc.

  * Semantics: operational and denotational semantics, program equivalence,
    parametricity, mechanization, etc.

Four kinds of submissions will be accepted: Research Presentations,
Experience Reports, Demos and Informed Positions.

  * Research Presentations: Research presentations should describe new
    ideas, experimental results, or significant advances in ML-related
    projects. We especially encourage presentations that describe work in
    progress, that outline a future research agenda, or that encourage
    lively discussion. These presentations should be structured in a way
    which can be, at least in part, of interest to (advanced) users.

  * Experience Reports: Users are invited to submit Experience Reports about
    their use of ML and related languages. These presentations do not need
    to contain original research but they should tell an interesting story
    to researchers or other advanced users, such as an innovative or
    unexpected use of advanced features or a description of the challenges
    they are facing or attempting to solve.

  * Demos: Live demonstrations or short tutorials should show new
    developments, interesting prototypes, or work in progress, in the form
    of tools, libraries, or applications built on or related to ML and
    related languages. (You will need to provide all the hardware and
    software required for your demo; the workshop organisers are only able
    to provide a projector.)

  * Informed Positions: A justified argument for or against a language
    feature. The argument must be substantiated, either theoretically
    (e.g. by a demonstration of (un)soundness, an inference algorithm, a
    complexity analysis), empirically or by substantial experience. Personal
    experience is accepted as justification so long as it is extensive and
    illustrated with concrete examples.

Format
------

The ML 2015 workshop will continue the informal approach used since
2010. Presentations are selected from submitted abstracts. There are no
published proceedings, so contributions may be submitted for publication
elsewhere. We hope that this format will encourage the presentation of
exciting (if unpolished) research and deliver a lively workshop atmosphere.

Each presentation should take 20-25 minutes, except demos, which should take
10-15 minutes. The exact time will be decided based on the number of
accepted submissions. The presentations will likely be recorded.

Post-proceedings
----------------

ML 2015 is an informal workshop without proceedings. We are planning to
publish a post-proceedings and to invite interested authors of selected
presentations to expand their abstracts for inclusion.

Coordination with the OCaml Users and Developers Workshop
---------------------------------------------------------

The OCaml workshop is seen as more practical and is dedicated in significant
part to OCaml community building and the development of the OCaml system. In
contrast, the ML family workshop is not focused on any language in
particular, is more research-oriented, and deals with general issues of
ML-style programming and type systems. Yet there is an overlap, which we are
keen to explore in various ways. The authors who feel their submission fits
both workshops are encouraged to mention it at submission time or contact
the Programme Chairs.

Submission details
------------------

Submissions should be at most two pages, in PDF format, and printable on US
Letter or A4 sized paper. A submission should have a synopsis (2-3 lines)
and a body between 1 and 2 pages, in one- or two-column layout. The synopsis
should be suitable for inclusion in the workshop programme.

Submissions must be uploaded to the workshop submission website before the
submission deadline (Monday 18th May, 2015). If you have a question
concerning the scope of the workshop or the submission process, please
contact the programme chair.

Important dates
---------------

Monday 18th May (any time zone)   Abstract submission deadline
Monday 29th June                  Author notification
Thursday 3rd September 2015  ML Family Workshop

Invited speaker
---------------

We are happy to announce the invited speaker for ML 2015:

David MacQueen (Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago)

Programme committee
-------------------

Damien Doligez (Inria Paris-Rocquencourt, France)
Suresh Jagannathan (Purdue University, USA)
Patricia Johann (Appalachian State University, USA)
Sam Lindley (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Moe Masuko (Ochanomizu University, Japan)
Adriaan Moors (Typesafe, USA)
Scott Owens (University of Kent, UK)
Jonathan Protzenko (Microsoft Research, USA)
Martin Sulzmann (Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, Germany)
Jeremy Yallop (University of Cambridge, UK) (PC chair)