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TUCS Newsletter 19.12.2014

Content of the newsletter

TUCS activities

New courses

Announcements

Latest publications at TUCS

TUCS Staff wishes everyone happy and relaxing holidays!

TUCS activities

TUCS Board meeting

TUCS Board had their last meeting this year on Wednesday 17th December 2014 at 10.00. On the agenda was the appointment of a new TUCS director and the next study report round.

New TUCS director

TUCS Board recommended to the rectors of Åbo Akademi and University of Turku that Professor Ion Petre is appointed as the TUCS director for the year 2015.

TUCS workgroup

The rectors of Åbo Akademi and University of Turku have appointed a workgroup to help to draw, together with the TUCS director and the TUCS board, a plan for the future of TUCS, as well as for the further strengthening of the collaboration and for the joint profiling in ICT between the two universities. The members of the workgroup are Tapio Salakoski (chair), Iiro Honkala, Johan Lilius, Ion Petre, and Reima Suomi.

TUCS GP Doctoral Defences

On Friday, December 19th, TUCS GP Student Sami Hyrynsalmi presents his Doctoral thesis "Letters from the War of Ecosystems – An Analysis of Independent Software Vendors in Mobile Application Marketplaces" for public critisism. The opponent of M.Sc. Hyrynsalmi is Professor Tommi Mikkonen, Tampere University of Technology. Professor Ville Leppänen will act as a custos at this public defence.

Time: 12 noon
Place: Auditorium Beta

On Friday, December 5th, TUCS GP Student Seppo Pulkkinen presented his Doctoral thesis "Efficient Optimization Algorithms for Nonlinear Data Analysis" for public critisism. The opponent of M.Sc. Pulkkinen was Professor LeoLiberti, École Polytechnicue, France. Professor Marko Mäkelä acted as a custos at this public defence.

Time: 12 noon
Place: Auditorium Cal 1

New courses

Organising of INFORTE.fi courses

Inforte.fi program started operating originally in 2001.During this wholeperiod, the Inforte.fi program has however maintained its standing as a stat- wide program for ICT professionals. It is designed to offer networking and education events to PhD students and professionals working in Finnish companies, polytechnics and public administration. Invited speakers are some of the top international researchers or industry representatives in their field. Inforte.fi’s member university departments will annually organize about 12 workshops and seminars on diverse areas of ICT. The main areas of focus are:

These intensive events can be used as tools for professional education, or as parts of doctoral education. Inforte.fi program delivers certificates of participation, and participants negotiate how these achievements can be included in their studies with their home universities. Inforte.fi events are a way to connect you with other ICT professionals and academics in your field, and build important social networks. Inforte.fi events allow you to update your knowledge and keep on track with the latest scientific and practical knowledge in the ICT field.

HOW TO COME ALONG?

Anyone within the member departments can suggest an event. We hope that the event is in line with our main areas of focus. If you have something in mind, contact the Inforte.fi staff and let’s start planning the event!

Inforte.fi’s member university departments are:

ABOUT ORGANIZING INFORTE.FI EVENTS

The organizer’s payment for organizing an one-day event is 250 € and for a two-day event 500 €. The organizer has to send the Inforte.fi staff his or hers separate tax card or otherwise the Finnish tax authorities will take off 60 % taxes from the payment. Inforte.fi staff will send the organizer a travelling expenses claim form and a bank and personal information form. The travelling expenses claim form needs to be filled only if needed, but the bank and personal information form needs to be filled always. The Inforte.fi office will organize morning coffee with something small to bite to the events, but lunch and afternoon coffee can be bought at participant’s own expense. The organizer can however buy his/her and the speaker’s lunch and afternoon coffee and reimburse those expenses from the Inforte.fi office with the travelling expense claim. Also one feasible dinner with the speaker is allowed to reimburse with the travelling expense claim. However when using the travelling expenses claim, the organizer needs to send all of the original documents and receipts to Inforte.fi office (the address is at the bottom of this document).

The speaker’s payment Inforte.fi pays 120 € / lecturing hour and 60 € / group work hour at most. Lecturing fee is considered salary by Finnish tax office. Because the work is done in Finland, the Finnish tax authorities will automatically take off approximately 35 % taxes. In addition, it is mandatory to take off around 4 % other social security and pension contribution payments from the fee. This will happen automatically - no fee can be paid without these deductions.In addition to travel expenses and accommodation Inforte.fi will pay the speaker daily allowance. Daily allowance is 39 euros or 18 euros per travelling day. Inforte.fi will calculate the daily allowances. Inforte.fi does not cover meal expenses according to receipts. The fee and travel expenses will be paid separately and it may take approximately a month until the payment is on the speaker’s bank account.

The speaker’s travelling and accommodation

Inforte.fi pays for the speakers travelling and accommodation expenses and helps with the arrangements regarding these. If the Inforte.fi event will be merged with other activities in Finland (e.g. seminars) or during the trip, Inforte.fi will pay only a part of the expenses. If the speaker decides to book the trip independently, he/she needs to be in contact with the Inforte.fi staff because only travelling in Economy class will be accepted as expenses. Inforte.fi will book the hotel for the speaker.

Date and other important information about the event

The date of the event has to be agreed on in good time and the Inforte.fi staff has to be informed about it immediately after that. In addition to this the Inforte.fi staff will need the following information as soon as possible:

Remote access

The organizer has to agree with the speaker if participants can be included in the event with remote access. If both sides agree that it can be handled, the organizer has to find out that with what kind of system the speaker is used to and whether the remote access is possible to organize at the event location.

Inforte.fi staff’s contact information:

Annemari Soranto

Project Researcher

Email: office@inforte.fi

Phone: +358 400 247700

Nina Jakonen

Programme planner

Email:office@inforte.fi

Phone: +358 400 247700

Courses on transferable skills at University of Turku

http://www.utu.fi/fi/Tutkimus/tutkijakoulu/courses/Sivut/home.aspx

Announcements

Nokia Foundation Awards 2014

The following people within the TUCS community have been awarded Nokia Scholarships as 2014 Nokia Foundation Awards:

Ahmad Tanwir
Online Model-based Security Testing with Behavioral Fuzzing

Benjamin Byholm
Deciding on Optimal Resource Allocations with Real-Time Constraints and Uncertainty: Theory and Practice in Cloud Computing

Farahnakian Fahimeh
Hierarchical Multi-Agent Based Architecture for Energy-Efficient Cloud Data Centers

Holvitie Johannes
Technical Debt Management as a Factor in Sustainable and Efficient Software Development

Jafri Syed Mohammad Asad Hassan
VRAP: Virtual Runtime Adaptive Partitions to Support Mixed Criticality Applications on Massively Parallel Architectures

Pereverzeva Inna
Formal Development of Resilient Autonomic Distributed Systems

Pohjankukka Jonne
Efficient Utilization of Big Data with Machine Learning Methods

Rahimi Moosavi Sanaz
Scalable and Lightweight Security Solutions for Internet of Things -Based Healthcare

Rönnqvist Samuel
Text Analytics for Financial Risk

Call for Papers - ECBS-EERC 2015

4th Eastern European Regional Conference on the Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ECBS-EERC 2015) with the technical co-sponsorship of the IEEE Computer Society

http://www.ecbs-eerc.org/2015/

August 27-28, 2015

Brno, The Czech Republic, Europe

ECBS-EERC was established at 15th IEEE International Conference on Engineering of Computer-Based Systems (ECBS 2008) in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to bring the spirit of ECBS into Eastern Europe by providing convenient conference opportunities in this region. Conference proceedings are published on a CD and submitted to the IEEE CS Digital Library. A selection of outstanding papers presented at the conference may be invited for publication in an internationally recognized journal (subject to additional reviewing).

ECBS-EERC 2015 is the 4th formal meeting dedicated to formulating and advancing methods, techniques and tools for the engineering of computer-based systems. The conference is devoted to the design, development, deployment, and analysis of complex systems whose behavior is largely determined or controlled by computers. Such systems are characterized by functional, performance, and reliability requirements that mandate the tight integration of information processing and physical processes.

ECBS integrates software, hardware, and communication perspective of system engineering through its many facets that include system modelling, requirements specification, simulation, architectures, safety, security, reliability, human computer interaction, system integration, verification and validation, and project management. The conference provides a bridge between industry and academia blending academic research and industrial development.

Papers are sought which reflect this intent in fundamental ECBS technologies and application domains including, but not limited to the following topics:

Architectures

Autonomic Systems

Cloud-based Applications

Co-Design

Component-Based System Design

Cyber-Physical Systems

ECBS Infrastructure (Tools and Environments)

Education & Training

Embedded Real-Time Software Systems

Internet of Things

Lifecycle Processes & Process Evolution

Model-Based System Development

Modelling and Analysis of Complex Systems

Parallel & Distributed Systems

Reengineering & Reuse

Reliability, Safety, Dependability, and Security

Software Engineering

System Assessment, Testing, and Metrics

Verification and Validation

Industrial reports of practical solutions, trends, and new system characteristics for ECBS, taking an integrated systems approach, may include application domains such as: Aerospace Systems, Command and Control, Continuous and Discrete Manufacturing, Environmental Systems, Instrumentation and Control Applications, Internet Technology and Applications, Intelligent Highway-Vehicle Systems (IHVS), Medical Systems, and Telecommunications.

Poster Sessions

Posters and abstracts presenting work in progress are invited for a poster session. Accepted abstracts will be published in the proceedings. Graduate students are especially welcome to participate.

Industrial Track

The industrial track provides a forum for short papers on results of industrial research and development.

Submission of Papers

Full papers should not exceed 8 pages (at least 4 pages are expected). Industrial reports should not exceed 4 pages (at least 2 pages are expected). Poster abstracts should be on 2 full pages. All papers must be prepared in the IEEE Computer Society format (see the conference web site for further information). Papers should be original contributions not submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere. For an accepted paper to appear in the proceedings, at least one author must register and attend the conference. Papers must be submitted via EasyChair and are requested to be allocated to one of the defined ECBS tracks. For further information see the submission guidelines on the conference web site.

For Full Papers and Doctoral Symposium Papers, the Program Committee will select a best paper award.

Important Dates (Note: these dates are tentative)

Submission of titles and abstract: 15 March 2015

Submission of all papers: 12 April 2015

Notification of acceptance: 17 May 2015

Camera-ready material for publication: 14 Jun 2015

Registration deadline for authors: 14 Jun 2015

Early registration deadline for non-authors: 9 August 2015

Call for Papers – WorldCIST'15

WorldCIST'15 - 3rd World Conference on Information Systems and Technologies

Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal

1 - 3 April 2015

http://www.aisti.eu/worldcist15/index.php/workshops/pis

Deadline for paper submission: December 14th, 2014

Scope

WorldCIST'15 - 3rd World Conference on Information Systems and Technologies, to be held at Ponta Delgada, São Miguel, Azores, Portugal, 1 - 3 April 2015, is a global forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, results, experiences and concerns in the several perspectives of Information Systems and Technologies. Azores is ranked as the second most beautiful archipelago in the world by National Geographic.

Pervasive Information Systems (PIS) extend the Information System paradigm by introducing a set of novel characteristics into the society. This workshop aims to discuss topics related to PIS, evaluate the importance for the society and the creation of new knowledge overcoming temporal and local barriers.

This workshop is focused on demonstrating how to take advantages from this new sort of information systems and which kind of solutions can be developed in order to support the decision making process anywhere and anytime. PIS 2015 is the ideal place for bringing together the researchers who are working in this particular area of information systems in order to promote discussion and explore new scope of scientific contributions.

Having conscience of the most recent situation in Europe and the Horizon 2020 strategy, a deeper analysis should be made on this emerging topic. Authors are invited to submit unpublished work, contributing with research papers, case studies and demonstrations that present original scientific results, methodological aspects, concepts and approaches in the multidisciplinary field of PIS. Authors should present new trends, discuss future challenges and understand how information affects the way humans interact with the built environments occupied by them.

Topics

Workshop topics include, but are not limited to:

 

Submission and Paper Format

Submissions must be of one of two types:

Full paper: Finished and consolidated R&D works. These papers are assigned a 10-page limit; and Short paper: Ongoing works with relevant preliminary results open to discussion. These papers are assigned a 7-page limit.

Submitted papers must comply with the format of Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing Series (see Instructions for Authors at Springer Website or download a DOC example) be written in English, must not have been published before, not be under review for any other conference, workshop  or publication and not include any information leading to the authors’ identification. Therefore, the authors’ names, affiliations and bibliographic references should not be included in the version for evaluation by the Program Committee. This information should only be included in the camera-ready version, saved in Word or Latex format and also in PDF format. These files must be accompanied by the Publication form filled out, in a ZIP file, and uploaded at the conference management system.

All papers will be subjected to a “double-blind review” by at least two/three members of the Program Committee. Based on Program Committee evaluation, a paper can be rejected or accepted by the Conference Chairs. In the latter case, it can be accepted as the type originally submitted or as another type. Thus, full papers can be accepted as short papers. The authors of accepted full papers will have 15 minutes to present their work in a Conference Work Session; approximately 5 minutes of discussion will follow each presentation. The authors of accepted short papers and company papers will have 11 minutes to present their work in a Conference Work Session; approximately 4 minutes of discussion will follow each presentation.

All papers should be submitted using the EasyChair system, available in the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=worldcist-ws2015

Publication and Indexing

Workshop papers will be published in the Springer Conference Proceedings. To ensure that a paper is published in the Proceedings, at least one of the authors must be fully registered by 11th of January 2015, and the paper must comply with the suggested layout and page-limit. Additionally, all recommended changes must be addressed by the authors before they submit the camera-ready version. No more than one paper per registration will be published in the Conference Proceedings. An extra fee must be paid for publication of additional papers, with a maximum of one additional paper per registration.

Full and short papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings by Springer, in Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Published full and short papers will be submitted for indexation by ISI, EI-Compendex, SCOPUS and DBLP, among others, and will be available in the SpringerLink Digital Library. Extended versions of the best papers accepted and presented at this workshop may be considered for publication in a Special Issue of a renowned international journal indexed by ISI, SCOPUS and DBLP (e.g. Journal of Universal Computer Science - JUCS).

Important Dates

Call for Papers – 20th International Symposium on Formal Methods

Oslo, Norway, June 22-26, 2015

http://fm2015.ifi.uio.no/

IMPORTANT DATES:

Jan 2      Abstract submission deadline

Jan 9      Full paper submission deadline

March 23   Notification

June 22-26 Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

FM 2015 is the twentieth in a series of symposia organized by Formal Methods Europe, an independent association whose aim is to stimulate the use of, and research on, formal methods for software development. The symposia have been notably successful in bringing together innovators and practitioners in precise mathematical methods for software and systems development, industrial users, as well as researchers. The FM symposia welcome original papers on research and industrial experience, proposals for workshops and tutorials, entries for the exhibition of software tools and projects, and reports on ongoing doctoral work.

SCOPE AND TOPICS

FM 2015 will have the goal of highlighting the development and application of formal methods. This includes uses of formal methods in a variety of disciplines such as medicine, biology, human cognitive modeling,

 human automation interactions and aeronautics, among others. FM 2015 particularly welcomes papers on techniques, tools and experiences in interdisciplinary frameworks, as well as on experience with practical

 applications of formal methods in industrial and research settings, empirical and experimental validation of tools and methods as well as construction and evolution of formal methods tools. The broad topics

 of interest for FM 2015 include but are not limited to:

Interdisciplinary formal methods: techniques, tools and experiences demonstrating formal methods in interdisciplinary frameworks.

Formal methods in practice: industrial applications of formal methods, experience with introducing formal methods in industry, tool usage reports, experiments with challenge problems.

Authors are encouraged to explain how the use of formal methods has overcome problems, lead to improvements in design or provided  new insights.

Tools for formal methods: advances in automated verification and model-checking, integration of tools, environments for formal methods, experimental validation of tools. Authors are encouraged

 to demonstrate empirically that the new tool or environment advances the state of the art.

Role of formal methods in software and systems engineering: development processes with formal methods, usage guidelines for formal methods, method integration. Authors are encouraged to evaluate process innovations with respect to qualitative or quantitative improvements. Empirical studies and evaluations are also solicited.

Theoretical foundations: all aspects of theory related to specification, verification, refinement, and static and dynamic analysis. Authors are encouraged to explain how their results contribute to the solution of practical problems with methods or tools.

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Elvira Albert, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain

Werner Damm, Carl von Ossietzky Universitaet Oldenburg, DE

Valerie Issarny, INRIA, France

Leslie Lamport, Microsoft Research, US

PAPER SUBMISSION

Papers will be evaluated by at least three members of the Programme Committee. They should be in Springer LNCS format and describe, in English, original work that has not been published or submitted

 elsewhere.

Authors of papers reporting experimental work are strongly encouraged to make their experimental results available for use by reviewers. Similarly, case study papers should describe significant case studies and the complete development should be made available at the time of review. In other words, the usual criteria for novelty, reproducibility, correctness and the ability for others to build upon the described work apply.

Tool papers should explain enhancements made compared to previously published work. A tool paper need not present the theory behind the tool but can focus more on its features, and how it is used, evaluation,

 with screen shots and examples. Authors of tool papers should make their tool available for use by reviewers.

Papers should be submitted through the FM 2015 EasyChair web site:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fm2015.

 

We solicit two categories of papers:

Regular Papers should not exceed 15 pages in LNCS format, not counting references.

Short papers, including tool papers, should not exceed 6 pages, not counting references. Besides tool papers, short papers are encouraged for any subject that can be described within the page limit, and in particular for novel ideas without an extensive experimental evaluation. Short papers will be accompanied  by short presentations.

For regular and tool papers, an appendix can provide additional material such as details on proofs or experiments. The appendix is not guaranteed to be read or taken into account by the reviewers and it should not contain information necessary to the understanding and the evaluation of the presented work. Papers will be accepted or rejected in the category in which they were submitted, there will be no “demotions" from a regular to a short paper.

BEST PAPER AWARD

FM 2015 will as a new feature have a best paper award. A best paper will be selected among accepted papers, and the award will be presented at the conference.

PUBLICATION

Accepted papers will be published in the Symposium Proceedings, to appear in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

GENERAL CHAIR

Einar Broch Johnsen, University of Oslo, NO

PC CHAIRS

Nikolaj Bjorner, Microsoft Research, US

Frank S. de Boer, CWI, NL

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Erika Abraham, RWTH Aachen University              

Bernhard K. Aichernig, TU Graz                            

Gilles Barthe, IMDEA Software Institute            

Nikolaj Bjorner, Microsoft Research                  

Marcello Bonsangue, Leiden University                  

Michael Butler, University of Southampton          

Andrew Butterfield, Trinity College Dublin              

Ana Cavalcanti, University of York                  

David Clark, University College London          

Frank S. de Boer, CWI                                

Jin Song Dong, National University of Singapore    

Michael Emmi, IMDEA Software Institute            

John Fitzgerald, Newcastle University                

Nate Foster, Cornell University                  

Vijay Ganesh, University of Waterloo

Diego Garbervetsky, Dep. de Computacion. U. de Buenos Aires

Dimitra Giannakopoulou, NASA Ames Research Center

Stefania Gnesi, ISTI-CNR                            

Ganesh Gopalakrishnan, University of Utah                  

Orna Grumberg, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology                          

Arie Gurfinkel, Carnegie Mellon University          

Reiner Haehnle, Technical University of Darmstadt  

Klaus Havelund, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Anne E. Haxthausen, Technical University of Denmark    

Ian J. Hayes, University of Queensland            

Gerard Holzmann, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory                            

Daniel Jackson, MIT                                

Cliff Jones, Newcastle University                

Gerwin Klein, NICTA and UNSW                      

Laura Kovacs, Chalmers University of Technology  

Marta Kwiatkowska, University of Oxford                

Peter Gorm Larsen, Aarhus University                  

Yves Ledru, Lab. d'Informatique de Grenoble, U. Joseph Fourier                            

Rustan Leino, Microsoft Research                  

Martin Leucker, University of Luebeck                

Shaoying Liu, Hosei University                    

Tom Maibaum, McMaster University                

Dominique Mery, Universite de Lorraine, LORIA      

Peter Mueller, ETH Zuerich                          

Cesar Munoz, National Aeronautics and Space Administration                      

David Naumann, Stevens Institute of Technology    

Tobias Nipkow, TU Muenchen                          

Jose Oliveira, Universidade do Minho              

Olaf Owe, University of Oslo                

Sam Owre, SRI International                  

Andrei Paskevich, Universite Paris-Sud 11, IUT d'Orsay                                  

Grigore Rosu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign                    

Kristin Yvonne Rozier, NASA Ames Research Center          

Sanjit A. Seshia, UC Berkeley                        

Natasha Sharygina, Universita' della Svizzera Italiana

Viorica Sofronie-Stokkermans, Max-Planck Institute for Informatics

Jun Sun, Singapore University of Technology and Design                          

Kenji Taguchi, AIST                                

Margus Veanes, Microsoft Research                  

Ji Wang, National Lab. for Parallel and Distributed Processing          

Alan Wassyng, McMaster University                

Heike Wehrheim, University of Paderborn            

Michael Whalen, University of Minnesota            

Jim Woodcock, University of York                  

Gianluigi Zavattaro,  University of Bologna                    

Pamela Zave, AT&T                                

PUBLICITY CHAIR

Martin Steffen, University of Oslo, Norway

Call for papers - AUTOMATA 2015

21st International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems

Turku, Finland
June 8-10, 2015

http://www.math.utu.fi/automata2015

Important dates
*Deadline for submissions: February 9, 2015
*Notification to authors: March 17, 2015
*Final version: March 27, 2015
*Submissions of exploratory papers: May 4, 2015
*Notification to authors of exploratory papers: within 10 days from submission
*AUTOMATA 2015: June 8-10, 2015

Scope
Papers presenting original and unpublished research on all fundamental aspects of cellular automata and related discrete complex systems are sought. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): dynamics, topological, ergodic and algebraic aspects, algorithmic and complexity issues, emergent properties, formal language processing, symbolic dynamics, models of parallelism and distributed systems, timing schemes, phenomenological descriptions, scientific modeling and practical applications. Papers authored or co-authored by PC members are also welcome and will follow a specific evaluation process.

Paper categories
There are two paper categories - full and exploratory contributions. Full papers are meant to report more complete and denser research, while the later submission deadline of exploratory papers allows quick reporting of most recent discoveries, work-in-progress and/or partial results. Papers in the full paper category are refereed and selected by the program committee. Papers in the exploratory category go through a less rigorous evaluation for suitability. Full papers receive a longer time slot for presentation in the workshop.

Invited speakers
Andreas Deutsch (Technische Universität Dresden, Germany)
Turlough Neary (University of Zürich and ETH, Switzerland)
Ville Salo (Universidad de Chile, Chile)
Luke Schaeffer (MIT, USA)

Submission
Papers have a page limit of 14 pages (full paper category) or 8 pages (exploratory paper category), they must be formatted in LaTeX using the LNCS format (see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs/lncs+authors) and must be submitted in Portable Document Format (PDF).  Authors are invited to submit original papers by the EasyChair system at
 https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=automata2015

The submission may contain an appendix that exceeds the page limit if the author wants to provide the PC with more details than allowed by the strict paper limit. The appendix will not be published in the proceedings. The papers must not have been submitted simultaneously to other conferences with published proceedings. All accepted papers must be presented at the conference.

Proceedings
Accepted papers in the full paper category will appear in the proceedings published by Springer in the LNCS series and will be available at the conference. Exploratory papers will be printed locally and will also be available to conference participants. Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended and improved version of their contribution to a special issue of Natural Computing, published by Springer.

Program committee
Matthew Cook (Institute of Neuroinformatics, Switzerland)
Nazim Fatès (Inria Nancy, France)
Enrico Formenti (Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, France)
Eric Goles (Adolfo Ibáñez University, Chile)
Jarkko Kari (chair, University of Turku, Finland)
Martin Kutrib  (Universität Gießen, Germany)
Andreas Malcher (Universität Gießen, Germany)
Kenichi Morita (Hiroshima University, Japan)
Pedro de Oliveira (Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Brazil)
Nicolas Ollinger (Université d’Orléans, France)
Ivan Rapaport (Universidad de Chile, Chile)
Klaus Sutner (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
Véronique Terrier (Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, France)
Guillaume Theyssier (Université de Savoie, France)
Hiroshi Umeo (Osaka Electro-Communication University, Japan)
Thomas Worsch (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Germany)

Organizing committee
Mikhail Barash
Jarkko Kari (chair)
Michal Szabados
Ilkka Törmä
Sonja Vanto

Steering committee
Enrico Formenti (Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, France)
Teijiro Isokawa (University of Hyogo, Japan)
Jarkko Kari (University of Turku, Finland)
Andreas Malcher (Universität Gießen, Germany)
Thomas Worsch (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Germany)

DAAD – German Academic Exchange Service – Research Grants for foreign PhD

Candidates:

1. One-Year Grants, Application deadline: 19.12.2014

2. Short-Term Grants, Application deadline: 1.10.2014 / 1.04.2015

3. Cotutelle Doctoral Programmes, Application deadline: 19.12.2014

Information on application requirements and application procedure: www.funding-guide.de

DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) offers Research Grants for foreign PhD Candidates:

1.Research Stays for University Academics and Scientists

2.Re-invitation Programme for Former Scholarship Holders

Application deadline: October 1st for the scholarship period January 1st to June 30th of the following year. / April 1st for the scholarship period July 1st of the same year to January 31st of the following year.

Information on application requirements and application procedure: www.funding-guide.de

Information and advisory centres: DAAD-Lecturers in Finland

Dina Heegen

dvbhee@utu.fi

dheegen@abo.fi

Dr. Anta Kursisa

anta.kursisa@helsinki.fi

Anne Stegemann

anne.stegemann@uva.fi

Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship: Europe, Middle East and Africa
   

Scholarship for female Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD students studying Computer Science or a closely related technical field. Recipients will receive a 7000 EUR Scholarship and have the opportunity to attend a networking retreat in summer 2015

Deadline for applications: February, 2015

More information: www.google.com/anitaborg/emea/

Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities  

Scholarship for Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD students with a disability studying Computer Science or a closely related technical field. Recipients will receive a 7000 EUR Scholarship.

Deadline for applications: February 17, 2015

More information: www.google.com/studentswithdisabilities-europe/

TUCS GP travel reports

TUCS GP travel report: Theory Day in Computer Science by Diana-Elena Gratie

Full name of the event: Theory Day in Computer Science, workshop affiliated with the 11th International Colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing

Place and date: Bucharest, Romania, September 15th – 16th, 2014

Type of event: workshop

My article:

Title: Hiding the Combinatorial State Space Explosion of Biomodels through Colored Petri Nets

Authors: Diana-Elena Gratie and Ion Petre

The scientific profile of the event: The Theory Day in Computer Science 2014 is the first workshop in a series with the goal of building a solid and modern TCS community in Romania, closely connected to the current global research-trends. The workshop focuses on theoretical aspects of Computer Science, but more practical contributions are also welcome.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: The presentations I liked most at the workshop are Ion Petre’s talk on Quantitative refinement as an approach to biomodeling and Gabriel Istrate’s talk on Topological combinatorics and its connections to computational complexity.

Number of participants: 25

Social events: Dinner in the historical restaurant “Caru’ cu Bere”, awarded the best Romanian restaurant prize in 2013

Touristic impressions: The workshop was held in the main building of the University of Bucharest, a beautiful historical building in the center of Bucharest, close to many touristic attractions.

TUCS GP travel report: MCIS by Marko Niemimaa

Full name of the event: Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (MCIS): IS in times of metamorphosis

Place and date: Verona, Italy, September 3rd – 5th, 2014

Type of event: conference

My article:

Title: Sociomaterial Ethnography: Taking the Matter Seriously

Link: http://aisel.aisnet.org/mcis2014/45/

Authors: Niemimaa, M.

The scientific profile of the event: The conference is generic Information Systems conference, so the conference covers everything that can be subsumed under “IS”.

Number of participants: approx. 150

Social events: I could only participate the first cocktail event held on 3rd as I got fever and could not participate the other events.

Touristic impressions: Verona’s opera arena is world known and the opera event was still taking place during the conference. Unfortunately, this also meant high prices for the accommodation...

TUCS GP travel report: OAP by Marko Niemimaa

Full name of the event: Objects, Artifacts and Practices (OAP): Rules, Regulations and Materiality in Management and Organization Studies

Place and date: Rome, Italy, June 26th – 27th, 2014

Type of event: Workshop

My article:

Title: Exploring the sociomaterial grounds of information security policy compliance

Authors: Niemimaa, M. & Laaksonen, E.

The scientific profile of the event: The workshop was intended for management and organization studies as well as Information Systems scholars. The main theme for the event was the regulatory role ‘materiality’ in social affairs, such as organizing.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: The professor Chanlat gave a presentation on Maurice Godelier’s thoughts. He gave a really passionate and energetic presentation on why we (as organization/management/IS studies) should not forget Godelier’s work and how his anthropological contributions may inform contemporary discussions around ‘sociomateriality’.

Number of participants: approx. 150

Social events: On both evenings we had some social events, but the most memorable event was a cocktail event held at the French embassy in Rome. The building is considered to be the most magnificent palace in Rome, or at least amongst the top. We had opportunity to socialize and wonder around the building. The atmosphere in the event was really nice and I would recommend it to others interested in the more theoretical discussions.

Touristic impressions: Well... it’s Rome!

TUCS GP travel report: Global Sourcing Workshop by Tingting Lin

Full name of the event: The 8th Global Sourcing Workshop

Place and date: Val d'Isère, France, March 23rd – 26th, 2014

Type of event: conference

My article:

Title: Interpersonal Networks and Governance Forms in IT Outsourcing: From a Vendor’s Perspective

Authors: Tingting Lin, Riitta Hekkala

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: As this workshop involves different topics on sourcing, my favourite presentation is the one closer to my research topic, by Albert Plugge with the title “Governance of Multivendor Outsourcing Arrangements: A Coordination and Resource Dependency View”. It was very inspiring for me, and it was beneficial to discuss with Albert afterwards as well.

Number of participants: Around 40

Social events:

Day 1: Registration and Reception (Drinks and Canapé) at the conference venue

Day 2: Workshop Dinner at Le Schuss

Day 3: Workshop dinner at L’Arolay

Touristic impressions: The conference was held in the famous Alpine ski centre, everything is expensive. I personally don’t like downhill ski, so there is not really much to do there for me. I would prefer a venue with easy access and reasonable price for such a serious academic workshop...

TUCS GP travel report: SSBSS by Diana-Elena Gratie

Full name of the event: The International Synthetic and Systems Biology Summer School

Place and date: Taormina, Italy, June 15th – 19th, 2014

Type of event: summer school

The scientific profile of the event: The Synthetic and Systems Biology Summer School (SSBSS) is a collection of lectures on cutting-edge advances in systems and synthetic biology. Invited lecturers are world-renowned experts in the field. The school provides a stimulating environment for doctoral students, early career researches and industry leaders.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: I enjoyed most of the lectures in the summer school. I particularly liked Rahul Sarpeshkar’s Analog versus Digital Computation in Biology, Jef Boeke’s lecture on Genome Design and Synthesis, and Giovanni Stracquadanio’s talk on Computational Tools for Genome editing.

Number of participants: 150

Social events: Piano concert and swimming pool party.

Touristic impressions: Taormina is a beautiful place with rich historical and natural beauties.

TUCS GP travel report: Theoretical Computer Science by Ilkka Törmä

Full name of the event: Theoretical Computer Science 2014

Place and date: Rome, Italy, September 1st – 3rd, 2014

Type of event: Conference

My article:

Title: Subshifts, MSO Logic, and Collapsing Hierarchies

Authors: Ilkka Törmä

The scientific profile of the event: The conference is very broad and includes most branches of theoretical computer science. The topics range from algorithms and computational complexity to programming language semantics and verification.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: I really enjoyed “The Lazy Matroid Problem”, presented by Aris Pagourtzis. The speaker presented the so-called lazy bureaucrat problem, where a worker is given a set of tasks with certain durations that may be performed on that day, and the goal is to choose a subset of these tasks so that a) there is enough time to finish all of them during the work hours, b) there is not enough time to finish any additional task, and c) the remaining “free time” is maximized. Then, he introduced a generalization of the problem, and showed how it can be solved by an efficient algorithm.

Number of participants: The number of accepted papers was 26, but the event was co-located with the larger CONCUR conference and the smaller TGC workshop, and many people attended several events. In total, I believe that there were close to 100 participants.

Social events: On the second day, there was a welcome reception just outside the conference venue, which included a tour in a nearby cathedral and an opera piece. On the third day, there was an excursion to the city of Tivoli and a conference dinner, which I did not attend, since they were not included in the registration fee.

Touristic impressions: The conference was held in the center of Rome, which is of course an extremely popular travel destination. The ruins of ancient Rome, the museums of Vatican and the many basilicas are all magnificent. On the other hand, the city center is very crowded and quite expensive.

TUCS GP travel report: MTD and ICSE by Johannes Holvitie

Full name of the event: 6th International Workshop on Managing Technical Debt (MTD) and 30th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSE)

Place and date: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, September 28th – October 3rd, 2014

Type of event: Workshop and conference

My article:

Title: Technical Debt and the Effect of Agile Development Practices on It - An Industry Practitioner Survey

Authors: Johannes Holvitie, Sami Hyrynsalmi, and Ville Leppänen

The scientific profile of the event:

The workshop on technical debt management was organized for the fifth time. It was pleasing to note that the request not only for technical debt research but also for its application in the industry is increasing. This was visible in the number of papers but also in the divergence of attendees: the audience was rather heterogeneous consisting equally from both academic and industrial representatives. The workshop was ended with an open discussion which in my opinion raised a lot of new ideas and hence further increased the scientific output of the workshop.

The main conference, ICSE, was a very well organized and vast event. While the acceptance criteria were strict, there were 114 paper and poster presentations during the three days and five concurrent tracks. It was also visible here that software maintenance and evolution is something the industry needs to deal with daily, as the industry was well represent both in participating as well as sponsoring the conference. It was also interesting to note that technical debt established itself as field within the conference: there was a panel discussion as well as a sub-track dedicated to the matter here.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: I was intrigued by the paper titled Continuous Software Quality Control in Practice. It was an industry paper in which the authors described a process developed by the CQSE, a company based in Germany, for introducing continuous risk-scalable quality control into real-world software projects. The paper was well structured and easy to comprehend. For us, developing technical debt management approaches, I think this paper presents a very good reference point on how we should go about implementing and introducing our solutions to the industry.

Number of participants: several hundred

Social events: The exceptional organization of the conference showed also in the social events. The conference and workshop days were divided by a multitude of coffee brakes and lunches, each of which were sponsored by an industrial partner. The venue Victoria Conference Center was ideal for networking as there was enough places to carry a proper conversation with other participants. Further, the organizers out did themselves in hosting a football match, bike tours, and hikes for the participants. Additionally, there was a 30th year celebratory gala dinner with a quiz and prices as well as a banquet in the Royal British Columbia museum.

Touristic impressions: The town of Victoria is one of the most beautiful and well organized cities I have visited. One reason for this is that it is quite small, comparable to Turku. The city is exceptionally well maintained and offers a number of walking paths for tourists to discover all sorts of historic buildings from the more English era. Additionally, one could take a ferry or a hydroplane to the USA or a dinghy to go whale watching.

TUCS GP travel report: CIT2014 by Johannes Holvitie

Full name of the event: The 14th IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (CIT)

Place and date: Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, September 11th – 13th, 2014

Type of event: Conference with workshops and symposiums

My article:

Title: Illustrating Modifiability - Capturing Cohesion and Coupling in a Force-Optimized Graph

Authors: Johannes Holvitie and Ville Leppänen

The scientific profile of the event: CIT has a long running history and a considerable number of affiliations. This showed in the number of tracks, paper presentations, and overall participants which were 13, 92, and several hundred respectively. While the conference had international participation, the venue evidently caused majority of the papers to come from China. For me, this gave an interesting insight into information technology research in China.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: While the field different somewhat from my own, I found that the paper titled Simple Octree Solution for Multi-resolution LiDAR Processing and Visualization was one of the most interesting ones. It concerned the use of LiDAR scanning in order to model urban environments via driving through them with a cap and issues related to this. This was interesting due to a couple of things. Firstly, the presentation was very well made and contained a video that went into detail to explain the domain and issues within it. Secondly, I was already aware of the LiDAR context as there is very similar working go on at our university. Thirdly, reading the paper, I found that the solution was explained very concisely and clearly, which made it possible to actual understand it even without proper context knowledge.

Number of participants: several hundred

Social events: The conference organizers had organized brakes throughout the day which was delightful. In addition to these, one could also network on the dinner as well as on the banquet. Outside the daily schedule the organizers had also reserved a number of tours for the conference participants, more on this in the next section.

Touristic impressions: Xi'an is a vast city with a population of several millions. The city in itself is already a sight as it consists from a number of town center which have been destroyed at different periods of time. The current town center is some couple of thousand years old and is surrounded by a vast wall. Within the walls, one can find a number of religious sights and other monuments. Outside the city, the most import sight by far is the archeological discovery of the Terracotta warriors. This sight is a must visit and this was one of the tours the conference organizers had arranged. One cannot comprehend the size of the Terracotta army without visiting it!

TUCS GP travel report: ECIME by Annika Holmbom

Full name of the event: 8th European Conference on IS Management and Evaluation (ECIME)

Place and date: Ghent, Belgium, September 11th – 12th, 2014

Type of event: Conference

My article:

Title: A Weak-Form Expert Evaluation of Customer Profiling Models

Authors: Annika H. Holmbom, Tomas Eklund, Barbro Back

The scientific profile of the event: The conference was about IS management and evaluation, but there seemed to be many working with e-health within Europe. Only one track covered evaluation of IS.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic:

The best presentation was a keynote given by Dirk Deschoolmeester from University of Ghent, Belgium. He is a local emeritus professor who comes to the University of Ghent every day with his bike, all year around. He had knowledge about most of the things regarding IS management and evaluation on which he has written several books. He also was interested in creating an electronic “copy” of himself onto the internet, so he promised to visit every ECIME conference there will ever be held – if not in person anymore, at least virtually. All in all, a funny guy.

The most valuable lesson I learned from him, was the 10 different ways for evaluating IT, which I want to repeat here in short:

1. Information quality; 2. Return on investment; 3. Total cost of ownership; 4. Requirements analysis; 5. Porter’s value chain; 6. Balanced scorecard; 7. Active benefit realization; 8. Option theory; 9. Benson & Parker’s Information economics; and finally 10. Attractiveness vs. Feasibility.

Which one suits your research?

Number of participants: around 80 persons

Social events: The conference dinner was at the local guest house: Groot Vleeshuis, located in the city center.

Touristic impressions: Ghent is a lovely old town worth visiting located only 45 min from Bruxelles airport with train. The city center of Ghent is of same size as Turku where everything is located at a walking distance. A very friendly place to visit that I can recommend to all!

TUCS GP travel report: ABZ 2014 by Inna Pereverzeva

Full name of the event: The 4th International Conference of Alloy, ASM, B, and Z Users.

Place and date: Toulouse, France, June 2nd – 6th, 2014

Type of event: Conference

My article:

Title: Formal Derivation of Distributed MapReduce

Authors: Inna Pereverzeva, Michael Butler, Asieh Salehi Fathabadi, Linas Laibinis, and Elena Troubitsyna

The scientific profile of the event: The ABZ conference is dedicated to the cross-fertilization of six related state-based and machine- based formal methods, Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B, TLA, VDM and Z, that share a common conceptual foundation and are widely used in both academia and industry for the design and analysis of hardware and software systems.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: Keynote talk given by Leslie Lamport (titeled as “TLA+ for Non-Dummies”).

Number of participants: It was around 120 participants during the main conference and affiliated workshops.

Social events: The welcome cocktail at the City Hall of Toulouse. Visit to the Airbus A380 final assembly chain. The banquet dinner at the authentic French restaurant in the countryside.

Touristic impressions: The conference took place in Toulouse – the centre of the European aerospace industry. The conference was well organized. There were many interesting talks and valuable discussions during the main conference and affiliated workshops as well. For me, the most interesting event during this conference was the visit to the Airbus A380 final assembly chain.

TUCS GP travel report: NII Shonan Meeting by Inna Pereverzeva

Full name of the event: NII Shonan Meeting – Science and Practice of Engineering Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS).

Place and date: Shonan Village Center, Japan, October 27th – 30th, 2014

Type of event: Seminars

My talk:

Title: Formal Development and Quantitative Assessment of a Resilient Multi-robotic System

The scientific profile of the event: The Shonan Meeting aims at providing the opportunity by inviting world-leading researchers on engineering methods for trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). The meeting provides an opportunity for researchers to exchange and discuss their latest ideas. In addition, this meeting aims at defining grand challenges and identifying the common principles of engineering methods for trustworthy CPS.

Number of participants: It was around 50 participants during the meeting.

Social events: Hiking; Excursion around old city Kamakura - a former capital of Japan; Japanese-style tea ceremony and banquet dinner in the Japanese restaurant.

Touristic impressions: The NII Shonan seminar was held in the Shonan Village Center (near Tokyo) which offered great conference facilities, meeting rooms, comfortable accommodation, restaurants and even pools like a resort hotel. The atmosphere of the Shonan Village Center was relaxed and open for fruitful discussions.

Open jobs at University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University

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