FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

FM 2024 is the 26th international symposium on Formal Methods in a series organized by Formal Methods Europe (FME), an independent association whose aim is to stimulate the use of, and research on, formal methods for software development. The FM symposia have been successful in bringing together researchers and industrial users around a program of original papers on research and industrial experience, workshops, tutorials, reports on tools, projects, and ongoing doctoral research. FM 2024 will be both an occasion to celebrate and a platform for enthusiastic researchers and practitioners from a diversity of backgrounds to exchange their ideas and share their experiences.

Important Dates

Topics of Interest

FM 2024 will highlight the development and application of formal methods in a wide range of domains including trustworthy AI, software, computer-based systems, systems-of-systems, cyber-physical systems, security, human-computer interaction, manufacturing, sustainability, energy, transport, smart cities, healthcare and biology. We particularly welcome papers on techniques, tools, and experiences in interdisciplinary settings. We also welcome papers on experiences of applying formal methods in industrial settings, and on the design and validation of formal method tools.

The topics of interest for FM 2024 include, but are not limited to:

Interdisciplinary formal methods: Techniques, tools, and experiences demonstrating the use of formal methods in interdisciplinary settings. Formal methods in practice include: industrial applications of formal methods, experience with formal methods in industry, tool usage reports, experiments with challenge problems. The authors are encouraged to explain how formal methods overcame problems, led to improved designs, or provided new insights.

Tools for formal methods: Advances in automated verification, model checking, and testing with formal methods, tools integration, environments for formal methods, and experimental validation of tools. The authors are encouraged to demonstrate empirically that the new tool or environment advances the state of the art.
Formal methods in software and systems engineering: Development processes with formal methods, usage guidelines for formal methods, and method integration. The authors are encouraged to evaluate process innovations with respect to qualitative or quantitative improvements. Empirical studies and evaluations are also solicited.

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

Embedded Systems Track: FM 2024 will feature a special track on Embedded Systems organized in collaboration with ACM SIGBED. This track will focus on theories, methods, and tools that are formal in nature and applied in the embedded, real-time, and cyber-physical systems.
We are particularly interested in submissions that apply formal methods on autonomous systems, including AI- and non-AI-based perception, decision, and control algorithms, compilers, middleware, operating systems, virtual machines, communication protocols, and hardware. Example application domains are increasingly automated vehicles, robots, and drones.

We solicit various categories of papers:

• Regular Papers (max 15 pages)
• Long tool papers (max 15 pages)
• Case study papers (max 15 pages)
• Tool demonstration papers (max 6 pages)
• Tutorial papers (22 pages)

All page limits are in LNCS format and do not include references and appendices.

For all papers, an appendix can provide additional material such as details on proofs or experiments. The appendix is not part of the page count and is not guaranteed to be read or taken into account by the reviewers. Thus, it should not contain information necessary for the understanding and evaluation of the presented work. Papers will be accepted or rejected in the category in which they were submitted and will not be moved between categories.
At least one author of an accepted paper is expected to present the paper at the conference as a registered participant.

SOLICITING: TUTORIAL PAPERS

The purpose of tutorial papers is to share user-facing main ideas in tools or techniques in well-designed educational ways that are significantly easier to comprehend than original research papers. Tutorial papers are meant to serve as authoritative educational contributions for the community. While tutorials about tools are a canonical fit also tutorials of important techniques are welcome. Tutorial papers will be reviewed subject to the standards of excellent education, clear intuition, solid precision, and ease of following the tutorial to achieve a good understanding of the presented tool or techniques. While originality of the presented techniques themselves is not a criterion, originality of the presentation and significant novelty compared to the published literature is. A short explicit discussion of the relation in presentation compared to the available research literature is expected.

Tutorial papers are expected to be between about 8 and 22 pages in LNCS format. An appendix with additional material can be submitted that will be read at the discretion of the reviewers. If the tutorial paper presents a tool, a link to the tool in which one can follow the tutorial needs to be included with the submission. Submissions of tutorial papers are welcome whether by the tool authors or by other people. Tutorial papers should make sense for both experts and novices in the particular tool / technique.

Selected tutorial papers will be included in the proceedings of the conference. Exceptionally, the tutorials committee can also accept tutorial papers for oral presentation, without inclusion in the conference proceedings.
Authors of accepted tutorial papers (both those appearing in the proceedings and those that will not) will be asked to present a tutorial in the days preceding the main FM conference, rather than a short talk at FM.

CALL FOR WORKSHOPS

FM 2024 is the 26th international symposium in a series organized by Formal Methods Europe (FME), an independent association whose aim is to stimulate the use of, and research on, formal methods for software development. FM 2024 will be held September 9 – 13 in Milan, Italy. The FM symposia have been successful in bringing together researchers and industrial users around a program of original papers on research and industrial experience, workshops, tutorials, reports on tools, projects, and ongoing doctoral research.

We are inviting proposals for workshops (and other similar events) that will complement the main FM 2024 symposium. We encourage a diversity of topics related to different ways of developing and using formal methods. We are also open to topics that are on the intersection of formal methods with emerging fields in computer science, such as AI and machine learning-based software development, cyber security, and quantum computing.

The general purpose of workshops is to provide an informal setting for participants to discuss technical issues, exchange research ideas and educational approaches, and to discuss and/or demonstrate applications. These may be driven by fundamental academic interests, or by needs from specific application domains.

A workshop is an event that involves an open call for contributions. Events that mix open and invited presentations will also be considered.

Workshops will take place on September 9 & 10, 2024, before the main symposium. Each workshop should typically run for a half day or one day, but two-day events will also be considered. The FM 2024 organizing committee aims to contribute to at least partial support for one invited speaker per workshop.

Submission Information

Researchers and practitioners wishing to organize a workshopare invited to submit proposals before by e-mail to the Workshops Chairs:

Marieke Huisman (m.huisman@utwente.nl)
Stefania Gnesi (stefania.gnesi@isti.cnr.it)

A workshop proposal should not exceed three pages and should include the following information:

• Title and brief technical description of the workshop, specifying its goals and formal methods focus, and whether the workshop has an open call or mixes open and invited presentations.
• The names and contact information (web page, email address) of the organizers. The organizers of a workshop will also be its Programme Committee (PC) chairs; the proposal may also list prospective international PC members.
• Pointers to information about past editions of the workshop, if applicable: has it taken place before; how often it has been co-located with FM or with other conferences, and the number of participants in the most recent installments.
• A discussion of the proposed format and agenda (for example: paper presentations, tutorials, demo sessions, etc).
• The proposed duration: half or one day. Exceptionally, two-day events may be considered.
• Potential invited speaker(s).
• The procedures for selecting papers and participants, including a tentative timeline for submission and notification of acceptance, and plans for the publication of proceedings, if any.

Important Dates for workshop proposal submission:

Submission of Workshop proposals: January 19, 2024
Notification of success of proposals (Workshops): February 2, 2024
Workshop dates: September 9 & 10, 2024