Decision Procedures in Software, Hardware and Bioware

Summary

A goal of the seminar Decision Procedures in Soft, Hard and Bio-ware was to bring together renowned as well as young aspiring researchers from two groups. The first group formed by researchers who develop both theory and efficient implementations of decision procedures. The second group comprising of researchers from application areas such as program analysis and testing, crypto-analysis, hardware verification, industrial planning and scheduling, and bio-informatics, who have worked with, and contributed to, high quality decision procedures. The purpose of the seminar was to heighten awareness between tool and theory developers for decision procedures with the array of applications found in software, hardware and biological systems analysis. The seminar fell in the week of April 19-23, 2010.

In spite of the travel disruptions due to the Icelandic volcano eruption, 27 researchers from 8 countries (Germany, Austria, Italy, France, USA, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and India)arrived and discussed their recent work and future trends. The absence of several attendees from North America meant that the seminar was unable to cover planned tutorials on Bio-analysis and constraint solving. Instead it focused heavily on decision procedures in the context of software analysis and to some extent hardware. The planned tutorial on hardware analysis, by Armin Biere, was highly successful, though. On the other hand, it allowed for a highly interactive environment and some attendees got a chance to present a talk on more than one topic.