Invited Lecture “Carl Adam Petri Lecture (CAP)”
Title: Programmable Molecular Networks
Speaker: Luca Cardelli, University of Oxford
Abstract: Chemical reactions have been widely used to describe natural phenomena, but increasingly we are capable of using them to prescribe physical interactions, e.g. in DNA computing and synthetic biology.
Thus, chemical reaction networks can be used as naturally concurrent programs that can be physically realized to produce and control molecular arrangements. Because of their relative simplicity and familiarity, and more subtly because of their computational power, they are quickly becoming a paradigmatic “programming language” for bioengineering. We discuss what can be programmed with chemical reactions, how these programs can be physically realized, and how they relate to the theory of concurrency.
Short bio: Luca Cardelli has an M.Sc. in computer science from the University of Pisa, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Edinburgh. He worked in the USA at Bell Labs, Murray Hill, from 1982 to 1985, and at Digital Equipment Corporation, Systems Research Center in Palo Alto, from 1985 to 1997, and at Microsoft Research, in Cambridge UK from 1997 to 2018 where he was head of the Programming Principles and Tools and Security groups until 2012. Since 2013 he is a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford.
His main interests are in programming languages and concurrency, and more recently in programmable biology and nanotechnology. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, an Elected Member of the Academia Europaea, and an Elected Member of the Association Internationale pour les Technologies Objets. His web page is at lucacardelli.name.
Invited Lecture “Petri Nets 2019”
Title: Describing, Discovering, and Understanding Multi-Dimensional Processes
Speaker: Dirk Fahland, Eindhoven University of Technology
Abstract: Processes are a key application area for formal models of concurrency. Petri nets shaped both research and industrial process modeling languages, tools, and analysis techniques like no other discipline from basic model syntax up to automated discovery of process models from event data. The most adopted model-driven techniques are centered around describing and analyzing the control-flow of a well-structured process instance in isolation – within this single dimension one could argue the case to be “solved”.
Unaddressed challenges in modeling and analysis arise where processes are not well-structured or not isolated from each other. In both cases a single process model can no longer adequately describe process behavior.
Taking recorded event data from such processes as a starting point, I will outline and develop a number of challenges and characteristics of such processes that can be observed in practice. I will discuss how the behavior of such processes can be classified along different dimensions and outline a few fundamental net-affine concepts that complement concepts from Petri nets and allow to adequately describe behavior of such processes.
Short bio: Dirk Fahland is an Assistant Professor in the Analytics for Information Systems group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Starting from a strong background in construction and analysis of distributed systems with formal models, he has, over the years, embraced event data as a central source for system analysis. A central theme in Dirk’s research is analyzing data and systems that are too large or complex to be understood as monolithic end-to-end processes executed in isolation.
Dirk’s approach is analyze and describe such systems as a complex network of behavior from several different angles through large-scale event data pre-processing and querying as well as discovering, synthesizing, and transforming formal models from event data. Dirk has published over 45 articles at international journals and conferences.
http://www.tue.nl/staff/d.fahland
Invited Lecture “ACSD 2019”
Title: Lock-free Data Sharing in Concurrent Software Systems
Speaker: Philippas Tsigas, Chalmers University of Technology
Abstract: Concurrent data structures provide the means to multi-threaded applications to share data. Typical designs of concurrent data structures are based on locks in order to avoid inconsistency due to concurrent modifications. Locks though introduce a sequential component in Amdahl’s law. Lock-free algorithmic designs of concurrent data structures were introduced in the quest for better performance and scalability and are widely used in practice. Lock-free designs typically employ optimistic conflict control making performance analysis challenging.
In this talk, I will describe recent efforts in improving their scalability and performance by introducing semantic relaxation and also efforts in modeling and analyzing their performance.
Short bio: Philippas Tsigas is a Professor in the Department of Computing Science and Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology. He received a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Patras, Greece and a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering and Informatics from the same University in 1994. From 1993 to 1994 he was with the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands (CWI), Amsterdam. From 1995 to 1997 he was with the Max-Planck Institute for Computer Science, Saarbrucken, Germany. He joined Chalmers University of Technology in 1997. He is the co-founder and the co-head of the Distributed Computing and Systems research group at Chalmers where he works on research topics in parallel and distributed computing and systems, data streaming, security, communication networks, and information visualization. His work appeared in over 120 conference papers and 45 journals.
