All tutorials will be held on Tuesday, September 23. Participation at the conference entitles you to participating in any tutorial.


Tutorial 1

Title: "An introduction to the design and study of self-assembling systems"

Roderich Groβ, PhD
Marie Curie Research Fellow
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Laboratoire de Systèmes Robotiques (LSRO)

Intended length: Half-day
Language: English

Self-assembly is a process by which pre-existing components organize into patterns or structures without human intervention. It can involve components at all scales, for example, molecules, cells, organisms, and weather systems. Self-assembly processes comprise one of four groups of processes responsible for the generation of biological form. The intelligence of self-assembly processes is coded in the logic of the underlying components (e.g., by selective binding preferences). In biological systems, the components' logic is shaped by natural evolution and thereby the overall system can attain desired properties and functions. The design and study of self-assembling systems offers great prospects for enhancing our understanding of natural systems as well as for advancing the intelligence and adaptivity of technological systems. Ultimately, a self-assembling system could form entities of arbitrary size, appearance, structure, and function. For many years research focused on systems at the molecular scale. Research on macroscopic systems (ranging from passively moving mechanical parts to autonomous robots) is now becoming a major trend in a variety of science areas (e.g. biology, computer science, and engineering). It is this latter class of systems that the tutorial addresses. Currently, this subject is neither covered by a text book nor by traditional lectures at university.

The tutorial is intended to provide support to scientists and practitioners wishing to enter this fascinating area. It introduces the general concepts and principles that underlie self-assembling systems. A selection of examples provide in-depth practical knowledge on the design of self-assembling systems (i) to model and analyze a natural phenomenon, or (ii) to address a technological challenge.


Tutorial 2

Title: "Reasoning in complex theories and applications"

Dr. Viorica SOFRONIE-STOKKERMANS
Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik
Saarbrücken, Germany

Intended length: Half-day
Language: English

One of the most important objectives of the research in mathematics and computer science is to obtain means of reasoning in and about complex systems. These can be, for instance complex mathematical theories; programs, or generally reactive or hybrid systems; distributed databases; or complex systems in general (e.g. multi-agent systems or reactive or hybrid systems with embedded software, whose behavior is controlled by databases, reasoning about knowledge and belief, planning mechanisms, or programs). Proving that such systems have certain properties (e.g. that they are safe, that they behave correctly, or that the information they use does not contain inconsistencies) is extremely important: In safety-critical systems (such as cars, trains, planes, or power-plants) even small mistakes can provoke disasters. Since the amount of data which has to be handled in verification tasks is usually huge, computer support is indispensable. The dream of the scientists is to provide such correctness proofs automatically. This goal cannot be reached in its full generality: As shown by undecidability results going back to the work of Gödel, Church and Turing, it is impossible to write a program for checking arbitrary properties of general systems. However, for concrete application domains, automatic procedures exist. It is therefore very important to identify situations in which automated verification of complex systems is possible. For this, it is essential to identify theories which are decidable, preferably with low complexity, and - since concrete problems often are quite heterogeneous in nature - to obtain methods for efficiently combining decision procedures.

The goal of the tutorial is to give a comprehensive, in-depth perspective of recent advances in the field of reasoning in complex logical theories, and to present applications of these results in various areas ranging from formal verification to reasoning about knowledge. The tutorial introduces the general principles underlying reasoning in complex theories from a unifying perspective, gives a survey of recent achievements in the field, and illustrates the problems and their solutions using a selection of examples from mathematics, verification, and knowledge representation.