[ecoop-info] Final CFP for WCPS2008

[Shangping Ren]

Our apology for multiple copies of this posting.

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                          CALL FOR PAPERS

The First International Workshop on Cyber-Physical Systems (WCPS2008)
--- in conjunction with ICDCS 2008, June 20, 2008, Beijing, China

Travel Grant:
There is an upto $1,000 travel grant available for every accepted paper.

Conference http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/icdcs/
Workshop http://www.qhdctc.com/wcps2008/

Important Dates:
Paper submission: November 26, 2007
Notification of acceptance: Feb. 11, 2008 
Camera ready papers: March 9, 2008

We are currently witnessing the emergence an infrastructure for a
technical, economic and social revolution that is enabled by
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Cyber-physical systems are physical and
engineered systems whose operations are integrated, monitored, and
controlled by a computational core.  The integration of computational
and physical processes exhibit complicated behavior that can not be
analyzed by the computational or physical sciences alone. These
systems also transcend traditional computer-controlled systems because
of their scale, dependence on man-machine interaction and their rich
communication infrastructure that is enabled by the Internet.

Some of the most challenging R&D software problems for cyber-physical
systems are those associated with producing distributed, real-time,
and embedded platforms and applications, and where computers control
physical, chemical, or biological processes or devices. Examples of
such systems include airplanes and air traffic control systems,
automobiles, power grids, oil refineries, and patient monitoring
systems. Despite advances in standards-based commercial-off-the-shelf
(COTS) technologies, key challenges must be addressed before COTS
software can be used to build mission-critical distributed real-time
embedded (DRE) systems effectively and productively. Furthermore,
there are existing critical infrastructures that oversee the
operations of everything from nuclear power plants to traffic lights
and yet they may not even be able to accept static upgrades, or
patches, or any dynamic change of behavior, but they will remain with
us for quite some time. Dynamically retrofitting these systems while
maintaining their stability within a cyber environment is a
significant challenge yet to be overcome.

The International Workshop on Cyber-Physical Systems (WCPS2008) is an
international forum for researchers to exchange information regarding
advancements in the state of the art and practice of CPS, as well as
to identify the emerging research topics and define the future of CPS.
The technical program of WCPS2008 will consist of invited talks, paper
presentations, and panel discussions.

Topics of Interest

In summary, the main topics of interest are on grand challenges,
requirements, architectures, innovations and abstractions for
Cyber-Physical Systems as well as technical challenges to interface
and manipulate the Physical World.  In particular, we are seeking
papers in, but not limited to, the following main areas:

 [Architecture and infrastructure] 
  Current architectures for cyber physical systems tend to be based on
  layers of network, OS, and middleware that have evolved over decades
  in the context of general-purpose computing systems.  One goal of
  this topic area is to seek architectural abstractions, mechanisms,
  and formalisms that are better suited to the needs of cyber-physical
  systems.  Some example topics include: approaches for refactoring
  the technology base to collapse/remove layers; techniques for
  managing QoS properties top-to-bottom; and end-to-end in
  ultra-large-scale cyber-physical systems.

 [Fundamental system services] 
  Decades of experience with enterprise systems have yielded
  reasonably good abstractions and technologies for developing
  reusable services, such as transactions, discovery, naming, and
  event notification.  There is much less consensus and experience,
  however, on the appropriate abstractions and technologies for
  fundamental system services in cyber-physical systems.  Some example
  topics include 'multi-ility' services, such as security, reliable,
  and predictable replica-based fault detection and isolation
  frameworks that can operate in resource-constrained safety- and
  mission-critical CPS environments.

 [Service composition/synthesis] 
  This area involves rigorous, evidence-producing composition (and
  composites) of system services, often using novel languages and
  models of computation.  Some example topics include "type systems
  for QoS contracts" or "checkable properties of dynamic event
  structures" or "synthesis of mixed-criticality RTOS tailored for
  domain X". The time and scheduling, behavioral interaction, and
  partitioning/isolation will be central cross-cutting issues.

 [Interaction and coordination] 
  A single critical infrastructure facility can have thousands of
  devices, such as in supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)
  systems, that spread over hundreds of miles. The devices themselves
  are typically in a physically protected environment; yet the
  interactions among them, on the other hand, go through the cyber
  space which poses a challenge to us and calls for a paradigm that is
  interaction and coordination centric.

 [Proactive monitoring]
  There are numerous existing systems, such as chemical plants, oil
  refiners, power grids, that have been in existence and correctly
  functioning for many years, and until now were not considered
  vulnerable because these systems were not envisioned to run in the
  cyber environment which has become today's reality. Theses systems
  face the high risk of being a terrorist target though cyber
  invasions. On the other side, it is out of the question that we
  re-build or prescribe a complete upgrade of all these systems. Worse
  yet, it may even be too expensive to take the mentality of
  ``dispatch-and- then-patch''. Therefore, external, lightweight and
  proactive monitoring of the systems is essential in building or
  retrofitting CPS.

 [Applications and experiences] 
  New CPS applications and experiences, such as Tele-Physical
  Services, Smart Transportation, etc. We learn from our past
  experiences: through our encounters with real-life applications and
  experiences with new technologies, we develop the skill set and
  tools to perform better in the future.


Paper Submission

The workshop solicits original and previously unpublished papers
reporting results from research and/or industrial experience as well
as discussion of grand challenges and requirements.  Submit a full
paper of 6 pages (IEEE Computer Society proceedings Manuscripts: two
columns, single-spaced), including figures and references, using 10
font size, and number each page. 

Contact author must input the following information at the WCPS2008
web site: paper title, authors' names, affiliations, postal address,
phone, fax, and e-mail address of the author, about 200-250 word
abstract, and keywords. Prepare your paper in PDF file (Adobe format),
and send it through the following web site.

	http://www.qhdctc.com/wcps2008/

Submission of a paper implies that should the paper be accepted, at
least one of the authors will register and present the paper in the
workshop. Each accepted paper must have a full registration in order
to include the paper in the conference proceedings. Accepted papers
will be given guidelines in preparing and submitting the final
manuscript(s) together with the notification of acceptance.


Organization Committee

General Co-Chairs:
 Aloysius K. Mok, University of Texas at Austin, USA
 Shangping Ren, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA
 Carolyn Talcott, SRI, International,USA

Steering Committee
 Helen Gill, National Science Foundation, USA
 Tei-Wei Kuo, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
 Raj Rajkumar, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
 Wei Zhao, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA

Publicity Chair
Limin Shen, Yanshan University, China

Program Committee

Tarek Abdelzaher, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Gul Agha, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Luca de Alfaro, Stanford University
Rajeev Alur, University of Pennsylvania
Albert M. K. Cheng, University of Houston
Jeff Grey, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Chris Gill, Washington University in St. Louis
Joseph Giordano, Dolphin Technologies
Steve Goddard, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Zonghua Gu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 
Joshua Guttman, Mitre
Thomas A. Henzinger, University of California at Berkeley
Sharon Hu, University of Notre Dame
Insup Lee, University of Pennsylvania
Jane Liu, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Steve Liu, Texas A&M University
Zhiyong Liu, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Ying Lu, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Chenyang Lu, Washington University in  St.Louis
Jerzy M. Nogiec, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Jens Palsberg, University of California at Los Angeles
Gang Quan,  University of South Carolina   
Douglas C. Schmidt, Vanderbilt  University
Joseph Sifakis, VERIMAG Laboratory, France
Limin Shen, Yanshan University, China
Kang Shin, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Oleg Sokolsky, University of Pennsylvania
Jeffrey Tsai, University of Illinois at Chicago
Shambhu Upadhyaya, University at Buffalo
Jan Vitek, Purdue University
Shengquan Wang, University of Michigan - Dearborn
Yongji Wang, Software Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences,China
I-Ling Yen, University of Texas at Dallas



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Cheers,

Shangping
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Dr. Shangping Ren
Department of Computer Science
Illinois Institute of Technology
10 W. 31st Street
Chicago, IL 60616
Cell Phone (630) 747-6272
Fax  (312) 567-5067
Web www.cs.iit.edu/~ren
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