SELMAS 2004

 
                 CALL FOR PAPERS - EXTENDED DEADLINE

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                  Third International Workshop on
      Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems
                             SELMAS'04

                          May 24-25, 2004
                        Edinburgh, Scotland
                   In conjunction with ICSE'04

          http://www.teccomm.les.inf.puc-rio.br/selmas2004/
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MOTIVATION AND GOALS

With the advances in Internet technologies, multi-agent systems (MASs) are undergoing a transition from closed monolithic architectures into open architectures composed of a huge number of autonomous agents, which operate and move across different environments. Large-scale open systems involve hundreds or perhaps thousands of agents not necessarily co-designed to share a common goal. As multiple software agents become highly collaborative and operate in networked environments, they must be context-aware and deal with environment uncertainty. It makes their coordination and management more difficult and increases the likelihood of the occurrence of exceptional situations, such as security holes, privacy violations, and unexpected global effects. The goal of the 3rd edition of SELMAS is to bring together researchers and practitioners to discuss the current state and future direction of research in software engineering for open MASs. The Workshop is also a forum to learn about the latest research, and to discuss and exchange ideas concerning ongoing work. Other particular interests of this Workshop are:

* Determine the challenges of engineering open MASs
* Understand those issues in the agent technology that make it difficult and/or improve the production of large open systems
* Provide a comprehensive overview of existing software engineering techniques that may successfully be applied to deal with the complexity associated with open multi-agent software.


TOPICS OF INTEREST

The Workshop is intended to cover a wide range of topics of software engineering for large-scale multi-agent systems, from theoretical foundations to empirical studies. We welcome the submission of papers in all aspects of multi-agent software engineering, including the following (but are not limited to):

* Advanced separation of concerns in the context of MAS
* Comparative studies between multi-agent systems and object-oriented systems
* Coordination architectures, infrastructures, and tools
* Design patterns, design principles, and architectural styles
* Dependability in open MAS
* Domain-specific languages for MAS
* Exception handling and fault-tolerance techniques
* Experiments and case studies with large-scale MAS development
* Frameworks and software architectures
* MAS development and pervasive computing
* Methodologies for agent-oriented analysis and design
* Mobility and security issues in large MAS
* Modeling of large MAS
* Pitfalls and learned lessons in the construction of large MAS
* Reflective software architectures
* Requirements engineering for MAS
* Software development environments for real-life MAS
* Software engineering techniques for resource-bounded MAS
* Software engineering theories for large-scale MAS
* Software reliability engineering and MAS
* Testing and metrics for MAS
* Verification and validation techniques for MAS
* UML application to large-scale MAS


FORMAT AND SUBMISSIONS

We encourage authors to present novel ideas, critique of existing work, and practical studies and experiments, which demonstrate how software engineering techniques can assist the development of large-scale multi-agent systems.

More detailed guidelines for successful submissions can be found at:
http://www.teccomm.les.inf.puc-rio.br/selmas2004/cfp.htm

It is the aim of the organizers to publish the Proceedings in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series of Springer-Verlag, following the tradition established for SELMAS'02 and SELMAS'03.


IMPORTANT DATES

Paper Submission: March 08, 2004          (NOW: MARCH 15)
Acceptance Notification: March 29, 2004   (NOW: APRIL 02)
Camera-Ready Due: April 12, 2004          (UNALTERED)


ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE

Ricardo Choren [PUC-Rio - Brazil]
Alessandro Garcia [PUC-Rio - Brazil]
Carlos Lucena [PUC-Rio - Brazil]
Martin Griss [University of California at Santa Cruz - USA]
David Kung [University of Texas at Arlington - USA]
Naftaly Minsky [Rutgers University - USA]
Alexander Romanovsky [University of Newcastle upon Tyne - UK]


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Paulo Alencar [University of Waterloo - Canada]
Bernhard Bauer [Universität Augsburg - Germany]
Federico Bergenti [Università degli Studi di Parma - Italy]
M. Brian Blake [Georgetown University - USA]
Lotzi Boloni [University of Central Florida - USA]
Paolo Bresciani [IRST - Italy]
Jean-Pierre Briot [CNRS - France]
Jaelson Castro [UFPE - Brazil]
Scott Cost [University of Maryland - USA]
Luiz Marcio Cysneiros [York University - Canada]
John Debenham [University of Technology at Sydney - Australia]
Prem Devanbu [University of California at Davis - USA]
Christophe Dony [Université Montpellier II - France]
Carlos Ángel Fernandez [Universidad Politécnica de Madrid - Spain]
Marcus Fontoura [IBM Almaden Research Center - USA]
Martin Fredriksson [Blekinge Institute of Technology - Sweden]
Marie-Pierre Gervais [Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6 - France]
Joseph Giampapa [Carnegie Mellon University - USA]
Paolo Giorgini [Università degli Studi di Trento - Italy]
Marie-Pierre Gleizes [IRIT - France]
Zahia Guessoum [Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6 - France]
Olivier Gutknecht [LIRMM - France]
Tom Holvoet [Katholieke Universiteit Leuven - Belgium]
Michael Huhns [University of South Carolina - USA]
Elisa Huzita [Universidade Estadual de Maringá - Brazil]
Mark d'Inverno [University of Westminster - UK]
Catholijn Jonker [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam - The Netherlands]
Robert Kessler [University of Utah - USA]
Rogério de Lemos [University of Kent - UK]
Roger Mailler [University of Massachusetts - USA]
Marco Mamei [Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia - Italy]
Eugénio Oliveira [Universidade do Porto - Portugal]
Andrea Omicini [University of Bologna - Italy]
Andrés Díaz Pace [UNCPBA - Argentina]
Anna Perini [IRST - Italy]
Omer Rana [Cardiff University - UK]
Awais Rashid [Lancaster University - UK]
Gustavo Rossi [Universidad Nacional de La Plata - Argentina]
Cecília Rubira [UNICAMP - Brazil]
Brian Henderson-Sellers [University of Technology Sydney - Australia]
Arndt von Staa [PUC-Rio - Brazil]
Michael Stal [Siemens - Germany]
Walt Truszkowski [NASA - USA]
Michael Weiss [Carleton University - Canada]
Andrea Zisman [City University - UK]