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Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design (FMCAD) 2025 - Second Call for
Papers
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FMCAD 2025 is the twenty-fifth edition in a series of conferences on the
theory and
applications of formal methods in hardware and system verification. The
conference
encompasses a wide range of topics related to formal aspects of
computer-aided system
design, including verification, specification, synthesis, and testing
and provides
a leading forum to researchers in academia and industry for presenting
and discussing
groundbreaking methods, technologies, theoretical results, and tools for
reasoning
formally about computing systems.
## General Information
Conference Website: https://fmcad.org/FMCAD25/
Conference Location: SRI Headquarters, Menlo Park, California, US
Conference Dates: October 6 - October 10, 2025
FMCAD 2025 includes the FMCAD Student Forum
(https://fmcad.org/FMCAD25/student_forum/)
and is co-located with VSTTE 2025.
## Topics of Interest
FMCAD welcomes submission of papers reporting original research on
advances in all
aspects of formal methods and their applications to computer-aided design.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
*Model checking, theorem proving, equivalence checking, abstraction and
reduction,
compositional methods, decision procedures at the bit- and word-level,
probabilistic
methods, combinations of deductive methods and decision procedures.
*Synthesis and compilation for computer system descriptions, modeling,
specification,
and implementation languages, formal semantics of languages and their
subsets, model-based
design, design derivation and transformation, correct-by-construction
methods.
*Application of formal and semi-formal methods to functional and
non-functional
specification and validation of hardware and software, including timing
and power
modeling, verification of computing systems on all levels of
abstraction, system-level
design and verification for embedded systems, cyber-physical systems,
automotive
systems and other safety-critical systems, hardware-software co-design
and verification,
and transaction-level verification.
*Experience with the application of formal and semi-formal methods to
industrial-scale
designs; tools that represent formal verification enablement, introduce
new features,
or substantially improve the automation of formal methods.
*Application of formal methods to verifying safety, connectivity and
security properties
of networks, distributed systems, smart contracts, block chains, and IoT
devices.
*Application of formal methods to the analysis of machine learning
systems, and
applications of machine learning to enhance formal methods techniques.
## Important Dates
*Abstract Submission Deadline: April 20, 2025
*Paper Submission Deadline: April 27, 2025
*Author Response: June 17 - June 19, 2025
*Author Notification: July 1, 2025
All deadlines are 11:59 pm AoE (Anywhere on Earth)
### FMCAD/VSTTE Program Outline
*Main VSTTE Day: October 6, 2025
*Joint FMCAD/VSTTE Tutorial Day: October 7, 2025
*Main FMCAD days: October 8 - October 10, 2025
## Submission Guidelines
Submissions must be made electronically in PDF format via EasyChair:
https://easychair.org/conferences?conf=fmcad2025
Two categories of papers are invited: Regular papers, and Tool & Case
Study papers.
**Regular papers*are expected to offer novel foundational ideas,
theoretical results,
or algorithmic improvements to existing methods, along with experimental
impact validation
where applicable.
**Tool & Case Study papers*are expected to report on the design,
implementation
or use of verification (or related) technology in a practically relevant
context
(which need not be industrial), and its impact on design processes.
Both Regular and Tool & Case Study papers must use the IEEE Transactions
format on
letter-size paper with a 10-point font size; preferably, use the FMCAD
template for
papers. Papers in both categories can be either 8 pages (long) or 4
pages (short)
in length excluding references. Short papers that describe emerging
results, practical
experiences, or original ideas that can be described succinctly are
encouraged. Authors
will be required to select an appropriate paper category at abstract
submission time.
Submissions may contain an optional appendix, which will not appear in
the final
version of the paper. The reviewers should be able to assess the quality
and the
relevance of the results in the paper without reading the appendix.
Submissions in all categories must contain original research that has
not been previously
published, nor is concurrently submitted for publication. Any partial
overlap with
published or concurrently submitted papers must be clearly indicated.
FMCAD employs a rigorous peer-review process and each submission will be
reviewed
by at least four members of the program committee. The review process is
single-blind.
The review process will incorporate a feedback and rebuttal period
during which authors
will have the opportunity to formally respond to reviewer comments.
**New - Artifact Evaluation:**FMCAD 2025 introduces optional artifact
evaluation
to enhance transparency and the usability of research outcomes. Authors
reporting
experimental results are strongly encouraged to publish their final data
in a long-term
repository (e.g. zenodo (https://zenodo.org)). With artifacts serving as
supplementary
evidence, high-quality artifacts can improve the likelihood of paper
acceptance.
Artifact evaluation will be integrated into the main review process,
with one selected
program committee member assessing the quality of the artifact alongside
the paper.
Accepted artifacts require a DOI and will be clearly identified in the
published
paper. Details are available on the Artifacts Page
(https://fmcad.org/FMCAD25/cfa).
Accepted papers are published by TU Wien Academic Press under a Creative
Commons
license (the authors retain the copyright) and distributed through the
IEEE XPlore
digital library. IEEE CEDA is a technical co-sponsor of FMCAD. There are
no publication
fees. Authors of accepted contributions will be required to sign the
FMCAD copyright
transfer form found here: https://fmcad.or.at/pdf/copyright.pdf.
For each accepted paper, at least one unique author must register for
the conference.
Moreover, authors of accepted papers ensure that at least one of them
will attend
the conference and present the work.
## Student Forum
Continuing the tradition of the previous years, FMCAD 2025 will host a
Student Forum
that provides a platform for graduate students at any career stage to
introduce their
research to the wider Formal Methods community, and solicit feedback.
Submissions for the student forum must be short reports describing
research ideas
or ongoing work that the student is currently pursuing, and must be
within the scope
of FMCAD. Work that has been partly published previously might be
considered; the
novel aspect to be addressed in future work must be clearly described in
such cases.
All submissions will be reviewed by a selected group of FMCAD student
forum committee
members. Details are available on the Student Forum Page
(https://fmcad.org/FMCAD25/student_forum).
## FMCAD 2025 Committees
### Program Chair
Ahmed Irfan, SRI, CA, USA
Daniela Kaufmann, TU Wien, Austria
### Program Committee
Guy Amir, Cornell University
Erika Ábrahám, RWTH Aachen University
Kshitij Bansal, Google
Haniel Barbosa, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Per Bjesse, Synopsys Inc.
Nikolaj Bjørner, Microsoft
Martin Blicha, University of Lugano
Roderick Bloem, Graz University of Technology
Rayna Dimitrova, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
Supratik Chakraborty, IIT Bombay
Aleksandar Chakarov, Phase Change Software LLC
Pascal Fontaine, Université de Liège
Katalin Fazekas, TU Wien
Divya Gopinath, NASA Ames (KBR Inc.)
Alberto Griggio, Fondazione Bruno Kessler
Arie Gurfinkel, University of Waterloo
Liana Hadarean, Amazon Web Services
Paula Herber, University of Münster
Osman Hasan, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST)
Marijn Heule, Carnegie Mellon University
Antti Hyvarinen, Certora
Alexey Ignatiev, Monash University
Mitesh Jain, Rivos Inv.
Mikolas Janota, Czech Technical University in Prague
Susmit Jha, SRI International
Martin Jonas, Masaryk University
Jianwen Li, East China Normal University
Enrico Magnago, Amazon Web Services
Sergio Mover, Ecole Polytechnique
Antonina Nepeivoda, Program System Institute of RAS
Aina Niemetz, Stanford University
Mathias Preiner, Stanford University
Stefan Ratschan, Czech Academy of Sciences
Kristin Rozier, Iowa State University
Philipp Rümmer, University of Regensburg and Uppsala University
Mark Santolucito, Barnard College
Christoph Scholl, University of Freiburg
Martina Seidl, Johannes Kepler Univeristy Linz
Natarajan Shankar, SRI International
Natasha Sharygina, University of Lugano
Anna Slobodova, ARM
Mate Soos, Ethereum Foundation
Christoph Sticksel, The MathWorks
Nestan Tsiskaridze, Stanford University
Ashish Tiwari, Microsoft
Georg Weissenbacher, TU Wien
Andrew Wu, Amherst College
Nisansala Yatapanage, Australian National University
Emily Yu, Institute of Science and Technology Austria
Cunxi Yu, University of Maryland
Zhen Zhang, Utah State University
Hongce Zhang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)
Yoni Zohar, Bar-Ilan University
### Local Chair
Stéphane Graham-Lengrand, SRI, CA, USA
### Registration Chair
Jenny McNeill, SRI, CA, USA
### Student Forum Chairs
Tanja Schindler, University of Basel, Switzerland
Lee A. Barnett, AWS, CA, USA
### Sponsorship Chair:
Alex Ozdemir, Stanford University, CA, USA
### Publication Chair
Georg Weissenbacher, TU Wien, Austria
### Web Chair
Thomas Hader, TU Wien, Austria
### FMCAD Steering Committee
Clark Barrett, Stanford University, CA, USA
Armin Biere, University of Freiburg, Germany
Ruzica Piskac, Yale University, USA
Anna Slobodova, ARM, USA
Georg Weissenbacher, TU Wien, Austria
Dear all,
The next talk in the IARCS Verification Seminar Series will be given
by Alastair Donaldson, a Professor and Director of Research in the
Department of Computing at Imperial College London. The talk is scheduled
on Tuesday, March 4, at 1900 hrs IST (add to Google calendar
<https://calendar.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&tmeid=Nzd2Zmc1bn…>
).
The details of the talk can be found on our webpage (
https://fmindia.cmi.ac.in/vss/), and also appended to the body of this
email.
The Verification Seminar Series, an initiative by the Indian Association
for Research in Computing Science (IARCS), is a monthly, online
talk-series, broadly in the area of Formal Methods and Programming
Languages, with applications in Verification and Synthesis. The aim of this
talk-series is to provide a platform for Formal Methods researchers to
interact regularly. In addition, we hope that it will make it easier for
researchers to explore newer problems/areas and collaborate on them, and
for younger researchers to start working in these areas.
All are welcome to join.
Best regards,
Akash, Deepak, Madhukar, Srivathsan
=============================================================
Title: Taking Back Control: Formally Modelling a Compiler Intermediate
Representation for GPU Computing
Meeting Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89164094870?pwd=eUFNRWp0bHYxRVpwVVNoVUdHU0djQT09
(Meeting ID: 891 6409 4870, Passcode: 082194)
Abstract:
We will present our POPL 2023 work on using formal modelling and analysis
techniques to understand and fix fundamental problems in the design of
SPIR-V, a compiler intermediate representation that is widely-used in GPU
computing. An innovation of SPIR-V is that it features special instructions
that allow information about high level control flow constructs to be
documented in its otherwise-unstructured basic block-based representation.
The idea is that compilers can exploit this information to generate
efficient GPU-specific machine code. However, the original definitions of
these instructions and the rules that govern them were fraught with
ambiguities, preventing users of SPIR-V from understanding their purpose
and hindering their use by compiler developers. We used the Alloy modelling
language and analysis tool to build an initial best-effort formal model of
SPIR-V control flow, after which we iteratively refined the model by
cross-checking it against official documentation, test suites and
validation tools, consulting with experts in industry to resolve
differences. Along the way we fixed numerous deficiencies in these test
suites and validation tools, and ended up with agreement between our
revised formal model and these other sources of truth about SPIR-V. We then
rewrote relevant parts of the English language formal specification based
on our rigorous formal model, and our changes to the language have been
incorporated in the latest version of the SPIR-V specification. As an added
bonus, we devised a novel technique for automated testing of SPIR-V
compilers that uses our formal model to generate unusual control flow
graphs which are then fleshed out into self-checking SPIR-V test cases.
This led to the discovery of numerous bugs affecting open source and
commercial SPIR-V compilers.
Bio: Alastair Donaldson is a Professor in the Department of Computing at
Imperial College London where he is Director of Research and leads the
Multicore Programming Group, investigating novel techniques and tool
support for programming, testing and reasoning about highly parallel
systems and their programming languages. He was Founder and Director of
GraphicsFuzz Ltd., a start-up company specialising in metamorphic testing
of graphics drivers, which was acquired by Google in 2018, after which he
spent time working with Google as a software engineer and then as a
Visiting Researcher. He was the recipient of the 2017 BCS Roger Needham
Award and an EPSRC Early Career Fellowship, and has published more than 100
articles in the fields of programming languages, formal verification,
software testing and parallel programming. Alastair was previously a
Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research Redmond, an EPSRC Postdoctoral
Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and a Research Engineer at
Codeplay Software Ltd. He holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow, and
is a Fellow of the British Computer Society.
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Dear Colleagues,
We are honored that IEEE ICDCS 2025 (https://icdcs2025.icdcs.org <https://icdcs2025.icdcs.org/>) will be hosting the 1st Workshop on Hot Topics in Distributed Machine Learning (HotDiML) this year!
HotDiML provides researchers working in the Distributed Machine Learning field with a platform for critical thinking, sharing both successes and failures, and fostering constructive discussions. The workshop encourages novel directions, accepting papers that offer fresh perspectives or critical analyses, even if not fully developed. These papers can provide valuable insights to advance the field.
We invite you to contribute with your recent work presented as position, research, experimental evaluation or report papers on Distributed Machine Learning. The accepted papers will be presented at the workshop and a plenary discussion will be held alongside these presentations. Please check the call for paper here: https://hotdiml.github.io/HotDiML2025/cfp/.
Important Dates:
Deadline for submissions: March 16th, 2025
Notification of acceptance: April 2nd, 2025
Camera-ready: April 16th, 2025
Workshop days: July 20th, 2025
Important Note:
For each accepted paper, at least one author is required to register and attend the workshop in-person to present their paper on-site. No-show paper will be reported to the publisher and removed from the ICDCSW companion conference proceedings. All accepted and presented papers will be included in the IEEE ICDCSW companion conference proceedings and IEEE digital library. Note that the authors should adhere to ethic and professional standards of IEEE. Please refer to IEEE Code of Ethics and IEEE Policy of AI-Generated Text.
We look forward to your submission and the eventual inspiring conversations in Glasgow, Scotland, UK!
All the best!
HotDiML 2025 Organizers
Andrea Agiollo, Enkeleda Bardhi, Paolo Bellavista, Rajiv Khanna and Riccardo Lazzeretti
hotdiml.workshop(a)gmail.com <mailto:hotdiml.workshop@gmail.com>

(apologies for the cross-posting!)
Dear colleagues,
Hi all,
we are looking for a postdoc interested in games on graphs, automata/logics,
and generally game theory, to join the verification group at the
University of Liverpool.
The post is for two years and is to be filled as soon as possible (there is
some flexibility). The application deadline is 2025-03-30. All details
here:
<https://my.corehr.com/pls/ulivrecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.display_form?p_…>
Thanks and best wishes,
P