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CALL FOR PAPERS
The 2nd International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2014)
May 5-6, 2014, Paris, France.
http://emas14.wordpress.com/
In conjunction with AAMAS 2014
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WORKSHOP SUMMARY

The engineering of multi-agent systems (MAS) is a complex activity, for these systems consist of multiple autonomous and heterogeneous agents, and the system's proper functioning depends on the effective interaction of these agents. MAS have been used to a certain extent in the industry, but a wider adoption is hindered by the fact that the engineering techniques for building them are not as mature as mainstream software engineering techniques. Numerous challenges have to be addressed, including:
- Design and software engineering; for example, how to effectively design agents and their interactions?
- Implementation; how to effectively implement multi-agent coordination or organizations?
- Verification; how to formally verify (un)desired properties of individual agents and MAS?

It is manifest that these challenges can be tackled more effectively when considered together within the overarching discipline of MAS engineering. For example, design artefacts (e.g., agent or MAS models) can be used to support and assist with debugging and testing. Another example is the development of agent-oriented programming languages that result in programs that are more readily verifiable. A final example is the use of declarative techniques that span design and implementation.

The International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS) is the ideal venue for papers that relate to all aspects of agent and MAS engineering. EMAS was created in 2013 as a merger of three separate workshops (with overlapping communities) that focus on software engineering aspects (AOSE), programming aspects (ProMAS), and the application of declarative techniques to design, programming and verification (DALT). The EMAS community welcomes application papers that describe lessons learned and engineering challenges identified in building and deploying multi-agent systems.

The EMAS workshop explicitly pursues three goals:
- To progress and further develop the understanding of how to engineer multi-agent systems.
- To bring together the communities that are concerned with different aspects of engineering multi-agent systems, and by doing so, allow for better interchange of ideas between the communities, thus exploiting synergies discussed above.
- To attract workshop papers that report on experiences and lessons learned from innovative applications of MAS.

We thus call for research papers that are concerned with any aspect of the engineering of multi-agent systems. The list of topics includes but is not limited to the topics of the three parent workshops.


SUBMISSION AND PUBLICATION

EMAS welcomes the submission of theoretical, experimental, methodological as well as application papers. Each paper will be evaluated by three members of the PC.
Papers must not be submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere. Papers should be written in English, formatted according to the Springer LNCS style (either in LaTeX or in Word), and not exceed 16 pages. Submission should be done via EasyChair (https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=emas2014).

Pre-proceedings containing all accepted papers are provided electronically on a USB stick as part of the AAMAS workshop registration package. Revised versions of accepted papers will be published in a Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence volume. For this purpose, authors will be given the opportunity to revise and re-submit their contributions after the conference.


IMPORTANT DATES

22 January 2014: Paper submission deadline
19 February 2014: Paper notification
12 March 2014: Camera-ready papers ready for pre-proceedings
5-6 May 2015: Workshop held at AAMAS


WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

M. Birna van Riemsdijk (TU Delft, Netherlands)
Fabiano Dalpiaz (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
Jürgen Dix (TU Clausthal, Germany)


STEERING COMMITTEE

Matteo Baldoni (Italy)
Rafael Bordini (Brazil)
Mehdi Dastani (Netherlands)
Jürgen Dix (Germany)
Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni (France)
Paolo Giorgini (Italy)
Jörg Müller (Germany)
M. Birna Van Riemsdijk (Netherlands)
Tran Cao Son (USA)
Gerhard Weiss (Netherlands)
Danny Weyns (Sweden)
Michael Winikoff (New Zealand).

CONTACT

For any question about the workshop, you can contact the organizers via email: emas2014@easychair.org
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