CALL FOR PAPERS: ProMAS'08

Sixth international Workshop on Programming Multi-Agent Systems (ProMAS'08)
http://www.cs.uu.nl/ProMAS/2008

ProMAS'08 is a satellite workshop at AAMAS 2008 Estoril, Portugal, 12-16
May 2008
http://gaips.inesc-id.pt/aamas2008/

Even though the contributions of the multi-agent systems (MAS)
community can make a significant impact in the development of open
distributed systems, the techniques resulting from such contributions
will only be widely adopted when suitable programming languages and
development tools are available. Furthermore, such languages and tools
must incorporate those techniques in a principled but practical way, so
as to support the ever more complex task of professional programmers,
in particular when the systems have to operate in dynamic environments.

The ProMAS workshop series aims to address the theoretical and
practical programming issues related to developing and deploying
multi-agent systems. In particular, ProMAS aims to address how
multi-agent systems designs or specifications can be effectively
implemented. In its previous editions, ProMAS constituted an invaluable
occasion bringing together leading researchers from both academia and
industry to discuss issues on the design of programming languages and
tools for multi-agent systems. In particular, the workshop promotes the
discussion and exchange of ideas concerning the techniques, concepts,
requirements, and principles that are important for multi-agent
programming technology. These include the theory and applications of
agent programming languages, the verification and analysis of agent systems,
as well as the implementation of social structure in agent-based systems
(e.g. roles within organizations, coordination and communication in
multi-agent systems).

We encourage the submission of proposals for programming languages and
development tools that provide specific programming constructs to facilitate
the implementation of the essential concepts used in multi-agent system
analysis and specifications (e.g., mental attitudes, distribution, and
social interaction). We also welcome submissions describing significant
multi-agent applications, as well as agent programming tools that allow
the integration of agents with legacy systems. Further, we are particularly
interested in approaches or applications that show clearly the added-value
of multi-agent programming, and explain why and how this technology should
be adopted by designers and programmers both in academia and industry.

The main areas of interest of the ProMAS workshop concern the development
and programming of Multi-Agent Systems, ranging from tools, (new) agent and
organizational programming concepts to semantics and formal verification.
These themes are related to other workshops, including among others the AOSE
and AT2AI workshops, which are also organized at AAMAS�?08. These workshops
aim to coordinate their activities, in particular, by organizing a joint
session. Details will be published on the ProMAS web site.

Specific topics for this workshop include, but are not limited to:

- Programming Languages for multi-agent systems
- Extensions of traditional languages for multi-agent programming
- Theoretical and practical aspects of multi-agent programming
- Computational complexity of MAS
- Semantics for multi-agent programming languages
- High-level executable multi-agent specification languages
- Algorithms, techniques, or protocols for multi-agent issues
(e.g., coordination, cooperation, negotiation)
- Agent communication issues in multi-agent programming
- Implementation of social and organisational aspects of MAS
- Formal methods for specification and verification of MAS
- Verification tools for implementations of MAS
- Test and debugging tools and techniques
- Agent development tools and platforms
- Generic tools and infrastructures for multi-agent programming
- Interoperability and standards for MAS
- Programming mobile agents
- Safety and security for mobile MAS deployment
- Fault tolerance and load balancing for mobile MAS
- Application areas for multi-agent programming languages
- Applications using legacy systems
- Programming MAS for Grid-based applications
- Programming MAS for the Semantic Web
- Deployed (industrial-strength) MAS
- Benchmarks and testbeds for comparing MAS languages and tools


Important Dates:
----------------

Paper submission deadline: 25 January, 2008
Notifications of acceptance/rejection: 25 February, 2008
Camera-ready copies due: 12 March, 2008
Workshop Date: 12th/13th May, 2008 (TBA)


Submission Details:
-------------------

Authors can submit their papers via the conference management system,
available at the following address:

http://www.conftool.net/ProMAS2008/

First, you will be asked to register into the system, then you will
get a user id and a password that you can use to submit your paper.
Papers should be formatted using Springer LNCS style
(http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html) and have a maximum
of 15 pages.

Accepted papers will be published as a technical report and distributed
among participants during the workshop. As was the case for previous
editions of the ProMAS workshop, we are planning to publish extended
versions of selected papers as a volume of the Lecture Notes in Computer
Science series by Springer-Verlag.


Workshop Chairs:
---------------------

- Koen Hindriks (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)
http://www.mmi.tudelft.nl/
- Alexander Pokahr (University of Hamburg, Germany)
http://vsis-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/members/info.php/84
- Sebastian Sardina (RMIT University, Australia)
http://goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ssardina/home.shtml


Steering Committee:
---------------------

- Rafael Bordini (University of Durham, UK)
- Mehdi Dastani (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
- Juergen Dix (Clausthal University of Technology, Germany)
- Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni (University of Paris VI, France)


Programme Committee
-------------------
Matteo Baldoni (Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy)
Juan A. Botía Blaya (Universidad de Murcia, Spain)
Lars Braubach (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Jean-Pierre Briot (University of Paris 6, France)
Keith Clark (Imperial College, UK)
Rem Collier (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Yves Demazeau (Institut IMAG - Grenoble, France)
Frank Dignum (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
Michael Fisher (University of Liverpool, UK)
Jorge Gómez-Sanz (Universidad Complutense Madris, Spain)
Vladimir Gorodetsky (Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia)
Dominic Greenwood (Whitestein Technologies, Switzerland)
Benjamin Hirsch (TU-Berlin, Germany)
Shinichi Honiden (NII, Tokyo, Japan)
Jomi Hübner (Universidade Regional de Blumenau, Brazil)
Michael Huhns (University of South Carolina (USA)
Yves Lespérance (York University, Canada)
João Leite (Universidade University Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
John-Jules Meyer (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
David Morley (SRI, USA)
Jörg Müller (Clausthal University of Technology, Germany)
Oliver Obst (Koblenz-Landau University, Germany)
Andrea Omicini (University of Bologna, Italy)
Agostino Poggi (Università degli Studi di Parma, Italy)
Alessandro Ricci (DEIS, Universit di Bologna, Italy)
Birna van Riemsdijk (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany)
Ralph Rönnquist (Intendico, Australia)
Ichiro Satoh (NII, Kyoto, Japan)
Kostas Stathis (City University London, UK)
Paolo Torroni (University of Bologna, Italy)
Tran Cao Son (New Mexico State University, USA)
Gerhard Wei�? (Software Competence Center Hagenberg, Austria)
Michael Winikoff (RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia)
Wayne Wobke (University of New South Wales, Australia)