*** CALL FOR PAPERS ***

ICSA 2018

International Conference on Software Architecture

April 30 - May 4, 2018
Seattle, USA

http://icsa-conferences.org/2018/call-for-papers/

ICSA cordially invites contributions related to all aspects of software architecture!

The International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA 2018) extends the WICSA and CompArch history and tradition as the premier gathering of practitioners and researchers interested in software architecture, in component-based software engineering and in quality aspects of complex software systems.

ICSA continues the WICSA tradition of a working conference, where researchers meet practitioners and where software architects can explain the problems they face in their day-to-day work and try to influence the future of the field. Interactive working sessions will be the place where researchers meet practitioners to identify opportunities to create the future.

The increasing size of software systems and the emergence of increasingly autonomous systems is asking for innovative software engineering practices. The way software is being developed and maintained is rapidly changing and must take into account multifaceted constraints like fast-changing and unpredictable markets, complex and changing customer requirements, pressures of shorter time-to-market, rapidly advancing information technologies, just to name a few of these new aspects. To cope with such constraints, software is increasingly produced according to rapid continuous software engineering development processes. The theme of ICSA 2018 is “Breaking Down Barriers” – leveraging advances like cross-functional and cross-national teams, scaling research to industry scale problems, bridging customer-developer divides, and working in Eoin Woods’s ‘intelligent connected’ world.

We welcome original papers that explore and explain the role of architecture in current systems as well as in near future systems, with special focus on self-adaptive, smart, and autonomous systems. This conference looks at what can be learned from our software architecture history, experience, studies, and best practices.

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Call for Papers
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Technical Papers
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We solicit the software architecture community the following types of submissions:
* Technical research papers (10 pages) should describe original and significant results of theoretical, empirical, conceptual, or experimental research in software architecture research or industrial practice. The novelty of the contribution needs to be clearly described and the results validated. Technical research papers are limited to 10 proceedings pages, and will be evaluate based on soundness, significance, verifiability, and presentation quality, in that order.
* Experience papers (8 pages) should describe significant experience in applying innovative approaches to software architecture domain, and should carefully identify and discuss important lessons learned, so that other researchers and/or practitioners can benefit from the experience. Of special interest are experience papers that report on industrial applications in software architecture. Experience papers are limited to 8 proceedings pages.

Topics
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Topics of interest for the conference include (but are not limited to) the following themes:
* Architecture and CI&D, DevOps, and/or
* Microservices
* Model driven engineering for continuous architecting
* Up-front architecture and agile development
* Architecting Systems of Systems, IoT systems, CPSs, software ecosystems, self-adaptive systems, or autonomous systems
* Component based software engineering and architecture design
* Architecture evaluation and quality aspects of software architectures
* Automatic extraction and generation of software architecture descriptions
* Re-factoring and evolving architecture design decisions and solutions
* Architecture frameworks and architecture description languages
* Linking architecture to requirements and/or implementation
* Preserving architecture quality throughout the system lifetime
* Reusable architectural solutions
* Software architecture knowledge management
* Software architecture for legacy systems and systems integration
* Architecting families of products
* Cultural, economic, business and managerial aspects of software architecture
* Software architects roles and responsibilities
* Training, education, and certification of software architects
* State-of-the-art and state-of-practice in software architecture
* Industrial experiments and case studies

Formatting and Submission Instructions
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All submissions must conform to the Author Instructions (http://icsa-conferences.org/2018/call-for-papers/author-instructions/). Please note that ICSA 2018 will pursue a double-blind review process for the main Technical track (only), which must be reflected by all submissions to this track. All papers are to be submitted electronically via the EasyChair submission system, by the submission deadline, and must not have been published before.

Publication
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All accepted contributions will be published in ICSA 2018 proceedings, and appear in IEEE Xplore Digital Library. At least one author of an accepted contribution is required to register and present the work at the conference. ICSA 2018 will ensure that all accepted contributions can be presented regardless of US immigration rules.

New and Emerging Ideas
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The goal of the New and Emerging Ideas (NEMI) track at ICSA 2018 is to encourage the software architecture community to propose radical new software architecture research visions and ideas, which can challenge the status quo of the software discipline and point to new directions.

Types of submissions
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To support that goal, the NEMI 2018 track will publish two kinds of papers:
* New Ideas (4 pages):
- Visions of new directions supported by a strong and well motivated scientific intuition or use-inspiration;
- Bold arguments against current research directions and results;
- Results that challenge established results or beliefs giving evidence that call for fundamentally new directions, open up new research avenues where software architecture research can contribute.
- Radically new approaches, techniques, or theories that can bring new results to a field of research;
* Emerging results (4 pages):
- Not yet fully mature research results, that may lack full validation but still that can stimulate discussions. Emerging results papers should trigger discussion and raise awareness and reflection on specific topics, in research and/or industrial practice.

NEMI papers must clearly motivate and illustrate a rationale for changing current practice and/or research in software architecture. Note that evaluation results are not required for NEMI papers (but if such results exist, then they may be presented, if only to give the reviewers a feel about the evaluation plan). Strong argumentation and reasoning is expected to inspire the readers.

Scope
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NEMI provides a forum for innovative, thought-provoking research in software architecture in order to accelerate the exposure of the community to early yet promising and potentially inspiring research efforts.

NEMI papers are not second-class ICSA research track papers. NEMI is a forum for first-class contributions that provide novel, soundly motivated research directions and emerging results.

In principle, the track addresses the same topics of interest as those of the technical research paper track. However, NEMI authors are encouraged to combine these topics in new ways, to establish connections to other fields outside of classical software architecture, push the boundaries of software architecture research to new avenues, as well as to argue for the importance of software architecture research in areas not explicitly listed.

Out of scope
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A NEMI submission should not be just incremental results on existing research, nor disguised advertisements for previously published results. ICSA conference have several tracks and workshops where incremental results, validated research and industry-relevant results are well suited for.

Evaluation
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All papers will be evaluated in terms of the following criteria:
* Value: the problem is worth exploring, ideally real world use-inspired.
* Impact: the potential for disruption of current practice;
* Scope: software architecture related topics that can impact software engineering practice
* Originality: new insight;
* Rationale: soundness of the rationale and argumentation;
* Evaluation: appropriate consideration of relevant literature and/or research evaluation to demonstrate originality and arguments.

Formatting and Submission Instructions
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All NEMI submissions must conform to the Author Instructions (http://icsa-conferences.org/2018/call-for-papers/author-instructions/), and must not exceed four pages, including all text, references, appendices, and figures. NEMI is not double blind. All papers are to be submitted electronically via the NEMI EasyChair submission system, by the submission deadline, and must not have been published before.

Note that authors of accepted papers may also submit a poster describing their work.

Publication and Attendance
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All accepted contributions will be published in ICSA 2018 Companion proceedings, and appear in IEEE Xplore Digital Library. At least one author of an accepted contribution is required to register and present the work at the conference. ICSA 2018 will ensure that all papers accepted can be presented regardless of US immigration rules.

Engineering Track
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The Engineering track at this year’s International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA 2018) provides researchers, practitioners, and educators with a platform to present and discuss the most recent innovations and findings in the field of software architecture by means of tools, case studies, software architecture artefacts, and technical talks.

Types of Submissions
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We solicit the following types of submissions:
* Tool demonstrations (4+2 pages)
* Software architecture artefacts (4 pages)
* Case studies (4 pages)
* Technical talks (1 page)

In the tools category, we distinguish two types of submissions addressing any aspect of tool support to help software architects, researchers, and practitioners:
* Tools used in practice, either from commercial vendors or open-source projects. These demonstrations should focus on practical applications within the different activities of software architecting and should particularly show how they advance the current state of the practice. New ideas and features are particularly welcome.
* Tools used in research, either from academia or industrial research environments. These demonstrations are intended to highlight underlying scientific contributions and show how scientific approaches have been transferred into a working tool.

Both categories may range from early prototypes to in-house or pre-commercialized products. Authors of regular ICSA papers are also welcome to submit an accompanying tool paper by adding information regarding the actual demo as an appendix, as described further under submission requirements.

In the case studies category, we seek submissions that demonstrate applications of architecture-centric engineering practices to real-world problems. The demonstrated engineering practice can be either a novel or recent state-of the art practice or a well-established practice applied in a specific domain. Authors should discuss and evaluate the advantages, drawbacks, limitations, problems, and any adaptations of the engineering practice to suit the technical, business or/or social context of their company or application domain.

The software architecture artefact category seeks submissions that describe architectures of software products, not only demonstrating how to create architectures, but also serving as instructive examples for the community in how to succinctly yet comprehensively capture and communicate architectures of such products.

Technical talks must feature current trends in the industry on the practice of software architecture presenting ideas that are both inspirational and informative.

Formatting and Submission Instructions
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All submissions must conform to the Author Instructions (http://icsa-conferences.org/2018/call-for-papers/author-instructions/). Submissions of papers for tools, case studies and software architecture artefacts must have a maximum length of 4 pages, describing the approach, how it relates to other industrial or research efforts, including references, and what the expected benefits are. Technical talks are limited to a one page overview of the talk. No double-blind review will apply to Engineering track papers.

Tool papers must also include an appendix of maximum 2 pages (not included in the page count) that provides a brief description on how the tool demonstration will be conducted, information on tool availability, maturity and the web-page for the tool (if one exists). Authors may optionally create a video (maximum length of 5 minutes) in high resolution and include, in the appendix, a link to a page where the video can be viewed. Note that the video is not mandatory, but if it is available, it will be used to the benefit of the evaluation of the submission.

All papers are to be submitted electronically via the EasyChair submission system, by the submission deadline, and must not have been published before.

Optional Requirements
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We ask participants to publish tools and artefacts as open (educational) material whenever possible, e.g., via a Free/Open Source licence (e.g., GPL), a Creative Commons license, or Public domain license, and make tools and artefacts available on an open online repository with a reasonable retention period, e.g., Github. Industry participants are exempted if intellectual property regulations at their company prevent open publication of tools and artefacts.

Moreover, we ask participants to make their presentations open and re-usable via SlideWiki, either by directly using Slidewiki to create the presentation, uploading a Powerpoint or OpenOffice Impress presentation file to SlideWiki, or by importing the presentation slides as images, e.g., from PDF or Prezi PDF export. The track organisers can provide you assistance with this.

At the conference, we ask the authors of accepted papers to demonstrate or display their tools, architecture artefacts, case studies, or technical talks during one of the breaks in between sessions. This can be either a tool demonstration on a computer (monitors will be provided), or an overview poster depicting interesting facts and results from the case study, architecture artefact, or technical talk. This is in addition to the presentation of work during the engineering track session.

Publication and Attendance
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All accepted contributions will be published in ICSA 2018 Companion proceedings, and appear in IEEE Xplore Digital Library. At least one author of an accepted contribution is required to register and present the work at the conference. ICSA 2018 will ensure that all accepted contributions can be presented regardless of US immigration rules.

Early Career Researchers Forum
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The goal of the Early Career Researchers Forum is to inspire and bring together early career researchers in the field of software architecture. The forum provides a vibrant place for discussing potential and ongoing research in any stage, from ideas to results. The forum strives to provide a friendly environment for early career researchers to get feedback on their work, exchange experiences, ask questions, and explore available research pathways. In addition, the forum stimulates interaction between early career researchers and experienced academic and industry members of the community by offering a two-stage submission process that will enable early career researchers to obtain one-on-one feedback on their papers before submitting them for review.

Participation
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Participation is open to anyone who considers themself an early career researcher, wanting to share research ideas and (preliminary or mature) results with their peers, and looking for an opportunity to inspire and be inspired, and to learn about research paths. Early career researchers in any stage of their research, including Ph.D. candidates, undergraduate students, and industry researchers, are all welcome. In addition, we highly encourage and invite early career researchers presenting their work in the main ICSA conference to also participate in this forum.

Topics
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Areas of interest include software architecture, component-based software engineering, and quality aspects of software and how these relate to the design of software architectures, as provided by the scope of the 2018 ICSA conference.

ICSA Early Career Researcher Best Paper Award
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The Early Career Researcher Best Paper Award may be given to the author(s) of an outstanding idea/contribution presented at the Early Career Researchers Forum. The award winner will be acknowledged during the main conference and given the opportunity to present their work within the main conference program.

Types of Submissions
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There are three ways of contributing to the program of the forum:
* Ongoing Research Papers (4 to 6 pages) presenting previously unpublished research, including motivation, goals, preliminary results, planned next steps, and industry impact of ongoing research.
* Research Abstracts (2 pages) outlining (preferably more mature) research of early career authors that are also presenting in the 2018 ICSA main program, and would like to actively engage in the forum. The research presented in the forum does not have to be the same research presented in the main track. However, if it is the same research, please note that these abstracts cannot simply be the same abstracts from the paper in the main track. The two pages should contain a short summary of the work, details of current and potential industry impact, and ideas for future research related to this work that the authors would like to discuss in this forum to obtain feedback.
* Emerging Ideas (2 pages) outlining very early ideas on a possible research topic, such as a potential dissertation topic, with the goal of obtaining feedback from forum attendees

In all types of submissions, we challenge the authors to think about the potential impact of their research on industrial practice (whether in the near- or long-term, based on the nature of the research), and to dedicate a section to the Industrial Impact of their work. The authors of Ongoing Research Papers will be assigned an experienced mentor who will help the author prepare for the actual submission (Stage 1), and advise on potential areas or impacts that the authors may be missing. The mentor’s feedback will need to be reflected in the revised submission as a condition for the paper to be accepted (Stage 2).

Formatting and Submission Instructions
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All submissions must conform to the Author Instructions (http://icsa-conferences.org/2018/call-for-papers/author-instructions/), and be submitted electronically via the EasyChair submission system (Early Career Researchers Forum track), by the submission deadline, and must not have been published before.

Publication and Attendance
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All accepted contributions will be published in ICSA 2018 Companion proceedings and appear in IEEE Xplore Digital Library. At least one author of an accepted contribution is required to register and present the work at the conference. ICSA 2018 will ensure that all accepted contributions can be presented regardless of US immigration rules.

Presentation and Discussion
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To further facilitate the discussions around the presented research topics, we assign discussants to each presentation. Please find the description of the discussant below:

A presenter will give her/his talk about their research. Following the presentation, the discussants assigned to each paper will make brief comments (5 minutes), including some combination of:
* how the paper made the discussant think differently about her or his own work
* how the paper is related in some way to the discussant’s own work
* some advice for the authors in continuing their work
* identification of collaboration opportunities or synergies
* discussion questions based on the presented paper

Workshops
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ICSA 2018 workshops provide a unique forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the latest R&D results, experiences, trends, and challenges in the field of software architecture.

Workshops can be half-day or one-day events. Potential topics for workshops are the same as, but not limited to, the ones of the ICSA 2018 conference.

Workshop chairs are responsible for submission and selection of papers. All submissions must conform to the Author Instructions, as workshop proceedings will be published as part of the ICSA 2018 Companion proceedings, and appear in IEEE Xplore Digital Library. Workshop organizers may allow for different types of contributions (e.g., short and long papers), but a workshop paper should not exceed a maximum of 8 pages in IEEE format.

Workshop chairs are required to communicate with the authors that at least one author of an accepted contribution is required to register and present the work at the conference. ICSA 2018 will ensure that all accepted contributions can be presented regardless of US immigration rules.

Formatting and Submission Instructions
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All workshop proposals must conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines (http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html).

Proposals must be written in English and not exceed 4 pages in length.
Proposals should contain:

1. Motivation and objectives of the workshop
* Title and acronym of the workshop
* Motivation and objectives of the workshop topic (not exceeding 500 words) (Note: If your workshop is accepted then this description will be used as early publicity.)
* A more detailed discussion of the anticipated outcomes of the workshop (e.g., open research problems to pursue, validation objectives, empirical studies, etc.)
* Information about previous editions of the same workshop (if any)
* Potential connection with other ICSA events (if any)

2. Workshop format and needed services
* What will be the format for the workshop (e.g., paper presentation and discussion, keynotes, breakout sessions, panel-like discussions, experiments, or a combination thereof)?
* What are the requirements in terms of rooms, equipment, and support staff (i.e., student volunteers)?

3. Target audience
* What backgrounds should the workshop attendees have?
* What is the range (min, max) for number of attendees for the workshop?
* What mix of industry and research participants is being sought?
* Strong and proactive publicity plan, including information about the expected number of submissions and the initial acceptance rate
* Potential Keynote speakers, in particular from industry

4. Workshop contributions and evaluation
* What types of contribution are being solicited for the workshop (e.g., full papers, position papers, posters, demos, experiments, or other interactive sessions)?
* What type of evaluation process will be used?

5. Workshop duration
* Indicate if you plan for a half-day or a full-day workshop

6. Organizers and program committee
* Names and bios of organizers
* List of the potential program committee members

7. Draft call for papers for the workshop (a one page call for papers that you intend to send out if your workshop is accepted)

Evaluation Criteria
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Workshop proposals will be reviewed in a separate evaluation process from research papers. Acceptance will be based on:
* evaluation of the workshop’s potential to advance the state of research and/or practice or
* bridging disciplines, between research and practice;
* timeliness and expected interest in the topic;
* relevance to the conference topics (See the topics of interest in the ICSA 2018 conference site);
* potential for attracting an appropriate number of participants;
* organizers’ ability to lead a successful workshop and attract submissions;
* balance and synergy with other ICSA events.

Workshops may be cancelled or merged after the early registration deadline if too few participants have registered.

Tutorials
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Tutorials at the International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA 2018) provide a valuable opportunity for conference participants to expand their knowledge and skills in specific research topics under the umbrella of software architecture. Tutorials will be held before the main ICSA 2018 conference in half-day or full-day sessions (30th of April or 1st of May, 2018).

Type of Submission
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A tutorial proposal consists of 2-4 pages containing sections that describe the relevance of the topic, including the state of the art, the implementation of the planned tutorial session, as well as the background of the presenter(s). In particular, the proposal should contain:
* Tutorial title (one line).
* A summary of 350 words (maximum) suitable for posting on the conference web site.
* Topic description and relevance for the ICSA community: this section should include (i) a description of the topic, (ii) the state of art in the topic, (iii) the intended audience – profile of the ideal targets – for the tutorial, and (iv) the relevance for ICSA. The topic should be described in detail, stressing its importance and timeliness, including the 2 or 3 key take-away messages the audience should leave with.
* Implementation section: this section should include (i) the duration of the proposed tutorial – half or full day, if both durations are suitable submit two proposals with different outlines – (ii) a preliminary schedule of events including estimated times, (iii) a detailed description of what the tutorial will cover, (iv) a justification of the tutorial for the expected audience, and (v) an explanation of how the tutorial will be conducted – lecture, hands on exercise, facilitated discussion, group activity, role playing, game, etc. – including a description of materials to be included in the tutorial notes.
* The Presenter(s)’ Background section: this section should include affiliation, relevant biographical information (250 words maximum), as well as summaries of the presenters’ technical, presentation, and tutorial qualification and experience. This section should include a description of where and when the tutorial has been offered previously and the past number of attendees.

Formatting and Submission Instructions
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All tutorial proposals must conform to the Author Instructions (http://icsa-conferences.org/2018/call-for-papers/author-instructions/), and be submitted by email directly to the Tutorial chairs at patrizio.pelliccione(_at_)gu.se and jschneider(_at_)swin.edu.au.

Tutorial proposals will be reviewed separately from research papers, although likely by a small subset of the main conference’s program committee. Acceptance will be based on:
* Evaluation of the tutorial’s interest to the community (research and/or practice)
* Timeliness and expected interest in the topic
* Organizer’s ability to lead a successful tutorial
* Balance and synergy with other ICSA 2018 events

Publication and Attendance
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Accepted tutorials will be invited to write a tutorial description of 2 pages, which will be published in ICSA 2018 Companion proceedings, and appear in IEEE Xplore Digital Library. All indicated presenters of an accepted tutorial are required to register and present the tutorial at the conference. ICSA 2018 will ensure that all accepted contributions can be presented regardless of US immigration rules.

Important Dates
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Technical Papers
- Abstract (mandatory) due: 18 January 2018
- Full Papers due: 25 January 2018
- Notification of acceptance: 1 March 2018
- Camera-ready due: 22 March 2018

New and Emerging Ideas, Engineering Track, Early Career Researchers Forum
- Abstract (mandatory) due: 8 March 2018
- Papers due: 15 March 2018
- Notification of acceptance: 5 April 2018
- Camera-ready due: 12 April 2018

Workshops
- Proposal submission: 12 November 2017
- Proposal notification: 17 November 2017
- Paper submission: 8 March 2018
- Paper notification: 22 March 2018
- Camera-ready due: 5 April 2018

Tutorials
- Proposal Submission: 9 March 2018
- Proposal Notification: 16 March 2018
- Possible cancellation notice: 23 March 2018
- Camera-Ready Tutorial Summary: 23 March 2018
- Tutorial handouts: 30 March 2018
- Tutorial days: 30 April and 1 May 2018

For more information about the evaluation process, specific instructions for submission for ICSA 2017, please visit http://icsa-conferences.org/2018.

Organization
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General Chair
Ian Gorton, Northeastern University, USA

Program Chairs
Bara Buhnova, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Neil Ernst, University of Victoria, Canada
Clemens Szyperski, Microsoft, USA

Engineering Track Chairs
Klaas-Andries de Graaf, VU Amsterdam, Netherlands
Raghu Sangwan, Penn State, USA

New and Emerging Ideas Chairs
Liming Zhu, Data61, CSIRO, Australia
Ipek Ozkaya, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, USA

Early Career Researchers Forum Chairs
Grace A. Lewis, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, USA
Romina Spalazzese, Malmö University, Sweden

Workshops Chairs
Yan Liu, Concordia University, Canada
Anne Koziolek, KIT, Germany

Tutorial Chairs
Patrizio Pelliccione, Chalmers University of Technology | University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Jean-Guy Schneider, Swinburne, Australia

Publication Chair
Robert Heinrich, KIT, Germany

Publicity Chair
Ilias Gerostathopoulos, TU Munich, Germany

Sponsorship Chair
Mary Trimarco, Northeastern University, Seattle, USA

Finance Chair
Jackie Saarenas, Northeastern University, Seattle, USA

Social Media
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Twitter: @ICSAconf
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ICSAconf