The 19th International Symposium on Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis


18 - 22 October 2021, Gold Coast (Online), Australia

Welcome to the website of the 19th International Symposium on Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis (ATVA 2021)

The ATVA series of symposia is intended to promote research in theoretical and practical aspects of automated analysis, verification and synthesis by providing a forum for interaction between the regional and international research communities and industry in the field. The previous 18 events were held in Taipei (2003-2005), Beijing (2006), Tokyo (2007), Seoul (2008), Macao (2009), Singapore (2010), Taipei (2011), Thiruvananthapuram (2012), Hanoi (2013), Sydney (2014), Shanghai (2015), Chiba (2016), Pune (2017), Los Angeles (2018), Taipei (2019) and Hanoi/Online (2020).

The proceedings will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series, same as in previous years. You can find previous proceedings here.

You can download an A4 poster of ATVA 2021 here.


Importance notice: Selected papers from ATVA 2021 proceedings will be invited to extend and publish in a special issue of Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering - A NASA Journal (ISSE). Important dates for the ISSE special issue is as below.

Submission: 15 Oct 2021 23 Oct 2021

Notification: 15 Nov 2021 15 Dec 2021

Camera-ready: 20 Dec 2021 20 Jan 2022

Publication: TBD

Please submit on the ISSE website and choose the ATVA 2021 special issue in the submission process.


ATVA 2021 will be hosted online. Please refer to the sections below for more information.


Keynote Speakers

Sir Tony Hoare Prof Moshe Vardi Prof Andrew Yao Prof Somesh Jha

Watch ATVA 2021 presentations here.

Registration

Option Fee
Online Author 150 AUD (≈ 117 USD)
Online Regular 70 AUD (≈ 55 USD)
Online Student 25 AUD (≈ 20 USD)
Online Workshop-only 0 AUD

Note that authors' registration deadline is 15 August 2021.

All of the above registration options include the ATVA 2021 conference and the three workshops.

The USD conversion is only for indication. The attendants should use the AUD price for registration.

If you are not located in Australia, please use the following link:
International Registration

If you are located in Australia, please use the following link:
Australian Registration

Venue

Gold Coast, Australia, is our virtual host city. However, based on the current COVID situation in Australia, the ATVA steering committee and the local organiser have decided to host the 2021 conference entirely online.

We will provide more information on how to attend ATVA 2021 online later.

Program

Download the conference program here.

Access the online proceedings via the link below.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-88885-5
.

Watch ATVA 2021 presentations here.


Keynotes

Sir Tony Hoare (C. A. R. Hoare) is a British computer scientist. He developed the sorting algorithm quicksort in 1959/1960. He also developed Hoare logic for verifying program correctness in 1969, and the formal language communicating sequential processes (CSP) to specify the interactions of concurrent processes in 1985. He received the Turing Prize and the Kyoto Prize for his fundamental contributions to the definition and design of programming languages in 1980 and 2000 respectively. Tony Hoare became a professor at Oxford University in 1977 where he is now an Emeritus Professor. Hoare was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society as well as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. A recent personal research goal has been the unification of a diverse range of theories applying to different programming languages, paradigms, and implementation technologies. Tony has been and continue to be an inspiration to many researchers.

Title: A Geometric Theory for Program Testing

Abstract: Formal methods for verification of programs are extended to testing of programs. Their combination is intended lead to benefits in reliable program development, testing, and evolution. Our geometric theory of testing is intended to serve as the specification of a testing environment, included as the last stage of a toolchain that assists professional programmers, amateurs, and students of Computer Science. The testing environment includes an automated algorithm which locates errors in a test that has been run, and assists in correcting them. It does this by displaying, on a monitor screen, a stick diagram of causal chains in the execution of the program under test. The diagram can then be navigated backwards by in the familiar style of a satnav following roads a map.. This will reveal selections of places at which the program should be modified to remove the error.


Moshe Y. Vardi is University Professor, Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University, where he is leading an Initiative on Technology, Culture, and Society. His interests focus on automated reasoning, a branch of Artificial Intelligence with broad applications to computer science, including machine learning, database theory, computational-complexity theory, knowledge in multi-agent systems, computer-aided verification, and teaching logic across the curriculum. He is also a Faculty Scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

Title: Linear Temporal Logic: From Infinite to Finite Horizon

Abstract: Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), proposed in 1977 by Amir Pnueli for reasoning about ongoing programs, was defined over infinite traces. The motivation for this was the desire to model arbitrarily long computations. While this approach has been highly successful in the context of model checking, it has been less successful in the context of reactive synthesis, due to the chalenging algorithmics of infinite-horizon temporal synthesis. In this talk we show that focusing on finite-horizon temporal synthesis offers enough algorithmic advantages to compensate for the loss in expressiveness. In fact, finite-horizon reasonings is useful even in the context of infinite-horizon applications.


Professor Andrew Chi-Chih Yao is the Dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) in Tsinghua University. He is also the Distinguished Professor-at-Large in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was a full professor at Stanford University (1976 - 1981) and Princeton University (1986 - 2004). In 1996 he was awarded the Knuth Prize. He received the Turing Award, the most prestigious award in computer science, in 2000, "in recognition of his fundamental contributions to the theory of computation, including the complexity-based theory of pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity". In 2021 he received the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology.

Title: Probabilistic Reasoning in Machine Learning

Abstract: Traditionally, algorithms are designed with a particular problem in mind, supported by specific performance guarantees. The rise of powerful machine learning algorithms (ML) is a paradigm shift; yet determining what problems can be solved effectively by ML turns out to be a difficult task theoretically. In this talk, we present several new results in this direction. Notably, in some cases where ML is known to have poor performance in experiments, we give a rigorous proof using sophisticated probabilistic and geometric reasoning to confirm the observation. This important line of active research is still in its infancy, as seemingly intuitive conjectures are often hard to prove rigorously.


Prof. Somesh Jha received his B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi in Electrical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University under the supervision of Prof. Edmund Clarke (a Turing award winner). Currently, Somesh Jha is the Lubar Professor in the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin (Madison). His work focuses on analysis of security protocols, survivability analysis, intrusion detection, formal methods for security, and analyzing malicious code. Recently, he has focussed his interested on privacy and adversarial ML (AML). Somesh Jha has published several articles in highly-refereed conferences and prominent journals. He has won numerous best-paper and distinguished-paper awards. Prof. Jha is the fellow of the ACM and IEEE.

Title: Trustworthy Machine Learning and the Security Mindset

Abstract: Fueled by massive amounts of data, models produced by machine-learning (ML) algorithms, especially deep neural networks (DNNs), are being used in diverse domains where trustworthiness is a concern, including automotive systems, finance, healthcare, natural language processing, and malware detection. Of particular concern is the use of ML algorithms in cyber-physical systems (CPS), such as self-driving cars and aviation, where an adversary can cause serious consequences. Interest in this area of research has simply exploded. In this work, we will emphasize the need for a security mindset in trustworthy machine learning, and then cover some lessons learned.

Important Dates

Workshop Proposals Due: 20 March 2021 (email to Workshop Co-chairs)

Full Paper Submissions Due: 9 April 23 -> April 26 April (AOE) 2021

Notification: 4 June 2021

Camera-ready Due: 4 July 2021


ISSE Special Issue Submission: 15 Oct 2021 23 Oct 2021

ISSE Special Issue Notification: 15 Nov 2021 15 Dec 2021

ISSE Special Issue Camera-ready: 20 Dec 2021 20 Jan 2022

ISSE Special Issue Publication: TBD

Conference Paper Submission and Publication

Scope and Topics

ATVA 2021 is the 19th in a series of symposia aimed at bringing together academics, industrial researchers and practitioners in the area of theoretical and practical aspects of automated analysis, synthesis, and verification of hardware and software systems. ATVA solicits high quality submissions in the following suggestive list of topics:

  • Formalisms for modeling hardware, software and embedded systems
  • Specification and verification of finite-state, infinite-state and parameterized system
  • Program analysis and software verification
  • Analysis and verification of hardware circuits, systems-on-chip and embedded systems
  • Analysis of real-time, hybrid, priced, weighted and probabilistic systems
  • Deductive, algorithmic, compositional, and abstraction/refinement techniques for analysis and verification
  • Analytical techniques for safety, security, and dependability
  • Testing and runtime analysis based on verification technology
  • Analysis and verification of parallel and concurrent systems
  • Verification in industrial practice
  • Synthesis for hardware and software systems
  • Applications and case studies
  • Automated tool support
  • Analysis and verification of machine learning and other AI systems

Submission

ATVA welcomes submissions in the following two categories:

  • Regular research papers (16 pages, including references)
  • Tool papers (6 pages, including references)

Submissions must be in Springer’s LNCS format. Additional material may be placed in an appendix, to be read at the discretion of the reviewers and to be omitted in the final version. Formatting style files and further guidelines for formatting can be found at the Springer website.

Tool papers must include information about a URL from where the tool can be downloaded or accessed on-line for evaluation. The URL must also contain a set of examples, and a user manual that describes usage of the tool through examples. In case the tool needs to be downloaded and installed, the URL must contain instructions for installation of the tool on Linux/Windows/MacOS.

Accepted papers in both categories will be published in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. At least one author of each accepted paper is expected to register and present the paper at the conference.

Authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings templates, either for LaTeX or for Word, for the preparation of their papers. Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers. In addition, the corresponding author of each paper, acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, must complete and sign a Consent-to-Publish form. The corresponding author signing the copyright form should match the corresponding author marked on the paper. Once the files have been sent to Springer, changes relating to the authorship of the papers cannot be made.

If you are interested in Open Access or Open Choice, please refer to Springer's webpage. They would need the address(es) for the invoice(s) and the CC-BY Consent-to-Publish form(s) at the same time as the files for the publication.

Papers must be submitted through EasyChair.

Submit your paper!

Copyright (Consent to Publish) form for accepted papers can be downloaded here.

Official Sponsors


ATVA'21 is an outstanding opportunity for you to reach the ‘thought leaders’ in this industry with your message, and for your Software Engineering team to network and exchange ideas with their peers in this unique and innovative forum.

Sponsors are offered the opportunity to reach over 100 software engineering experts, including researchers and industry practitioners such as developers, QA and engineering managers.

New sponsorship are welcome and any entity wishing to become an official sponsor may contact the Program Co-chairs.


WeAreDestinationGoldCoast

Springer-LNCS

FormalMethodsEurope

GriffithUniversity

NationalUniversityofSingapore

Conference Organising Committee


General Co-Chairs

Jin Song Dong, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Jing Sun, University of Auckland, New Zealand


Program Co-Chairs

Zhe Hou, Griffith University, Australia
Vijay Ganesh, University of Waterloo, Canada


Steering Committee

Teruo Higashino, Osaka University, Japan
Jie-Hong Roland Jiang, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Doron A Peled, Bar Ilan University, Israel
Yu-Fang Chen, Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Ichiro Hasuo, National Institute of Informatics, Japan
Yunja Choi, Kyungpook National University, Korea


Advisory Committee

Insup Lee, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Allen Emerson, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Hsu-Chun Yen, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Farn Wang, National Taiwan University, Taiwan


Publicity Co-Chairs

Giles Reger, The University of Manchester, UK
Meng Sun, Peking University, China


Workshop Co-Chairs

Guy Katz, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Rayna Dimitrova, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Germany


Program Committee

Erika Abraham, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Mohamed Faouzi Atig, Uppsala University, Sweden
Christel Baier, TU Dresden, Germany
Stanley Bak, Stony Brook University, US
Ezio Bartocci, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Saddek Bensalem, VERIMAG, France
Armin Biere, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Nikolaj Bjorner, Microsoft, USA
Udi Boker, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Israel
Borzoo Bonakdarpour, Michigan State University, US
Luca Bortolussi, University of Trieste, Italy
Jalil Boudjadar, Aarhus University, Denmark
Martin Brain, University of Oxford, UK
Franck Cassez, ConsenSys & Macquarie University, Australia
Supratik Chakraborty, IIT Bombay, India
Krishnendu Chatterjee, Institute of Science and Technology (IST), UK
Yu-Fang Chen, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Chih-Hong Cheng, DENSO AUTOMOTIVE Deutschland GmbH, Germany
Alessandro Cimatti, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy
Hung Dang Van, Vietnam National University, Vietnam
Tien V. Do, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
Alexandre Duret-Lutz, LRDE/EPITA, France
Javier Esparza, Technical University of Munich, Germany
Bernd Finkbeiner, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Germany
Pascal Fontaine, Université de Liège, Belgium
Martin Fränzle, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany
Pierre Ganty, IMDEA Software Institute, Spain
Alberto Griggio, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy
Dimitar Guelev, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria
Keijo Heljanko, University of Helsinki, Finland
Guy Katz, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Siau-Cheng Khoo, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Xuandong Li, Nanjing University, China
Anthony Widjaja Lin, TU Kaiserslautern, Germany
Alexander Nadel, Intel, Israel
Pham Ngoc Hung, Vietnam National University, Vietnam
Aina Niemetz, Stanford University, USA
Tobias Nipkow, The Technical University of Munich, Germany
Doron Peled, Bar Ilan University, Israel
Mathias Preiner, Stanford University, USA
Markus Rabe, Google, USA
Andrew Reynolds, University of Iowa, USA
Olli Saarikivi, Aalto University, Finland
Indranil Saha, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
Sven Schewe, University of Liverpool, UK
Anne-Kathrin Schmuck, Max-Planck-Institute for Software Systems, Germany
Daniel Selsam, Microsoft Research, USA
Gagandeep Singh, VMWare Research and UIUC, USA
Sadegh Soudjani, Newcastle University, UK
Jun Sun, Singapore Management University, Singapore
Sofiene Tahar, Concordia University, Canada
Michael Tautschnig, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Tachio Terauchi, Waseda University, Japan
Aditya Thakur, University of California, Davis, USA
Cesare Tinelli, University of Iowa, USA
Hoang Truong, Vietname National University, Vietname
Bow-Yaw Wang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Zhilin Wu, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Contact Us

ATVA Local Organiser, Griffith University