ProMAS 2008

=Sixth international Workshop on Programming Multi-Agent Systems (ProMAS'09)= ProMAS'09 is a satellite workshop at AAMAS 2009; Budapest, Hungary, 10-15 May 2009, http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/
 * http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/agents/PROMAS2009/

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 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 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.

We encourage the submission of proposals for programming languages and 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.

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


 * Programming Languages for multi-agent systems
 * Programming models and abstractions 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
 * 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
 * Integration of agent and mainstream technology

Important Dates

 * Paper submission deadline: 01 February, 2009
 * Notifications of acceptance/rejection: 01 March, 2009
 * Camera-ready copies due: 15 March, 2009
 * Workshop Date: 10th/11th May, 2009 (TBA)

Submission Details
Authors should submit their papers via a conference management system. 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.

Programme Committee

 * has PC member::Matteo Baldoni (University of Torino, Italy)
 * has PC member::Juan Botia Blaya (University of Murcia, Spain)
 * has PC member::Guido Boella (University of Torino, Italy)
 * has PC member::Olivier Boissier (Ecole des Mines de St Etienne, France)
 * has PC member::Keith Clark (Imperial College, UK)
 * has PC member::Rem Collier (University College Dublin, Ireland)
 * has PC member::Louise Dennis (University of Liverpool, UK)
 * has PC member::Ian Dickinson (HP Labs, UK)
 * has PC member::Bernd Farwer (Durham University, UK)
 * has PC member::Michael Fisher (University of Liverpool, UK)
 * has PC member::Jorge Gomez-Sanz (Universidad Computense Madrid, Spain)
 * has PC member::Vladimir Gorodetsky (Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia)
 * has PC member::Dominic Greenwood (Whitestein Technologies, Switzerland)
 * has PC member::James Harland (RMIT, Australia)
 * has PC member::Koen Hindriks (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)
 * has PC member::Benjamin Hirsch (Technical University of Berlin, Germany)
 * has PC member::Jomi Hubner (State University of Blumenau, Brazil)
 * has PC member::Joao Leite (University Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
 * has PC member::John Lloyd (Australian National University, Australia)
 * has PC member::Viviana Mascardi (Genova University, Italy)
 * has PC member::John-Jules Meyer (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
 * has PC member::David Morley (SRI, USA)
 * has PC member::Jorg Muller (Clausthal University of Technology, Germany)
 * has PC member::Peter Novak (Clausthal University of Technology, Germany)
 * has PC member::Andrea Omicini (University of Bologna, Italy)
 * has PC member::Frederic Peschanski (LIP6, France)
 * has PC member::Michele Piunti (CNR, Italy)
 * has PC member::Agostino Poggi (Universita degli Studi di Parma, Italy)
 * has PC member::Alexander Pokahr (University of Hamburg, Germany)
 * has PC member::Alessandro Ricci (University of Bologna, Italy)
 * has PC member::Birna van Riemsdijk (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)
 * has PC member::Ralph Ronnquist (Intendico, Australia)
 * has PC member::Sebastian Sardina (RMIT University, Australia)
 * has PC member::Ichiro Satoh (NII, Japan)
 * has PC member::Munindar Singh (North Carolina State University, USA)
 * has PC member::Kostas Stathis (City University London, UK)
 * has PC member::Leon van der Torre (University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg)
 * has PC member::Paolo Torrini (Bologna University, Italy)
 * has PC member::Cao-Son Tran (New Mexico State University, USA)
 * has PC member::Gerhard Weiss (Software Competence Center Hagenberg, Austria)
 * has PC member::Wayne Wobke (University of New South Wales, Australia)
 * has PC member::Neil Yorke-Smith (SRI, USA)
 * has PC member::Yingqian Zhang (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)

Organising Committee: -


 * has organising chair::Lars Braubach (University of Hamburg, Germany)
 * has organising chair::Jean-Pierre Briot (LIP6, France)
 * has organising chair::John Thangarajah (RMIT University, Australia)

Steering Committee: -


 * has steering chair::Rafael Bordini (University of Durham, UK)
 * has steering chair::Mehdi Dastani (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
 * has steering chair::Jurgen Dix (Clausthal University of Technology, Germany)
 * has organising chair::Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni (LIP6, France)