Porto welcomes more than 500 worldwide computer experts

01st October 2019

For what purpose? To bring together researchers, academics and technology industry professionals operating in the computer science field, in particular in the Formal Methods topic in order to promote the quality and reliability in an increasingly technological and socially relevant sector – the development of a high-assurance software.

More than 30 simultaneous sessions will take place during the Congress days at three venues in Porto - Alfândega Porto’s building, World of Discoveries Museum and Vincci Hotel – divided into 9 conferences, 16 workshops, 7 tutorials and other events such as the Industry day and the doctoral symposium, among others. There will be several renowned guest speakers, mainly in the session of 8 October at 9:00 a.m. in the Alfândega Porto’s building, in which the British researcher Tony Hoare will give a speech, invited by the several conferences associated to the congress.

Tony Hoare received a Turing Award, a distinction in the computer science field that is generally recognised as the Computing Nobel Prize. The speech that the expert will give on 8 October marks precisely 50 years (October of 1969) of the publication of one of his papers, which remains one of the most quoted paper ever in Computer Science – “An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming ”.

But, after all, what are formal methods? “Formal methods are programming techniques that achieve high levels of quality and reliability through the use of mathematical treatment of problems that can be addressed by software. All military, security, energy, health, education systems, all back offices and company’s operating systems — well, all the systems in which our civilisation is based on — rely on sophisticated software that is continuously being developed so that they can operate and serve us. In safety critical issues, programming errors can have devastating consequences. This is where formal methods become very important tools. One of the research lines of INESC TEC's High-Assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab) has a vast experience in this area, applying formal methods in areas such as security, human-computer interaction, model checking, program calculation and verification, and more recently, quantum programming ”, explains José Nuno Oliveira, president of the organising committee, INESC TEC’s researcher and Professor at the University of Minho. These two institutions are in fact the organisers of this congress, alongside Formal Methods Europe.

The 3rd World Congress on Formal Methods will have the presentation of about 400 scientific papers submitted by researchers, academics and industry professionals. From the technology industry, it is important to highlight the presence of renowned institutions such as Apple, Airbus, Booking.com, ESA, Fraunhofer, Microsoft, MathWorks, NASA, Samsung, VERIMAG, among others.

The congress will start on Monday, 7 October at 6:00 p.m., in which over 500 specialists will be received at the quay of Alfândega Porto Congress Centre.

More information on the congress can be found here: http://formalmethods2019.inesctec.pt/

For more information:

Joana Coelho

Communication Service

INESC TEC

FEUP’s Campus

Rua Dr Roberto Frias

4200-465 Porto

Portugal

Tel.: +351 22 209 4297

Mob.: +351 924 444 321

joana.d.coelho@inesctec.pt