PSI 2009, Novosibirsk, Russia

The Seventh International Andrei Ershov Memorial Conference “Perspectives of System Informatics” was held in June 15-19, 2009, in Akademgorodok, Novosibirsk, Russia.

The PSI’09 Conference was dedicated to the memory of a prominent scientist academician A.P. Ershov and to a significant date in the history of computer science in the country, namely, to the 50th anniversary of the Programming Department founded by A.P. Ershov. Another aim of the conference was to provide a forum for the presentation and in-depth discussion of advanced research directions in computer, software and information sciences. Improvement of contacts and exchange of ideas between researchers from the East and West were further aims of the conference.

Altogether, two hundred participants took part in the conference (including the workshops). At the conference, new results of theoretical and methodological studies in promising fields of theoretical computer science, programming methodology, and new information technologies were presented. The program included a tutorial and five invited talks in addition to 32 contributed presentations (selected by PC from among 67 papers submitted to the conference by researchers from 26 countries). The detailed information on the conference program can be found at the conference website http://www.iis.nsk.su/PSI06.

The FME invited lecture “Rôle of Domain Engineering in Software Development. Why Current Requirements Engineering is Flawed!” delivered by Professor Dines Bjorner was in the focus of public attention. This is due to the fact that Professor Bjorner is an effective public speaker and the substance of his lecture highlights the main problems emerging in software development and indicates the tracks of a solution to the problems. Undoubtedly, the lucid, clear and direct to the point speech shall stimulate the use of formal methods by systems and software scientists and IT-industry, improve the reliability, flexibility and efficiency of methods, algorithms and tools for software systems and promote international co-operation among researchers and users of formal methods. Also, it should be mentioned that 10 year friendship of Professor Bjorner and the late academician A.P. Ershov, their joined scientific activities had a considerable impact on the research work of the staff of the Institute of Informatics Systems (Novosibirsk, Russia). Professor Bjorner was a PC co-chair of PSI’96, PSI’99, PSI’01 and a steering committee member of PSI’06. The importance of Professor Bjorner’s lecturers and his visits to Siberia can scarcely be overestimated.

The preliminary conference proceedings were available at the conference. A book with the invited papers and the papers presented at the conference (and revised with regard to comments and criticisms) will be published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series after the conference.

During the coffee breaks, coffee, soft drink and good sweet cookies were available in a room nearby the lecture hall of the SB RAS House of Scientists and the lunches were served there, which also gave the possibility to continue scientific discussions on the hot topics of PSI’09. The participants really enjoyed a half-day picnic at the campgrounds “Bvlina” with Russian sauna and a barbecue on the third day of the conference. The program of cultural events also included excursions to geological and railroad engineering museums and visit to the Novosibirsk opera and ballet theatre where ballet “Juno and Avos” was performed. The conference dinner on the last day were greatly appreciated by all the participants.

Irina Virbitskaite (PSI’2009 PC Co-Chair)

June 2009.

Author: Bernhard Aichernig

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