Organization - Chairmen:

Workshop Dinner:     Cf.   ETAPS   Registration Guidelines   (ETAPS 2006   web page).

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Short Description and Explanation of the Workshop Topic

Category Theory is a well-known powerful mathematical modeling language with a wide area of applications in mathematics and computer science, including especially the semantical foundations of topics in software science and development. Since about 30 years there have been workshops including these topics. More recently, the ACCAT group established by Jochen Pfalzgraf at Linz and Salzburg has begun to study interesting applications of category theory in Geometry, Neurobiology, Cognitive Sciences, and Artificial Intelligence. It is the intention of this ACCAT workshop to bring together leading researchers in these areas with those in Software Science and Development in order to transfer categorical concepts and theories in both directions.

Explanation of the Workshop Topic, Relevance to ETAPS:

The ACCAT Workshop on Applied and Computational Category Theory is organized by Jochen Pfalzgraf and Hartmut Ehrig who are leading representatives of categorical methods for several areas like Geometry, Neurobiology, Cognitive Sciences, and Artificial Intelligence on one hand and Software Science and Development on the other hand. Categorical methods are already well-established for the semantical foundation of type theory (cartesian closed categories), data type specification frameworks (institutions) and graph transformation (adhesive high level replacement categories), which are most relevant for ETAPS. The organizers have already contacted leading senior and promising junior researchers (cf. attached list) for giving invited lectures at the ACCAT workshop which promises to lead to interesting discussions concerning transfer of categorical methods between the areas mentioned above. The ACCAT workshop is intended to be a first event of workshops to be held as satellite events of different conferences. An ACCAT lecture was presented already by J.Pfalzgraf as a tutorial at the 27th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, KI-2004, September 2004, University of Ulm   (a scriptum of the tutorial is available as .pdf file, cf.the link to ACCAT below,
click ACCAT-Tutorial.pdf).

The proposed workshop will consist of 12 Invited Lectures where Extended Abstracts will be presented at ETAPS 2006.
Workshop Proceedings:
The authors will be invited to submit a full paper for a special issue of a journal (e.g. Applied Categorical Structures, Kluwer academic publishers) to be published after ETAPS 2006.

Opening of Workshop, Welcome, Introduction:       Hartmut Ehrig   and   Jochen Pfalzgraf

List of Invited Speakers:

Liara Aparecida dos Santos Leal (PUCRS - Porto Alegre, Brazil)
Andrea Corradini (Univ. Pisa, Italy)
Jose Meseguer (Univ. Illinois, USA)
Till Mossakowski (Univ. Bremen, Germany)
Fernando Orejas (Univ. Catalunya, Spain)
Julia Padberg (TU Berlin, Germany)
Ulrike Prange (TU Berlin, Germany)
Jiri Rosicky (Univ. Brno, Czech Republic)
Andrzej Tarlecki (Univ. Warsaw, Poland)

Some Comments on Category Theory:

In the Handbook of Logic in Computer Science, Vol.1,   Axel Poigné makes the comments:

``If asked for a single reason for the attention that category theory, at least as a language, enjoys in some areas of computer science, I would guess that its attraction stems from being a foundational theory of functions which provides a sound basis for (functional) programming and programming logic. If asked for more reasons I would recollect the familiar arguments namely that category theory

• formalizes otherwise vague concepts,
• provides a language that brings to the surface common basic concepts in ostensibly unrelated areas,
• allows us to translate problems from one area to another where a solution may be more easily achieved, or more specifically with regard to computer science, category theory
• allows easier access to various areas of mathematics in that it provides a core of properties to be looked for,
• offers a rich language in which to axiomatize, differentiate and compare structures in computer science and mathematics.''

Some LINKS of INTEREST for the Workshop Topics:

http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~jpfalz/ACCAT-KI2004.html     ACCAT

http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~jpfalz/ACCAT.html     Univ Course ACCAT

http://home.att.net/~topologicalpsychology/     Topology

http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~jpfalz/MATHmod.html     MATH Modeling

Connectionist Network Structures and Learning: Categorical and Geometric Aspects
(cf. corresponding section in the ACCAT Tutorial and the article   ACCAT and Neural Networks).

NOTE:   The ACCAT-Tutorial Scriptum of the Tutorial held by J.Pfalzgraf at the conference KI-2004 (as previously mentioned) is provided as .pdf file,   cf. the page ACCAT, listed above - click   ACCAT-Tutorial.pdf.