The Focus and Explanation of the Workshop Topic of this
4th ACCAT Workshop is similar to the previous ACCAT Workshops.
Short Description and Explanation of the Workshop
The originators of the ACCAT workshops are Hartmut Ehrig (Berlin)
and Jochen Pfalzgraf (Salzburg) starting with the
1st ACCAT workshop at ETAPS 2006.
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 continuation of former
workshops to be
held as satellite events of different conferences.
A first 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,
extended versions are under continuous development.
Organization of the Workshop:
The proposed workshop ACCAT'09 will consist of
Invited Lectures
where Extended Abstracts will be presented followed by
possible discussions.
A Presentation can take 30 minutes (25 min. for talk, 5 min. for discussion).
Important Date:
January 20, 2009: Extended Abstract (1 - 3 Pages)
NOTE:
Short Abstracts or Long Abstracts are welcome as well.
Workshop Proceedings:
It is intended to invite the authors to
submit a full paper for a Special Issue of the
Journal of Symbolic Computation
to be published after ETAPS-2009.
This special issue with the title
"Computational Category Theory and Applications" will be a collection of
contributions to ACCAT'08 and ACCAT'09, i.e. a Joint Special Issue
for both workshops.
List of Invited Speakers (preliminary):
Jiri Adámek (TU Braunschweig, Germany)
Ricardo Baeza R. (Univ. Talca, Chile)
Olivier Bartheye (Academy of Saint-Cyr, France)
Christoph Beierle (FernUni Hagen, Germany)
Bruno Buchberger (RISC-Linz, Univ. Linz, Austria)
Dominique Duval (LJK, Univ. Grenoble, France)
Tetsuo Ida (Univ. Tsukuba, Japan)
Barbara König (Univ. Duisburg-Essen, Germany)
Michael Löwe (FHDW Univ. Appl. Sciences Hannover, Germany)
Stefan Milius (TU Braunschweig, Germany)
Till Mossakowsi (DFKI Lab Bremen, Germany)
Fernando Orejas (Univ. Catalunya, Spain)
Stephen M. Watt (Univ. Western Ontario, Canada)
Uwe Wolter (Univ. Bergen, Norway)
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.''
Foundational Book on Graph Transformation:
H.Ehrig,K.Ehrig,U.Prange,G.Taentzer:
"Fundamentals of Algebraic Graph Transformation",
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2006.
A short description (brief survey) of the Origins of ACCAT (and the acronym)
can be found in
ACCAT Origins.
For further information cf. also
Remarks on ACCAT.
