BISS 2004: Bertinoro International Spring School for Graduate Studies in Computer Science 8-19 March 2004 University of Bologna Residential Center Bertinoro (Forlì), Italy

[ Courses and Lecturers
| Lecture Schedule
| Important Dates
| Location
| How to Reach Bertinoro
| Registration
| Financial Sponsorship
| Organization
| Local Weather Forecast]

The school will offer 4 courses each consisting of 15 hours of lectures:

• Middleware for Distributed Computing: Objects, Components and Web Services, Prof. Santosh Shrivastava (University of Newcastle)
• A Semantic Theory of Distributed Mobile Computation, Prof. Matthew Hennessy (University of Sussex)
• Models and algorithms for complex information networks, Prof. Stefano Leonardi (University of Rome "La Sapienza")
• Intelligent agents: modeling and reasoning techniques, Prof. Alberto Martelli (University of Torino)

The registration fee for the School is 700,00 Euro and includes all local expenses from the evening of 7 March to mid-day on 19 March including all meals and on-site lodging in double-occupancy rooms. Attendance is limited to 50 students and will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. All applicants must complete a Registration Form by 9 February 2004.

Courses and Lecturers

Summary:
We will begin be covering basic concepts of client-server computing, namely remote procedure calls and go on to discuss object-oriented middlware, such as CORBA Object Request Broker and Java/RMI. This will be followed by discussion on various middleware services, such as transaction services and notification service (for publish-subscribe communication). The evolution of object middleware into component middleware will be discussed with examples from Java (Enterprise Java Beans) and CORBA (CORBA Component Model). With this background, we will be in a good position to examine the Web Services middleware, and how it relates to Component middleware. Time permitting, we will cover advance issues of transactions and service coordination in the world of Web Services.

Summary:
We develop a distributed version of the picalculus for modelling distributed systems in which mobile agent can migrate between sites. Capability types are used to control access to local resources, and migration is also controlled using process types. In the second half of the course we develop semantic theories, based on bisimulations, for reasoning about processes in this distributed framework.

Summary:
We will address several topics related to the modelling and the analysis of complex information networks. We will present studies describing the graph structure of the Web and of the Internet, and stochastic graph models aimed to capture the properties of these complex networks. We will also describe algorithmic techniques that exploit the topological strucure for Information retrieval and for inferring relationships between the components of networks. We will finally discuss economical inspired methods to design mechanisms and distributed algorithms for resource allocation and optimization in networks operated by selfish distributed agents.

Summary:
The purpose of the course is to present modeling and reasoning techniques for intelligent agents, based on formal methods. Intelligent agents will be presented from two viewpoints. First of all it will be shown how to model the behavior of a single agent, in particular referring to the belief-desire-intention (BDI) model. Then the problem of modeling and reasoning in multi-agent systems will be tackled, by describing communication and cooperation among agents. Finally it will be shown how the above models can be implemented by using computational fragments of the logic formalisms, and how they can be used to prove properties of agent systems.

Outline:

• Introduction to intelligent agents
• The belief-desire-intention model
• Formal techniques for modeling agents
  • modal and temporal logics
  • reasoning about actions
• Communication
  • speech acts
  • Agent Communication Languages: KQML and FIPA
  • communication protocols
• Logic based specification and implementation of intelligent agents
• Verification of multi-agent systems: model checking

Lecture Schedule

Important Dates

Location

Bertinoro itself is picturesque, with many narrow streets and walkways winding around the central peak.  The School will be held in an archiepiscopal fortress that has been converted by the University of Bologna into a modern conference center with computing facilities and Internet access.  From the fortress you can enjoy a beautiful vista that stretches from the Tuscan Apennines to the Adriatic coast and the Alps over the Po Valley.

How to Reach Bertinoro

Financial Sponsorship

Organization

Last updated: 22 Sep 2003