CologNet/AgentLink
Symposium on Logic-Based Agent Verification http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~michael/symposium04.CALL9th
July 2004, Liverpool, United Kingdom


Overview
The view of computational components as `agents' is widely used in
contemporary software applications, such as Internet navigation, information management, autonomous process control, and e-commerce. The popularity of the agent paradigm stems not only from its intuitive and appealing nature, capturing the notions of flexibility and evolving behaviour, but also from the range of theories, tools and techniques that have been developed over recent
years for agent-based systems.

However, the increasing use of agents in (business, mission, safety) critical applications, together with the development of infrastructures such as the world-wide web and wireless computing is leading to new problems. Central amongst these is that of the *trustworthiness* of agent software. Can agents be trusted to autonomously make decisions in critical areas? In addition, once large numbers of agents are present, can they work safely together?

Thus, it is important to be able to guarantee predictable behaviour for agent-based systems if these are to be used in critical applications. Verifying the behaviour of an agent-based is a complex problem: the behaviour of individual agents must be verified; collections of agents must be shown to be able to work together effectively; and agents that communicate over wider distances and multiple sites must be shown to retain security properties. Tackling
these problems often requires a large number of diverse techniques,
yet many such techniques are based on formal logics, providing a clear
semantic basis for the verification tasks.

The aim of this symposium is to bring together high-quality researchers working on leading edge, "logic-based" approaches to the verification of agent-based systems. We here consider logical verification in a broad sense (incorporating theorem-proving, model checking, etc.). Thus, the symposium contributes to the theory and practice of logic-based agent technology, and aims to enhance the uptake of logic-based approaches to the verification of agents.

Chairs
The symposium co-chairs are:
Michael Fisher (U. Liverpool, UK) http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~michael
Mike Wooldridge (U. Liverpool, UK) http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~mjw

Funding
The symposium is funded by both the European Network of Excellence on
Agent-Based Systems (AgentLink; see http://www.agentlink.org) and the
European Network of Excellence on Computational Logic (CologNet; see
http://www.colognet.org), and represents part of the joint activity
between these networks.


Location and Accommodation
The symposium takes place in Liverpool, UK, and is co-located with
EASSS. For details of accomodation/location, see http://www.agentlink.org/happenings/easss/2004/accomodation.html

Participation and Sponsorship
Attendance at this symposium is *free*. However those who wish to attend should complete a registration form and send it to Adele Maggs (adele@csc.liv.ac.uk) by 15th June 2004. The form can be dowloaded at: http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~michael/lbav04reg.ps or
http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~michael/lbav04reg.pdf

In addition, sponsorship of up to 600 Euros for a limited number of selected nationals of the EU or Associated States is available. To apply for such sponsorship, please send a request containing your contact details and reason for attending to M.Fisher@csc.liv.ac.uk before 9th June 2004.

Draft Program (http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~michael/symposium04.CALL)