Call for Papers

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Submitted by Katie Dey on Wed, 08/19/2015 - 2:16pm

Call for Position Papers

The High Confidence Software and Systems (HCSS) Coordinating Group (CG) of the Federal Networking and Information Technology R&D (NITRD) Subcommittee, Committee on Technology of the National Science and Technology Council, invites you to submit a position paper for the National Workshop on High-Confidence Software Platforms for Cyber-Physical Systems (HCSP-CPS). The purpose of the HCSP-CPS workshop is to provide an open working forum for leaders and visionaries from industry, research laboratories, academia, and Government to contribute to the goal of defining a research roadmap for conquering barriers to create high confidence software platforms for cyber-physical systems.

Through this call for position papers, we solicit inputs that can be used by the HCSS CG to help identify the research needs, challenges, and roadmap for HCSP-CPS. The organizers will deliver a report to the Government that summarizes the workshop's findings. By submitting a position paper, you will have an opportunity to provide technical facts and information that potentially can help shape the future direction of HCSS. Due to the workshop's ambitious schedule, position papers are requested by Wednesday, October 18, 2006. The position papers will be used to select invitees to the workshop scheduled for November 30th through December 1st, 2006 at the Hilton Old Town Alexandria in Alexandria, VA. Invitees will have the opportunity to provide further input to the HCSP- CPS roadmap.

The main purpose of the Workshop is to solicit community inputs on the research needs and promising technical approaches pertaining to restructuring high confidence software platforms for cyber-physical systems to provide a more sound and assured technology base. The consensus of the community will be documented and used to help shape national research investments in HCSP-CPS technologies.

Background and Goals

For over a decade, the software industry has had a continued major impact on both the private sector and the Federal government. The U.S. software industry employs more than 2,000,000 technical workers and 350,000 support personnel but still has more than 1,000,000 open positions. Given this tremendous impact on the Nation's present and future economic growth, establishing and maintaining a substantial research agenda on high confidence software design and productivity is critical for the security and economic viability of the United States.

Some of the most challenging R&D software problems for cyber-physical systems are those associated with producing distributed, real-time, and embedded platforms and applications, and where computer processors control physical, chemical, or biological processes or devices. Examples of such systems include airplanes and air traffic control systems, automobiles, power grids, oil refineries, and patient monitoring systems. Despite advances in standards-based commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies, key challenges must be addressed before COTS software can be used to build mission-critical distributed real-time embedded (DRE) systems effectively and productively. For example, developers of DRE systems continue to use ad hoc means to develop, configure, and deploy their applications due to the lack of formally analyzable and verifiable building block components at the operating system and middleware layers.

Recognizing this tremendous challenge and responsibility, the HCSS CG has decided to conduct an extensive community outreach for exploring new ideas and identifying emerging trends that could be used as input for a National research agenda on High Confidence Software Platforms for Cyber-Physical Systems. In particular, the workshop will focus on R&D strategies and tactics for restructuring the current real-time operating system, virtual machine, and distributed computing middleware platforms into a sound and assured real-time technology base for building future cyber-physical systems.

Position Papers

Position papers are solicited from community members on all aspects of developing and validating high confidence software. Position papers should:

  1. Articulate bold visions, new paradigms and promising directions for building high- confidence software platforms for cyber-physical systems
  2. Identify well-defined technical challenges that must be addressed
  3. Propose promising approaches and solutions for building high confidence software platforms for cyber-physical systems.

The product of the workshop will be a detailed report documenting research needs and roadmapping promising technology directions.

Summary

Involving university and industry researchers in identifying R&D needs and promising technical directions to enhance high confidence software platforms for cyber-physical systems is essential to the success of Federally-funded IT R&D programs. In its widely cited February 1999 report, "Information Technology Research: Investing in Our Fu-ture," the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) had a major recommendation, which was to, "Make software research an absolute priority." We are confident that this workshop will help us make their recommendation a reality.

Workshop Attendance

Workshop attendance is by invitation. Anyone interested in participating is encouraged to submit a position paper following the submission guidelines outlined below by October 18th, 2006. Notifications will be sent by October 28, 2006 to all those who will be invited and will include information of the roles they will be asked to play. The workshop will be structured largely as a working meeting, with some participants invited to make presentations. Please indicate in your position paper if your participation at the workshop is conditional on not making such a public presentation.

Government representatives interested in being invited to attend as observers are asked to submit a brief biography with a few sentences describing your past or current interests in cyber-physical systems.

Submission Guidelines for Position Papers

Position papers should be at most three pages in length and printed in a 12-point font on 8-1/2 by 11-inch paper. Each position paper should address the following questions:

  1. What are the three fundamental limitations and knowledge barriers of today's high- confidence software platforms for cyber-physical systems?
  2. What are the three most important research challenges?
  3. What are promising innovations and abstractions for building future high confidence software platforms for cyber-physical systems?
  4. What are possible milestones for the next 5 to 10 years?

In addition, a combination of contextual topics and questions will be posted to the workshop website, which is hosted at http://cps-vo.org/group/HCSP-CPS. These topics and questions will help shape potential workshop panel discussions and breakout sessions. You are free to address any of these topics/questions for developing position pa- pers, so please watch for updates to the workshop website for this list of topics/questions.

Finally, each position paper should include at most a half-page bio, organization/affiliation, e-mail address, and phone number for each author. The bios are included in the 3-page limit.

Position papers should be provided in PDF format and addressed to the attention of the HCPS-CPS Workshop Program Committee and submitted via the Workshop website. Please note that submitted position papers will be available on-line and authors are advised not to include any proprietary information that they do not want disseminated to the public.

Important Dates

  • October 18, 2006: Submission deadline
  • October 27, 2006: Notification of acceptance/rejection
  • November 30 - December 1, 2006: Workshop

Venue

The workshop will be held at the Hilton Old Town Alexandria, Alexandria, Virginia located at 1767 King Street, Alexandria, Virginia 22314. Additional hotel information can be found on the workshop website at http://cps-vo.org/group/HCSP-CPS.

Information

The workshop website at http://cps-vo.org/group/HCSP-CPS provides up-to-date information. For more information on the HCSP-CPS Workshop, or if you wish to be put on the workshop mailing list, please contact both the workshop organizers at d.schmidt@vanderbilt.edu or raj@ece.cmu.edu.