Subject: categories: Visit to Bangor of Eric Goubault

From: Ronnie Brown <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 15:07:18 +0000

Dr E Goubault (ENS, Paris; Commission Energie Atomique) will visit
the School of Informatics, University of Wales, Bangor, UK,  on Dec 19, 20
2000 and give two talks, the second of which will be more mathematical:

Tuesday, Dec 19, 4:00pm, Room 149

Geometric semantics for the analysis of concurrent and distributed
software

ABSTRACT: This talk will be focused on applications of geometrical ideas
and
modeling to computer scientific problems, among which: -
relationship with other models for concurrency (for instance
transition systems and Petri nets). - static analysis of
concurrent programs (mostly Java-like threads); in particular,
deadlocks, reachable states, scheduling properties (joint work
with Martin Raussen and Lisbeth Fajstrup), state-space reduction
techniques. - scheduling properties of distributed systems; in
particular serialisability conditions for databases (after Jeremy
Gunawardena and Martin Raussen), computability in fault-tolerant
systems (after Maurice Herlihy and Sergio Rajsbaum).

Wednesday, Dec 20th 11:15 pm, Room S5

Recent developments of "geometric concurrency theory"

ABSTRACT: In this talk, I will present some of the "geometrical theories"
used for modeling concurrent systems. Among these are: - the
(di-)topological approaches where the flow of concurrent
executions is modeled by a topological space of states plus local
partial orders on it. This is very much related to the "progress
graphs" of E. W. Dijkstra. I will also outline some links with
similar objects introduced in domain theory. Some of the algebraic
topology which is useful for describing interesting (scheduling)
properties of concurrent systems will be described (many results
from Martin Raussen and Lisbeth Fajstrup, Aalborg University). I
will also refer to recent work by Stefan Sokolowski, Gdansk
University. - the semi-cubical set approach which is in some way a
combinatorial counterpart of the topological approach. This is
very much related to ordinary transition systems semantics. This
was described first by Vaughan Pratt and Rob van Glabbeek,
Stanford University. - the omega-categorical approach (cubical
and/or globular of course) initiated also by Vaughan Pratt. Most
of this work has been developped by Philippe Gaucher, IRMA,
Strasbourg University.

I will add some recent developments (joint work with Philippe
Gaucher), and also some other "applications" of these ideas (in
Logics, joint work with Jean Goubault-Larrecq).

All are welcome. It is hoped the above schedule will allow good
time for discussion.

Enquiries to

Ronnie Brown [email-masked]