The Symposium on Dependable Software Engineering: Theories, Tools and Applications (SETTA) 2023 will be held in Nanjing on November 27-29, 2023.

Formal methods emerged as an important area in computer science and software engineering about half a century ago. An international community has formed researching, developing and teaching formal theories, techniques and tools for software modeling, specification, design and verification. However, the impact of formal methods on the quality and improvement of software systems is, in practice, lagging behind. This is for instance reflected by the challenges in applying formal techniques and tools to engineering large-scale systems such as Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Internet-of-Things (IoT), Enterprise Systems, Cloud-Based Systems, and so forth.

The purpose of the SETTA symposium is to bring international researchers together to exchange research results and ideas on bridging the gap between formal methods and software engineering. SETTA will show research interests and results from different groups so as to initiate interest-driven research collaboration. It is aiming at academic excellence and its objective is to become a flagship conference on formal software engineering in China.

To achieve these goals and contribute to the sustainability of the formal methods research, it is important for the symposium to attract young researchers into the community. Thus, this symposium particularly encourages the participation of young researchers and students.

Authors are invited to submit papers on original research, industrial applications, or position papers proposing challenges in fundamental research and technology. The latter two types of submissions are expected to contribute to the development of formal methods and applications thereof in software engineering. This is done by either substantiating the advantages of integrating formal methods into the development cycle or through delineating the need for research by demonstrating weaknesses of existing technologies, especially when addressing new application domains.

All submissions must be in the PDF format. Papers should be written in English. Submitted papers must be unpublished and not submitted for publication elsewhere.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Requirements specification and analysis
• Formalisms for modeling, design and implementation
• Model checking, theorem proving, and decision procedures
• Scalable approaches to formal system analysis
• Formal approaches to simulation, run-time verification, and testing
• Integration of formal methods into software engineering practice
• Contract-based engineering of components, systems, and systems of systems
• Formal and engineering aspects of software evolution and maintenance
• Parallel and multicore programming
• Embedded, real-time, hybrid, probabilistic, and cyber-physical systems
• Mixed-critical applications and systems
• Formal aspects of service-oriented and cloud computing
• Safety, reliability, robustness, and fault-tolerance
• Dependability of smart software and systems
• Empirical analysis techniques and integration with formal methods
• Applications and industrial experience reports
• Software tools to assist the construction or analysis of software systems

Research papers will be published in the SETTA 2023 proceedings as a volume in Springer's LNCS series. Papers should be submitted electronically through the EasyChair submission website (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=setta2023). A selection of papers will be invited to special issues of the Elsevier Journal of Systems Architecture (JSA) and Software Testing, Verification & Reliability (STVR).

Important dates (AoE)

Submission Guidelines

All submissions must be in PDF format and should be written in English. Submissions can take the form of either regular or short papers. Regular papers should not exceed 17 pages (excluding references) in LNCS format. Short papers can discuss an ongoing research at an early design stage, including PhD projects. Short papers should not exceed 6 pages (excluding references) in LNCS format. All submitted papers should be unpublished and not submitted for publication elsewhere. All accepted papers will have to be presented at the conference by one of their authors. Extended version of selected papers will be recommended to special issues of Journal of System Architecture (JSA) and of Software Testing, Verification & Reliability (STVR) after the proceeding of the conference.

Springer's author instructions for LNCS series' articles can be found on overleaf. Finally, the attention of contributing authors in drawn on the code of conduct of the publisher.

All questions about submissions should be sent to setta2023 at easychair.