Association for Automated Reasoning

Newsletter No. 149
January 2026

Herbrand Award 2026: Call for Nominations

Philipp Rümmer
Secretary of CADE Inc.
On behalf of the CADE Inc. Board of Trustees

Call for Nominations

The Herbrand Award for Distinguished Contributions to Automated Reasoning is the award established by CADE Inc. to honour a person or group of people for their exceptional work in the field of Automated Deduction. The award is named after the French mathematician Jacques Herbrand, and is given out annually at the respective CADE or IJCAR conference.

The Herbrand Award has been given in the past to:

At most one Herbrand Award will be given in each year.

Nominations for the Herbrand Award consist of a letter (preferably as a PDF attachment) of up to 2000 words from the principal nominator, describing the nominee's contributions (including the relationship to CADE), along with letters of up to 2000 words of endorsement from two other seconders. The following rules apply:

Nominations for the Herbrand award can be submitted at any time by email to

Jürgen Giesl, President of CADE Inc.
with copies to
Philipp Rümmer, Secretary of CADE Inc.

The deadline for nominations to be considered for the Herbrand Award 2026, which will be given at IJCAR'26, is

March 10 2026
Nominations pending from previous years must be resubmitted in order to be considered.

The Herbrand Award Committee 2026

In 2026, the Herbrand award committee consists of the following people, listed here in alphabetical order:

The board of trustees reserves the option to exclude or replace committee members after receiving the nominations, in case a conflict of interest involving nominees and members of the award committee is identified.

For more details, please check the Herbrand Award webpage.

Bill McCune PhD Award in Automated Reasoning 2026: Call for Nominations

Automated Reasoning is the area of Computer Science dedicated to applying reasoning in the form of logic to computing systems. The Bill McCune PhD Award in Automated Reasoning distinguishes each year a PhD thesis defended the previous year, for its substantive contributions to the field of Automated Reasoning, its theory, its implementation, and/or its application on important problems. The award is named after the American computer scientist William Walker McCune, known for his contributions in the fields of Automated Reasoning, Algebra, Logic, and Formal Methods. He was the implementer of OTTER, Prover9 and Mace 4, automated tools for first-order reasoning which are known to this day for their accuracy and robustness. He was also known for his generosity towards research colleagues and as a great supporter of young researchers in the field.

Eligibility
Eligible for the award are those who successfully defended their PhD

The PhD students supervised or co-supervised by the Expert Committee members are not eligible.

Nomination
Candidates for the award must be nominated by their supervisor(s) and one additional independent researcher who reviewed/examined the thesis. Nominations are to be made by March 10, 2026 (Anywhere on Earth).

Nominations should proceed in two steps:
In a first step, the supervisors planning to make a nomination should send an email to Viorica Sofronie-Stokkermans to obtain a link at which to submit all the documents.
In a second step they should upload a zip file containing the following documents:

Procedure
The thesis will be evaluated with respect to its quality, originality and (potential) impact to the field of Automated Reasoning.

Expert Committee
The Expert Committee, consisting of leading researchers in Automating Reasoning, is formed by the board of CADE Trustees with the aim to reflect the broad diversity in the area of Automated Reasoning. It is announced with the call for nominations, and thus formed before this call. The decision on the award is taken by the Expert Committee. The Expert Committee can seek additional expertise, even after the submission deadline for nominations. Expert Committee members cannot nominate a PhD student. Expert Committee members cannot contribute an independent report seconding a nomination.

The Expert Committee for the Bill McCune PhD Award 2026 consists of the following researchers:

Call for volunteers for AAR and CADE Secretary

Jürgen Giesl
CADE President

After eight years of excellent service, AAR and CADE Secretary Philipp Rümmer has informed the CADE Board of Trustees and the AAR Board of Directors that he wishes to step down. Philipp did incredible work during these eight years and deserves heartfelt thanks from all our field! Thus, the two corporations are seeking a new Secretary.

The role of Secretary is an important one, and most precious to our organizations. Former secretaries include Bill McCune, Bob Veroff, Maria Paola Bonacina, Amy Felty, Wolfgang Ahrendt, and Martin Giese. The two roles of Secretary of AAR and Secretary of CADE have been filled by the same person since 1999, because AAR and CADE are strongly interconnected: CADE is a subcorporation of AAR, and the members of AAR elect the board of trustees of CADE. Thus, this call is for candidates to be the Secretary of both AAR and CADE.

The Secretary is a full-right member of both the AAR Board of Directors and the CADE Board of Trustees. The Secretary shares with the other members of these boards the responsibility, and opportunity, to influence and shape the core community work and decisions. In addition, the Secretary has the following distinguished duties:

Clearly, this is a very important job, which may give a lot of reward: the new Secretary will inherit all necessary documents and historical records from the outgoing Secretary and will be welcomed by the two boards. As CADE President I'll be happy to welcome the new Secretary and help towards a smooth transition.

Interested applicants should send an e-mail message with a brief statement, highlighting motivation and previous organizational experience, if any, and the url of their web page, to

Jürgen Giesl, President of CADE Inc.
with copies to
Philipp Rümmer, Secretary of CADE Inc.

no later than March 10, 2026. The Secretary will be appointed by the two boards as soon as possible and all applicants will be informed of the outcome.

Results of the CADE Trustee Elections

Philipp Rümmer
Secretary of CADE Inc.

The affairs of CADE are managed by its Board of Trustees. This includes the selection of CADE (IJCAR) co-chairs, the selection of CADE venues, choosing the Herbrand, Bill McCune, and Skolem Award selection committee, instituting new awards, etc.

The members of the board of trustees until the 2025 elections were:

The terms of Pascal Fontaine, Jürgen Giesl, André Platzer, and Sophie Tourret ended in 2025. The term of office of Uwe Waldmann as CADE-30 program co-chair ended after the CADE conference, and Armin Biere is joining the board of trustees as IJCAR 2026 program co-chair.

In the 2025 elections, four new trustees had to be elected.

The following candidates were nominated; their statements were given in the September newsletter:

The election was carried out using the Condorcet Internet Voting Service (CIVS) and the Condorcet completion Minimax-PM. Participants of the last three CADE/IJCAR conferences (who paid registration fees at at least one of the conferences) were invited to vote, and a total of 254 ballots were sent out on October 3. By October 17, 67 CADE members had voted through CIVS, which translates to a participation rate of 26.4% (as compared to 30.2% in 2024, 26.2% in 2023, 26.7% in 2022, 26.7% in 2021, 34.5% in 2019, 21.1% in 2018, 9.1% in 2017, 11.2% in 2016).

The results of the election can be viewed on CIVS:

  1. Jürgen Giesl: Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices;
  2. Sophie Tourret: loses to Jürgen Giesl by 43-20;
  3. Uwe Waldmann: loses to Jürgen Giesl by 50-11, loses to Sophie Tourret by 47-15;
  4. Cláudia Nalon: loses to Jürgen Giesl by 50-13, loses to Uwe Waldmann by 32-26;
  5. Viorica Sofronie-Stokkermans: loses to Jürgen Giesl by 44-16, loses to Cláudia Nalon by 31-29;
  6. André Platzer: loses to Jürgen Giesl by 51-12, loses to Viorica Sofronie-Stokkermans by 32-27.

The four candidates elected are Jürgen Giesl, Sophie Tourret, Uwe Waldmann, and Cláudia Nalon.

In the first meeting of the new board of trustees, Jürgen Giesl was unanimously reelected as the President of CADE Inc.

The new board of trustees is therefore:

On behalf of CADE Inc., I would like to thank Pascal Fontaine and André Platzer for their service for CADE over the last six resp. three years, and Viorica Sofronie-Stokkermans for running in the 2025 elections. I would like to congratulate Cláudia Nalon and Uwe Waldmann, who will join the board as new elected trustees, and Jürgen Giesl and Sophie Tourret on getting reelected!

TABLEAUX & FroCoS 2027: Call for Proposals

We are pleased to announce the call for proposals for hosting and organising TABLEAUX 2027 and FroCoS 2027, on their 34th and 16th editions, respectively.

Tableaux and FroCoS have co-located for quite a number of editions. In 2027 we intend to continue this partnership. We expect the 2027 edition to have around 100 participants.

Bids should be sent to Elaine Pimentel and should include at least the following information:

The deadline for bids is March 31, 2026. The bids will be analysed by the TABLEAUX and FroCoS Steering committees and the result will be made public by mid April 2026.

Events

ETAPS 2026: 29th European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, call for participation

11–16 April 2026, Turin, Italy

ETAPS is a primary forum for academic and industrial researchers working on topics relating to software science. ETAPS, established in 1998, is a confederation of four annual conferences accompanied by satellite workshops.

ETAPS 2026 will feature four invited speakers and two invited tutorials, covering a wide range of topics including data privacy, digital twins, large language models, model checking, probabilistic programming, symbolic reasoning, theorem proving, and more.

In addition to its main conferences, ETAPS 2026 will also host fifteen satellite events and three collocated events, including the ETAPS Industry Day. We strongly encourage you to submit to and attend these events.

More information is available on the conference’s web page.

Conferences

ICALP 2026: 53rd EATCS International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming, call for papers

July 7–10, 2026, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, United Kingdom (co‑located with PODC 2026 and SPAA 2026)

ICALP 2026 is the main conference and annual meeting of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS). The conference brings together researchers in all areas of theoretical computer science.

Papers presenting original research on all aspects of theoretical computer science are sought. Typical, but not exclusive, topics of interest include:

  • Track A: Algorithms, Complexity, and Games
    • Algorithmic and computational complexity aspects of biological and social networks
    • Algorithmic aspects of security and privacy
    • Algorithmic game theory and mechanism design
    • Approximation algorithms
    • Combinatorial optimization
    • Combinatorics in computer science
    • Computational complexity
    • Computational geometry
    • Computational learning theory
    • Cryptography
    • Data structures
    • Design and analysis of algorithms
    • Distributed and mobile computing
    • Dynamic algorithms
    • Foundations of machine learning
    • Graph mining and network analysis
    • Online algorithms
    • Parallel and external memory computing
    • Parameterized complexity
    • Quantum computing
    • Randomness in computation
    • Sublinear time and streaming algorithms
    • Theoretical foundations of algorithmic fairness
  • Track B: Automata, Logic, Semantics, and Theory of Programming
    • Algebraic and categorical models of computation
    • Automata, logic, and games
    • Database theory, constraint satisfaction problems, and finite model theory
    • Formal and logical aspects of learning
    • Formal and logical aspects of security and privacy
    • Logic in computer science and theorem proving
    • Models of computation: complexity and computability
    • Models of concurrent, distributed, and mobile systems
    • Models of reactive, hybrid, and stochastic systems
    • Principles and semantics of programming languages
    • Program analysis, verification, and synthesis
    • Type systems and typed calculi

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Abstract registration deadline: February 3, 2026
  • Submission deadline: February 6, 2026
  • Track B rebuttal period: March 21–24, 2026
  • Author notification: April 20, 2026
  • Workshops: July 6, 2026

More information can be found on the conference's web page.

IJCAR 2026: the 9th International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning, call for papers

July 26–29, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (part of FLoC 2026)

IJCAR is the premier international venue on all aspects of automated reasoning. It is held biannually as a merger of leading events in automated reasoning:

  • CADE: Conference on Automated Deduction
  • FroCoS: Symposium on Frontiers of Combining Systems
  • TABLEAUX: Conference on Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods

IJCAR 2026 invites submissions related to all aspects of automated or interactive logical reasoning, including foundations, implementations, and applications. Original research papers and descriptions/evaluations of working automated deduction systems or proof assistant systems are solicited.

IJCAR topics include (but are not limited to):

  • Logics of interest: propositional, first-order, classical, equational, higher-order, non-classical, constructive, modal, temporal, many-valued, substructural, description logics, type theory.
  • Methods of interest: tableaux, sequent calculi, resolution, model-elimination, inverse method, paramodulation, term rewriting, induction, unification, constraint solving, decision procedures, model generation, model checking, semantic guidance, interactive theorem proving, logical frameworks, AI-related methods for deductive systems, proof presentation, automated theorem proving, combination of decision or proof procedures, SAT and SMT solving, machine learning and theorem proving, integration of automated provers/proof assistants in automated test generators, program synthesisers, verified compilers, intelligent systems, agent-based systems, knowledge processing systems, formal methods tools, symbolic tools, etc.
  • Applications of interest: verification, formal methods, program analysis and synthesis, computer mathematics, declarative programming, deductive databases, knowledge representation and processing/engineering, education, formalization of mathematics, trusted AI, etc.

Important Dates (AoE, tentative)

  • Abstract submission: February 6, 2026
  • Paper submission: February 13, 2026
  • Rebuttal: March 30–31, 2026
  • Notification: April 14, 2026
  • Camera-ready: June 15, 2026

More information will appear on the conference's web page.

KR 2026: 23rd International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, call for papers

July 20-23, 2026, Lisbone, Portugal (part of FLoC 2026)

Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR) is a well-established and vibrant field of research within Artificial Intelligence. KR builds on the fundamental thesis that knowledge can often be represented in an explicit declarative form, suitable for processing by dedicated symbolic reasoning engines. This enables the exploitation of knowledge that would otherwise be implicit through semantically grounded inference mechanisms.

KR has contributed to the theory and practice of various areas of AI, including agents, automated planning, robotics, and natural language processing, and to fields beyond AI, including data management, semantic web, verification, software engineering, computational biology, and cybersecurity.

The KR conference series is the leading forum for timely, in-depth presentation of progress in the theory and practice of the representation and computational management of knowledge.

In addition to the Main Track, KR 2026 will include two special thematic tracks:

  • KR meets Machine Learning and Explanation
  • KR in the Wild

We solicit papers presenting novel results on the principles of KR, which clearly contribute to the formal foundations of the field or show the applicability of KR techniques to implemented or implementable systems. We welcome papers from other areas that demonstrate clear use of, or contributions to, the principles or practice of KR. We also encourage "reports from the field" of applications, experiments, developments, and tests.

Typical topics of interest include the following, but the list is not exhaustive. The conference welcomes all topics concerned with the explicit representation or management of knowledge, and with the automated inference on the basis of such knowledge.

  • Argumentation
  • Belief change
  • Common-sense reasoning
  • Computational aspects of knowledge representation
  • Description logics
  • Ethical considerations in KR
  • Explanation, abduction and diagnosis
  • Geometric, spatial, and temporal reasoning
  • Inconsistency- and exception-tolerant reasoning
  • Knowledge acquisition
  • Knowledge compilation, automated reasoning, satisfiability and model counting
  • Knowledge representation languages
  • Logic programming, answer set programming
  • Model learning for diagnosis and planning
  • Modeling and reasoning about preferences
  • Modeling constraints and constraint solving
  • Multi- and order-sorted representations and reasoning
  • Non-monotonic logics
  • Ontologies and knowledge-enriched data management
  • Philosophical foundations of KR
  • Qualitative reasoning
  • Reasoning about actions and change, action languages
  • Reasoning about knowledge, beliefs, and other mental attitudes
  • Reasoning in knowledge graphs
  • Reasoning in multi-agent systems
  • Semantic web
  • Similarity-based and contextual reasoning
  • Uncertainty and vagueness

KR 2026 will also include a Recently Published Research Track, a Video Track, tutorials, workshops, and a Doctoral Consortium.

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Submission of title and abstract: February 8, 2026
  • Paper submission deadline: February 13, 2026
  • [Recently published research] Abstract submission : March 5, 2026
  • [Recently published research] Paper submission : March 12, 2026
  • [Video track] Early cycle submission: March 20, 2026
  • Author response period: March 24–28, 2026
  • [Doctoral consortium] Application deadline: March 26, 2026
  • Notification of acceptance (papers, early video track, doctoral consortium, recently published research track): April 13, 2026
  • [Video track] Late cycle submission: April 24, 2026
  • Camera-ready due: May 3, 2026
  • [Recently published research] Camera-ready due: May 7, 2026
  • [Video track] Late cycle notification: May 18, 2026
  • Camera-ready due (video track): July 3, 2026

More information is available on the conference's web page.

TASE 2026: 20th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering, call for papers

July 4–6, 2026, Shanghai, China

Now in its 20th edition, TASE is an international symposium that aims to bring together researchers and developers from academia and industry with interests in the theoretical aspects of software engineering. We invite submissions of research papers on topics covering all theoretical aspects of software engineering.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Abstract interpretation
  • Algebraic and co-algebraic specifications
  • Component-based software engineering
  • Cyber-physical systems
  • Deductive verification
  • Distributed and concurrent systems
  • Domain engineering
  • Embedded and real-time systems
  • Feature-oriented software
  • Formal verification and program semantics
  • Integration of formal methods
  • Language design
  • Model checking and theorem proving
  • Model-driven engineering
  • Object-oriented systems
  • Probability in software engineering
  • Program analysis
  • Program logics and calculi
  • Requirements engineering
  • Reverse engineering and software maintenance
  • Run-time verification and monitoring
  • Semantic web and web services
  • Service-oriented and cloud computing
  • Software processes and workflows
  • Software architectures and design
  • Software testing and quality assurance
  • Software safety, security, and reliability
  • Specification and verification
  • Type systems and behavioural typing
  • Tools exploiting theoretical results

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Abstract submission: February 15, 2026
  • Paper submission: February 21, 2026
  • Author Notification: April 1, 2026
  • Camera-ready Version: May 1, 2026

More information is available on the conference's web page.

ITP 2026: International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving, call for papers

July 26–29, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (part of FLoC 2026)

The ITP conference series is concerned with all aspects of interactive theorem proving, ranging from theoretical foundations to implementation aspects and applications in program verification, security, and the formalization of mathematics. This will be the 17th conference in the ITP series, while predecessor conferences from which it has evolved have been going since 1988.

ITP welcomes submissions describing original research on all aspects of interactive theorem proving and its applications. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • formalizations of computational models
  • improvements in interactive theorem prover technology
  • formalizations of mathematics
  • integration with automated provers and other symbolic and neurosymbolic tools
  • industrial applications of interactive theorem provers
  • formal specification and verification of hardware and software
  • user interfaces for interactive theorem provers
  • use of theorem provers in education
  • concise and elegant worked examples of formalizations (proof pearls)
  • sound methods for using AI in proof discovery

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Abstract deadline: February 12, 2026
  • Paper submission deadline: February 19, 2026
  • Author notification: April 26, 2026
  • Camera-ready copy: May 24, 2026

More information can be found on the conference's web page.

ICFP 2026: 31st International Conference on Functional Programming, call for papers, workshops, tutorials, and co-located events

August 24–29, 2026, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

PACMPL issue ICFP 2026 seeks original papers on the art and science of functional programming. Submissions are invited on all topics from principles to practice, from foundations to features, and from abstraction to application. The scope includes all languages that encourage functional programming, including both purely applicative and imperative languages, as well as languages with objects, concurrency, or parallelism.

ICFP welcomes submissions on all aspects of functional programming. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Language Design: concurrency, parallelism, and distribution; modularity; components and composition; meta-programming; macros; pattern matching; type systems; type inference; dependent types; effect types; gradual types; refinement types; session types; interoperability; domain-specific languages; imperative programming; object-oriented programming; logic programming; probabilistic programming; reactive programming; generic programming; bidirectional programming; secure programming
  • Implementation: abstract machines; virtual machines; interpretation; compilation; compile-time and run-time optimisation; garbage collection and memory management; runtime systems; multi-threading; exploiting parallel hardware; interfaces to foreign functions, services, components, or low-level machine resources
  • Software-Development Techniques: algorithms and data structures; design patterns; specification; verification; validation; proof assistants; debugging; testing; tracing; profiling; build systems; program synthesis
  • Analysis and Transformation: control flow; data flow; abstract interpretation; partial evaluation; program calculation
  • Foundations: formal semantics; lambda calculus; program equivalence; rewriting; type theory; logic; category theory; computational effects; continuations; control; state; names and binding; program verification
  • Applications: symbolic computing; formal-methods tools; systems programming; distributed systems and web programming; hardware design; databases; scientific and numerical computing; graphical user interfaces; graphics and multimedia; GPU programming; scripting; system administration; security
  • Education: teaching introductory programming; mathematical proof; algebra

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Submission deadline: February 19, 2026
  • Author notification: June 10, 2026
  • Camera-ready copy: July 1, 2026

More information can be found on the conference's web page.

SAT 2026: 29th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing, call for papers

July 20–23, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (part of FLoC 2026)

SAT is the premier annual meeting for researchers focusing on the theory and applications of propositional satisfiability, broadly construed. That includes Boolean optimization, such as MaxSAT and Pseudo-Boolean (PB) constraints, Quantified Boolean Formulas (QBF), Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT), model counting, and Constraint Programming (CP) for problems with clear connections to Boolean-level reasoning.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Theoretical advances (including algorithms, proof complexity, parameterized complexity, and other complexity issues)
  • Practical search algorithms
  • Knowledge compilation
  • Implementation-level details of SAT solving tools and SAT-based systems
  • Problem encodings and reformulations
  • Applications (including both novel applications domains and improvements to existing approaches)
  • Case studies and reports on insightful findings based on rigorous experimentation

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Abstract submission: February 27, 2026
  • Paper submission: March 6, 2026
  • Rebuttal: April 13–17, 2026
  • Author notification: April 30, 2026
  • Camera-ready version: May 14, 2026

More information can be found on the conference's web page.

MFPS XLII: 42nd Conference on Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics, call for papers

June 1–3, 2026, Ljubljana, Slovenia (Co-located with SSTT 2026)

MFPS conferences are dedicated to the areas of mathematics, logic, and computer science that are related to models of computation in general, and to the semantics of programming languages in particular. This is a forum where researchers in mathematics and computer science can meet and exchange ideas. The participation of researchers in neighbouring areas is strongly encouraged.

Topics of interest include (but are not restricted to):

  • Bio-computation
  • Concurrent qualitative and quantitative distributed systems
  • Process calculi
  • Probabilistic systems
  • Constructive mathematics
  • Domain theory and categorical models
  • Formal languages
  • Formal methods
  • Game semantics
  • Lambda calculus
  • Programming language theory
  • Quantum computation
  • Security
  • Topological models
  • Logic
  • Type systems
  • Type theory
  • Denotational and operational semantics
  • Rewrite theory
  • Proof theory

We also welcome contributions that address applications of semantics to novel areas.

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Paper submission: March 5, 2026
  • Author notification: April 23, 2026

More information is available on the conference's web page.

PLS15: The Fifteenth Panhellenic Logic Symposium, call for papers

July 6–10, 2026, Athens, Greece

PLS is a biennial scientific event established in 1997 to promote interaction and cross-fertilization among different areas of logic. Originally created to bring together logicians of Hellenic descent around the world, it has since grown into an international forum for the communication of state-of-the-art advances in logic. The symposium is open to researchers worldwide working in logic, broadly construed.

Areas of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Categorical logic
  • Computability theory
  • History of Logic
  • Logic in Computer Science
  • Logic in Human Reasoning
  • Model theory
  • Nonclassical and modal logics
  • Philosophical logic
  • Proof theory
  • Reasoning in AI
  • Set theory

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Submission deadline: March 30, 2026
  • Notification: April 30, 2026
  • Final version due: May 29, 2026

More information can be found on the conference's web page.

FMICS 2026: 31st International Conference on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems, call for papers

September 2–4, 2026, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (co-located with CONFEST)

The aim of the FMICS conference series is to provide a forum for researchers an practitioners who are interested in the development and application of formal methods in industry. FMICS brings together scientists and engineers who are active in the area of formal methods and interested in exchanging their experiences in the industrial usage of these methods. The FMICS conference series also strives to promote research and development for the improvement of formal methods and tools for industrial applications.

FMICS is the ERCIM Working Group conference on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems, and it is the key conference in the intersection of industrial applications and Formal Methods.

We encourage submissions on cross-cutting approaches that bring together formal methods and industrial applications. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Formal specification, including specification elicitation, validation, debugging, sanity checking, revision, coverage, and explainability
  • Case studies and experience reports on industrial applications of formal methods, focusing on lessons learned or the identification of new research directions
  • Methods, techniques, and tools to support automated analysis, certification, debugging, learning, optimization, and transformation of complex, distributed, real-time, embedded, mobile, and autonomous systems
  • Verification and validation methods (model checking, theorem proving, SAT/SMT solving, abstract interpretation, etc.) addressing shortcomings of existing methods with respect to industrial applicability, such as scalability, usability, tool qualification, and certification
  • Transfer to industry and the impact of adopting formal methods on the development process and associated costs in industry, including applications in standardization and industrial forums

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Abstract submission: April 10, 2026
  • Paper submission: April 17, 2026
  • Notification: June 1, 2026
  • Camera-ready version: June 15, 2026
  • Conference: September 2–4, 2026

More information is available on the conference’s web page.

SCML 2026: International Conference on Symbolic Computation and Machine Learning, call for presentations and papers

July 6–8, 2026, Hagenberg, Austria

SCML 2026 is dedicated to research combining Symbolic Computation (SC) and Machine Learning (ML) as two major approaches to Artificial Intelligence. The conference focuses on applying ML to SC, applying SC to ML, and hybrid approaches that integrate both paradigms to solve challenging problems.

SCML 2026 provides a forum to exchange ideas and discuss recent advances in this emerging research area, with ample opportunities to initiate new research projects, form collaborations, and identify funding opportunities.

SCML 2026 is a presentation-oriented conference. Submissions are solicited in the form of extended abstracts (1–2 pages), which are briefly reviewed for relevance. Accepted abstracts are published collectively as a conference booklet within the SCML publication forum. At least one author of each accepted abstract must register as a presenter.

Authors are also encouraged to submit related full papers to the SCML Publishing Forum. Papers are refereed independently and may be submitted at any time, before or after the conference. Acceptance of a presentation does not depend on acceptance of a full paper.

Topics of Interest

  • Applying ML to computer mathematics, algebra, and geometry; integration of ML into mathematical software
  • Applying ML to automated reasoning, theorem proving, and satisfiability solving
  • ML-based synthesis and verification of programs
  • Applying SC to explainable AI, error bounds, robustness, and interpretation of ML models
  • Verification of ML models using symbolic computation (“verified AI”)
  • Synthesis of ML models with guaranteed correctness, robustness, and error bounds
  • Integration of computer algebra and automated reasoning into ML models
  • Use of LLMs for automatic formalization of mathematical and logical texts
  • LLMs as natural language interfaces and co-pilots for symbolic computation systems
  • Combining linguistic reasoning (LLMs) with formal reasoning (theorem provers)
  • Educational uses of combined SC and ML systems
  • Software and system descriptions, datasets, benchmarks, and metrics for SC–ML interaction

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Opening of registrations: March 2, 2026
  • Extended abstract submission deadline: April 27, 2026
  • Notification of acceptance: May 11, 2026
  • Presenter registration deadline: May 25, 2026
  • Non-presenter registration deadline: June 15, 2026

More information is available on the conference web page.

RuleML+RR 2026: 10th International Joint Conference on Rules and Reasoning, call for papers

August 24–26, 2026, Vilnius, Lithuania (Co-located with Declarative AI 2026)

RuleML+RR 2026 is the leading international conference in the field of rule-based reasoning. A primary goal of RuleML+RR is to build bridges between academia and industry in the area of semantic reasoning.

RuleML+RR 2026 aims to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in the foundations and applications of rules and reasoning. It provides a forum for stimulating cooperation between different communities focused on the research, development, and applications of rule-based systems. This year, we particularly encourage contributions at the intersection of databases and AI, reflecting the growing importance of data-centric and hybrid approaches to rule-based reasoning.

We solicit high-quality papers related to theoretical advances, novel technologies, and applications that involve rule-based representation and reasoning or other declarative forms of artificial intelligence.

Topics of interest include (but are not restricted to):

  • Ontology / Semantic Web
  • Rules for AI and AI for Rules
  • Rules and Reasoning / Logics
  • Rules-Based Systems
  • Rules and Interoperability
  • Constraints and Schema
  • System Descriptions, Applications and Experiences of Ontologies and Rules

The conference will also include the following events:

  • Rule Challenge
  • Doctoral Consortium
  • Industry Track
  • Networking Session

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Title and abstract submission: May 8, 2026
  • Paper submission: May 15, 2026
  • Notification of acceptance: June 26, 2026

More information is available on the conference's web page.

Workshops

IWC 2026: 15th International Workshop on Confluence , call for papers

July 24, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (satellite event of FLoC 2026)

The 15th International Workshop on Confluence (IWC 2026) aims at promoting further research in confluence and related properties. Confluence provides a general notion of determinism and is a central concept in rewriting. It relates to many topics in rewriting and computation, including completion, modularity, termination, and commutation, and has been studied in a wide range of rewriting formalisms. Recent advances have led to new techniques, tool support, certification efforts, and novel applications.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Confluence and related properties (unique normal forms, commutation, ground confluence)
  • Completion
  • Critical pair criteria
  • Decidability issues
  • Complexity issues
  • Certification
  • Applications of confluence

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Title and abstract submission: March 1, 2026
  • Paper submission: March 9, 2026
  • Notification to authors: April 9, 2026

More information is available on the workshop’s web page.

ARCH 2026: 13th International Workshop on Applied Verification for Continuous and Hybrid Systems, call for papers

June 3, 2026, online

ARCH 2026 brings together researchers and practitioners to establish a curated set of benchmarks for continuous and hybrid systems and to test them in a friendly competition. The workshop focuses on verification techniques for these systems, emphasizing the transfer from theory to practice.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Proposals for new benchmark problems (not necessarily yet solvable)
  • Tool presentations
  • Tool executions and evaluations based on ARCH benchmarks
  • Experience reports including open issues for industrial success
  • Reports on results of the friendly competition

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Submission deadline: April 1, 2026
  • Notification of acceptance: April 29, 2026
  • Final version / camera-ready: May 27, 2026

More information is available on the workshop's web page.

LSFA 2026: 21st International Symposium on Logical and Semantic Frameworks with Applications , call for papers

July 18–19, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal

Logical and semantic frameworks are formal languages used to represent logics, languages, and systems. These frameworks provide foundations for the formal specification of systems and programming languages, supporting tool development and reasoning.

We invite submissions on topics including, but not limited to:

  • Automated deduction
  • Applications of logical and/or semantic frameworks
  • Computational and logical properties of semantic frameworks
  • Formal semantics of languages and systems
  • Implementation of logical and/or semantic frameworks
  • Lambda and combinatory calculi
  • Logical aspects of computational complexity
  • Logical frameworks
  • Process calculi
  • Proof theory
  • Semantic frameworks
  • Specification languages and meta-languages
  • Type theory

Following LSFA tradition, in addition to the proceedings, a special issue LSFA 25+26 is being considered.

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Abstract submission: March 30, 2026
  • Full paper submission: April 4, 2026
  • Notification of acceptance: May 4, 2026

More information is available on the symposium’s web page.

NMR 2026: 24th International Workshop on Nonmonotonic Reasoning, call for papers

July 17–19, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (satellite event of FLoC 2026)

NMR is the premier forum for results in the area of nonmonotonic reasoning. Its aim is to bring together active researchers in this broad field within knowledge representation and reasoning (KR), including belief revision, uncertain reasoning, reasoning about actions, planning, logic programming, preferences, argumentation, causality, and many other related topics including systems and applications.

NMR 2026 aims to foster connections between the different subareas of nonmonotonic reasoning and provide a forum for emerging topics. We especially invite papers on systems and applications, as well as position papers addressing benchmark issues. The workshop will be structured by topical sessions fitting to the scopes of accepted papers.

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Paper registration: April 3, 2026
  • Paper submission: April 10, 2026
  • Notification of acceptance: May 18, 2026
  • Camera-ready version due: June 17, 2026

More information is available on the workshop's web page.

SD26: 6th International Workshop on Structures and Deduction , call for papers

July 24–25, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (satellite event of FLoC 2026)

SD26 is the sixth international workshop on Structures and Deduction. It brings together researchers from different areas of proof theory, with a particular focus on new algebraic and geometric results that enhance our ability to manipulate proofs, reduce bureaucracy in deductive systems, and lead to new methods for proof search and novel forms of proof certificates.

Themes of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Syntactic representations of proofs, such as sequent calculi and deep inference systems, in focused and unfocused variants
  • Combinatorial representations of proofs, such as proof nets, flow graphs, and expansion trees
  • Algebraic representations of proofs, for example via game semantics or category theory
  • Methods for proof manipulation and proof normal forms, including cut-elimination, rule permutations, and proof compression
  • Formulas-as-types interpretations of proofs, such as Curry–Howard correspondences and witness extraction
  • Methods for incorporating computation and rewriting in proof search, such as deduction modulo or cyclic proofs
  • Complexity-theoretic aspects of proof representations, including proof complexity, normalization complexity, and decision procedures from proof search

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Submission deadline: April 23, 2026
  • Notification of acceptance: May 23, 2026
  • Early-bird registration deadline for FLoC workshops: June 1, 2026

More information is available on the workshop’s web page.

WST 2026: 21st International Workshop on Termination , call for papers

July 25, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (satellite event of FLoC 2026)

The Workshop on Termination traditionally brings together, in an informal setting, researchers interested in all aspects of termination, whether practical or theoretical, primary or derived.

The workshop provides a forum for cross-fertilization of ideas from different communities interested in termination, including computational mechanisms, programming languages, software engineering, constraint solving, and related areas. Its friendly atmosphere encourages fruitful exchanges leading to joint research and subsequent publications.

WST 2026 welcomes contributions on all aspects of termination. Papers investigating applications of termination—for example in complexity analysis, program analysis and transformation, theorem proving, program correctness, and modeling of computational systems— are particularly encouraged.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Termination and complexity analysis in any domain (e.g., lambda calculus, declarative programming, rewriting, transition systems, probabilistic programs)
  • Abstraction methods in termination analysis
  • Certification of termination and complexity proofs
  • Challenging termination problems
  • Comparison and classification of termination methods
  • Implementation of termination and complexity methods
  • Non-termination analysis
  • Normalization and infinitary normalization
  • Operational termination of logic-based systems
  • Ordinal notation and subrecursive hierarchies
  • SAT, SMT, and constraint solving for (non-)termination analysis
  • Scalability and modularity of termination methods
  • Well-founded relations and well-quasi-orders

Termination Competition
Since 2003, the effect of WST to stimulate new research on termination has been enhanced by the Termination Competition and its continuously developing Problem Databases containing thousands of programs as challenges for termination analysis in different categories. In 2026, the Termination Competition will run during WST.

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Title and abstract submission: April 28, 2026
  • Paper submission: May 5, 2026
  • Notification: May 26, 2026
  • Early registration: June 1, 2026
  • Final version: June 26, 2026
  • Workshop: July 25, 2026

More information is available on the workshop’s web page .

TEAL 2026: Tools for Educational Activities in Logic , call for papers

July 25, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (satellite event of FLoC 2026)

TEAL welcomes work on tools for learning about logic. Tools can be of many forms: tutors, restricted versions of standard logic tools, and more. They can be used at many levels: university, industrial, and more. If in doubt, you can always reach out to the chairs to check whether your work is in scope.

Our goal is to take advantage of the many groups of people who will be coming together for FLoC. Our anti-goal is to create yet another publication venue. We want to have a lively, interactive event that focuses on exchanging knowledge and helping grow this community. Therefore, we have many kinds of activities and corresponding submission formats.

TEAL is not limited to papers! You can submit in any of the following categories:

  • Plenary demos, where the demonstrator shows their work to all the attendees (there is limited time for these)
  • Shared-time demos, akin to a poster session, where participants can visit several demonstrators and, as appropriate, interact with tools with the help of the demonstrators (there is time for many more of these)
  • Discussions of challenges and opportunities in logic education, such as: designing usable interfaces, evaluating educational impact, adapting tools to diverse audiences, and integrating tools into curricula
  • Regular paper presentations
If you have an idea that doesn’t fit any of the above categories, feel free to discuss it with the chairs. We will definitely consider other interesting proposals! But please do this early in the cycle, not near the deadline.

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Submission deadline: April 29, 2026
  • Author notification: May 27, 2026
  • Workshop: July 25, 2026

More information is available on the workshop’s web page.

WiL 2026: 10th Women in Logic Workshop, call for papers

July 24–25, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (satellite event of FLoC 2026)

WiL 2026, the 10th International Workshop for Women in Logic, will take place in Lisbon on 24–25 July 2026 as a satellite event of FLoC 2026. The workshop highlights and increases awareness of the valuable contributions made by women in logic and computer science. Its goal is to promote excellent research led by women and strengthen visibility and representation within the community.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: automata theory, automated deduction, categorical models and logics, concurrency and distributed computation, constraint programming, constructive mathematics, database theory, decision procedures, description logics, domain theory, finite model theory, formal aspects of program analysis, formal methods, foundations of computability, games and logic, higher-order logic, lambda and combinatory calculi, linear logic, logic in artificial intelligence, logic programming, logical aspects of bioinformatics, logical aspects of computational complexity, logical aspects of quantum computation, logical frameworks, logics of programs, modal and temporal logics, model checking, probabilistic systems, process calculi, programming language semantics, proof theory, real-time systems, reasoning about security and privacy, rewriting, type systems and type theory, and verification.

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Abstract submission: May 5, 2026
  • Paper notification: May 15, 2026
  • Grant application: May 17, 2026
  • Grant notification: May 19, 2026
  • Contribution for informal proceedings: June 25, 2026

A limited number of travel grants is available for students and young researchers who would otherwise lack resources to attend WiL, and whose attendance would benefit both the applicant and the event.

More information is available on the workshop's web page.

Isabelle Workshop 2026, call for papers

July 24, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (satellite event of FLoC 2026)

This informal workshop will bring together users and developers of the interactive theorem prover Isabelle. The year 2026 is special as it marks the 40th anniversary of Isabelle, and therefore the workshop will span two full days.

The workshop aims to foster interaction between Isabelle users and developers, and to provide a forum for presenting new ideas, tools, applications, and ongoing work related to Isabelle and its ecosystem.

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Paper submission deadline: May 9, 2026
  • Notification of acceptance: June 1, 2026
  • Deadline for final versions: June 15, 2026

More information is available on the workshop's web page.

Vampire Workshop 2026, call for papers

July 24, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (satellite event of FLoC 2026)

The Vampire 2026 workshop will discuss recent developments in the implementation, application, evaluation, and comparison of first-order theorem provers, including but not limited to Vampire, and their interaction with other systems.

We seek submissions reporting on, but not limited to:

  • Prerequisites for substantial progress in theorem proving tools
  • Implementation principles and practice
  • Heuristics and strategies for different application areas
  • Case studies, both successful and unsuccessful
  • Missing features in modern theorem provers

Submissions can range from work in progress to completed work. In particular, authors are invited to submit:

  • Extended abstracts or full papers
  • Theoretical papers
  • Experimental papers and case studies
  • Any contributions that may benefit tool developers and users

Papers may be of any length, ranging from 1-page abstracts to full papers of up to 20 pages. Submissions should use the EasyChair templates available at https://easychair.org/publications/for_authors .

Important Dates (AoE)

  • Paper submission deadline: May 29, 2026
  • Notification of acceptance: June 5, 2026

More information is available on the workshop's submission web page.

Seasonal Schools

ISR 2026: International School on Rewriting

July 12–16, 2026, Nijmegen, the Netherlands

Term rewriting is a powerful model of computation that underlies much of declarative programming and which is heavily used in symbolic computation in mathematics, theorem proving, and protocol verification.

The International School on Rewriting (ISR) is aimed at Master and PhD students and provides an intensive introduction to rewriting techniques, as well as advanced courses on recent developments and applications. The school is held in the week before FLoC 2026, allowing participants enough time to reach Lisbon for the first workshop day. Accommodation and catering will be provided.

Tracks and Topics
  • Basic track: A comprehensive introductory course to first-order term rewriting, accompanied by exercise sessions. Participants without previous exposure to term rewriting will benefit most. The course ends with an exam, and passing students receive a certificate that can be credited by their home universities.
  • Advanced track: A series of more advanced courses covering recent developments and applications, for participants with prior experience in the area.

Scholarships may be available for students without their own funding, though this cannot be guaranteed. Early expressions of interest (by email) are encouraged to help set pricing and planning.

More information is available on the school's web page.

Competitions

VerifyThis 2026, call for problems

April 11–12, 2026, Torino, Italy (co-located with ETAPS 2026)

VerifyThis 2026 will take place as part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS 2026) on 11 and 12 April 2026. It is the 14th event in the VerifyThis competition series. Information on previous events and participants can be found here.

The aims of the competition are:

  • to bring together those interested in formal verification, and to provide an engaging, hands-on, and fun opportunity for discussion.
  • to evaluate the usability of program verification techniques and tools.

The competition will offer a number of challenges presented in natural language. Participants have to formalize the requirements, implement a solution, and formally verify the implementation for adherence to the specification. There are no restrictions on the programming language and verification technology used. Solutions will be judged for correctness, completeness and elegance.

To be able to offer a broad and diverse set of verification challenges, we are collecting submissions of ideas for verification challenges and problems. We welcome both problems of academic interest as well as challenges based on themes that are relevant in industry.

The competition proceeds in three rounds. In each round, participants are given 60 - 120 minutes to implement and prove specified properties of a given algorithm and/or data structure. They are free to use any verification tools they choose. Challenges are typically concerned with proving functional properties of the code in question (at least some part of a challenge involves expressing and proving properties specific to the algorithm/data structure in question). It is common for problems to have multiple parts, e.g. to prove some basic properties first, perhaps for a simplified case, and to progress to more-advanced goals.

We are looking for problem submissions. If you have recently encountered an interesting challenge in your work where formal techniques could be applied, please don't hesitate to submit it. Typical challenges have clear input-output specifications and often incorporate one or more of the following: heap allocation, concurrency, arithmetic reasoning. A challenge usually describes a problem using natural language together with some pseudocode, and then provides a list of properties or "verification tasks" of varied levels of difficulty. Contributors are encouraged to look at the Archive of previous problems.

Submission Criteria:

  • A brief yet precise problem description, specifically identifying verification sub-tasks.
  • A solution to the challenge is strongly encouraged, otherwise please provide a sketch of correctness.
  • The description document can use any reasonable format, including plain text or PDF.

An award will be given for any submission used in the competition. To avoid spoiling the competition for others, we ask that you keep the subject of your submission private. However, note that problem authors are allowed to participate in the competition!

Submissions should be sent by email to Sacha Ayoun and Thibault Dardinier. The submission deadline is February 8, 2026. We look forward to receiving your ideas!

More information is available on the competition’s web page.

AnalyzeThat’26, call for problems

April 12, 2026, Torino, Italy (co-located with ETAPS 2026)

Static program analysis has matured to the point where many of our research tools can tackle substantial real-world code. What we lack are opportunities to exercise these tools on real software together, compare approaches, and learn from one another. Real-world audits require careful modeling and domain understanding, which can be time-consuming and scientifically unglamorous. AnalyzeThat creates a focused venue to make this work visible, collaborative and fun!

AnalyzeThat complements existing initiatives in the verification landscape. The Software Verification Competition (SV-Comp) provides rigorous evaluation on benchmarks with known outcomes, while VerifyThis offers a two-day challenge focused on deductive verification of intricate algorithms. AnalyzeThat instead emphasizes open-ended exploration of real software without predefined ground truth.

The aim of AnalyzeThat is to gather static analysis developers around a challenge: spending limited time auditing an open-source project. This event is built around two goals:

  • Open-ended exploration. There is no “ground truth” of bugs for the chosen project, the goal will be to prove some components of the project (un)safe. Each team will be free to choose the components they inspect, and their modeling of interactions.
  • Collaborative research. The event will foster sharing of practices when analyzing new projects, strengthen the community and offer opportunities for collaboration of researchers and tools. At the end of the workshop, we will have identified common struggles of participating tools, from which we can identify further research directions (identification of new challenging areas of application of static analysis; needs for developing novel abstractions)

What kind of open-source project? To gather a significant number of interested parties, this first event will target analysis of real-world, non-concurrent C programs/libraries. You can find example projects that could be considered here.

Important dates (AoE)

  • Software submission: February 20, 2026
  • Registration deadline: March 2, 2026
  • Announcement of the selected software: March 2, 2026

Participation and coordination take place via Zulip.

More information is available on the competition's web page.

Journal Special Issues

Festschrift in Honor of Christoph Weidenbach's 60th Birthday, call for papers

As a follow-up to the very successful workshop at CADE, we invite contributions to the Festschrift in Honor of Christoph Weidenbach's 60th Birthday. This Festschrift comes in the form of a topical collection (akin to a special issue) in the Journal of Automated Reasoning.

Christoph Weidenbach heads the Automation of Logic group at Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Saarbrücken. He is a well-known figure in the automated reasoning community, a former president of CADE Inc., and the main developer of the automatic prover SPASS.

Contributions are invited in areas close to Christoph's research, including but not limited to:

  • First-order reasoning
  • Decidable fragments
  • SAT and SMT solving
  • Combination of theories
  • Rewriting
  • Automated verification

Submissions should be 15 to 50 pages long. The submission deadline is February 28, 2026.

More information can be found on the journal's web page.

Special Issue on the Theoretical Foundations and Applications of Counterexample Guided Abstraction Refinement (CEGAR), call for papers

To celebrate the 25th year of Counterexample Guided Abstraction Refinement (CEGAR), we solicit papers for a special issue on its theoretical foundations and applications. This issue provides an overview of the current state of the CEGAR approach and its many applications.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Retrospective papers expanding on previously published papers on CEGAR
  • Tutorial-style papers explaining extensions or applications of CEGAR
  • Theoretical investigations of CEGAR
  • Applications of CEGAR to verification in hardware, software, cyber-physical systems, and security
  • Extensions and applications in infinite-state and hybrid systems, numerical abstractions, and hybrid automata
  • Compositional and modular CEGAR approaches, including assume-guarantee reasoning and interface abstraction refinement
  • Probabilistic and quantitative CEGAR, e.g., for Markov decision processes and stochastic games
  • Learning and data-driven CEGAR, including machine learning-aided predicate selection and reinforcement learning for refinement policies

The submission deadline is February 28, 2026. Please submit your manuscript to Formal Methods in System Design (FMSD) as a regular submission. Once you enter the details of the manuscript, you will have the option of choosing a collection. There, choose "Special issue on 25 years of CEGAR".

More information can be found on the journal's web page.

Special Issue on Proof-Theoretic Semantics and Computation, call for papers

Proof-theoretic semantics (P-tS) offers a foundational shift in logic by prioritizing inference over truth conditions and emphasizing the centrality of proof in the assignment of meaning. This inferential perspective is naturally aligned with computational approaches; however, the intersection of proof-theoretic semantics and computation remains comparatively underexplored.

This special issue of the Journal of Logic and Computation aims to address this gap by bringing together contributions at the interface of logic, computer science, and philosophy. We invite submissions that explore how computational interpretations of logic interact with proof-theoretic approaches, both conceptually and practically.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • The computational content of proof-theoretic semantics
  • Type theory (simple, dependent, homotopy, cubical, inductive, etc.)
  • The Curry–Howard correspondence and computational interpretations of logic
  • Definitional reflection, inversion principles, and normalization
  • Reductive logic, proof search, and logic programming
  • Automated and interactive theorem proving
  • Inductive and coinductive types and (co)algebraic semantics
  • Term rewriting systems and proof-term transformation
  • Realizability semantics and connections to constructive logics
  • Proof mining and quantitative information extraction
  • Formal verification of software, hardware, and algorithms
  • Proof simplicity, proof identity, and Hilbert’s 24th problem
  • Applications in computational linguistics and type-logical grammars
  • Logic-based AI and explainable reasoning systems

Submissions must engage substantively with the ideas of proof-theoretic semantics and their relevance to computational practice. Submissions that address computational topics in isolation, without a clear connection to proof-theoretic semantics, will not be considered.

The submission deadline is March 31, 2026.

More information and submission instructions are available on the journal’s web page.

For enquiries, please contact Sara Ayhan, Alexander V. Gheorghiu, or Will Stafford.

Special Issue on Horn Clauses for Verification and Synthesis, call for papers

This special issue aims to collect state-of-the-art research on Constrained Horn Clauses (CHCs). Many program verification and synthesis problems of interest can be modeled directly using Horn clauses, and recent advances in constraint logic programming and computer-aided verification have focused on efficiently solving problems presented as Horn clauses. CHCs are thus an enabling technology for modern verification and synthesis techniques, relevant to multiple communities including constraint / logic programming, program verification, and automated deduction.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Analysis and verification of programs and systems of various kinds (imperative, object-oriented, functional, logic, higher-order, concurrent, transition systems, Petri-nets, smart contracts)
  • Program synthesis
  • Program testing
  • Program transformation
  • Constraint solving
  • Type systems
  • Machine learning and automated reasoning
  • CHC encoding of analysis and verification problems
  • Resource analysis
  • Case studies and tools
  • Challenging problems

The submission deadline is April 1, 2026.

More information can be found on the journal's web page.

Topical Selection on Advances in String Constraint Solving, call for papers

String is a basic data type in almost every programming language and has been widely used in many scenarios, especially web programming. String constraint solving is a classical topic in theoretical computer science. In the last decade, it has received a lot of attention as a result of the momentum from formal verification of string-manipulating programs. Various string constraint solvers have been developed and used within verification and testing tools. Nevertheless, the area still poses many open questions, ranging from the fundamental decidability and complexity questions to devising powerful heuristics that can quickly handle real-world string constraints, to the design of algorithms that efficiently reason about string-manipulating programs.

The objective of this topical collection is to highlight recent advances in the area of string constraints, including, but not limited to, decidability and complexity results for fragments of string constraints, decision procedures, heuristics for solving, as well as tools and systems for analysing string-related properties in programs.

We welcome original research and extended versions of conferences submissions that are well-suited to the topic of the journal.

The submission deadline is April 1, 2026.

More information can be found on the journal's web page.

Open Positions

PhD and Full Professor in Programming Languages at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

PhD

The Theoretical Computer Science group at FAU Erlangen–Nürnberg has an opening for a PhD position within the new German–French DFG–ANR project "Advancing the Theory of Quantitative Universal Algebra".

The principal investigators are Stefan Milius and Henning Urbat on the German side, and Matteo Mio (CNRS & ENS Lyon) on the French side. The project aims to advance the theory and applications of quantitative universal algebra towards a comprehensive body of results, constructions, and tools for the mechanizable deductive and algorithmic treatment of specifications with quantitative aspects.

The position is funded at salary level TV-L 13 (full time) for a period of three years, commencing in April or May 2026.

Complete application documents should be submitted by email until February 6, 2026.

Professorships

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg is seeking applicants for a full professorship in Programming Languages. Areas of particular interest include verification and other topics in programming languages.

For more information and the full call, please see here.

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Software Verification at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

The Department of Computer Science at Royal Holloway, University of London invites applications for a postdoctoral research associate position.

The position is funded by the EPSRC project INDIMO (Invariant Discovery and Monitoring for Message-Passing Programs) joint with the University of Kent. The project focuses on developing new techniques and tools to automatically detect bugs such as deadlocks in message-passing concurrent systems (in languages such as Go and Erlang), with particular emphasis on programs with statically unknown parameters (e.g., channel bounds, number of processes). We will adopt a hybrid approach to software verification combining the high coverage of static approaches with the high precision of dynamic approaches.

The successful candidate will join the Systems & Software Security Lab (S3Lab) at Royal Holloway, a dynamic research group of 3 academics, 7 PhD students, and 1 postdoc. The project involves collaboration with leading industry partners (Uber and WhatsApp), the University of Kent, and the University of Aarhus.

The position is full-time for three years, with a flexible start date around March 2026. The application deadline is February 19, 2026.

For informal enquiries, please contact Julien Lange. Full details and application instructions are available here.

Postdoctoral Researcher in AI and Formal Methods at Inria Rennes, France

Inria Rennes (France) invites applications for a postdoctoral researcher position with a strong background in either Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Formal Methods (FM).

The successful candidate will join a collaboration between Inria and Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe (MERCE) on formal reasoning applied to AI for software engineering.

The objective of the project is to propose new AI techniques for generating correct and informative formal code annotations directly from program source code.

The application deadline is February 19, 2026, with a possible start date from February 2, 2026. Full details of the position and application instructions are available here.

For informal enquiries, please contact Thomas Genet.

Assistant/Associate Professor in Formal Methods in Hard- and Software, Télécom Paris, France

A job vacancy under the title "Formal Methods at the crossroads of Hardware and Software" is open within the ACES team of Télécom Paris. The position aims at strengthening the team's expertise in hardware/software systems, where the interplay between hardware elements and software code is essential to ensure correct system operation. Applications include cyber-security (e.g., side channels and information leakage), critical real-time systems (avionics, railways, automotive), and energy-constrained systems such as IoT infrastructures.

More generally, the position targets systems that must satisfy both functional and non-functional properties, with a strong emphasis on formal methods (broadly construed) to increase trust in system correctness.

Télécom Paris, an international multidisciplinary center for education, research, and innovation, is a leader in the digital world. We are looking for a teacher-researcher in formal methods in the field of hardware and software to join the ACES (Autonomous, Critical, Embedded Systems) team within the INFRES department.

Applicants should hold a PhD and be fluent in English, with strong theoretical or applied expertise at the crossroads of hardware and software, embedded systems, software engineering, or cybersecurity. Postdoctoral or international experience is appreciated.

The application deadline is February 27, 2026. More information about the job offer is available here .

Tenure Track Research Position in Computer Science at the Institute of Computer Science of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

The Institute of Computer Science of the Czech Academy of Sciences is opening a tenure track research position in computer science. Automated reasoning is explicitly mentioned as a relevant research keyword. The position is research-only, with teaching at local universities possible but not mandatory.

Application deadline is March 31, 2026. Further details about the position can be found here. For additional information, you may contact Stefan Ratschan.

Postdoctoral Research Position in Programming Languages and Semantics (NetKAT)

We invite applications for a postdoctoral research position in programming languages and semantics, with a focus on NetKAT and related formalisms for reasoning about networks and systems.

The position is jointly sponsored by:

  • Nate Foster (EPFL)
  • Jules Jacobs (ETH Zürich)
  • Dexter Kozen (Cornell University)
  • Alexandra Silva (Cornell University)

The successful candidate will work on foundational and applied aspects of NetKAT and related languages, including (but not limited to) semantics, logics, compilation, and connections to automata theory, category theory, and formal methods. The exact research direction is flexible and will be shaped jointly with the postdoc based on their interests and expertise.

The position offers a high degree of intellectual freedom and a unique opportunity to collaborate closely with researchers across EPFL, ETH Zürich, and Cornell University. The postdoc may spend extended time at one or more of these institutions, and flexible arrangements are possible to support sustained collaboration.

Candidates should have (or be close to completing) a PhD in Computer Science or a closely related field, with a strong background in programming languages, semantics, logic, verification, or formal methods. Experience with NetKAT or network verification is welcome but not required.

The position is expected to start in spring or fall 2026 (flexible). The initial appointment is typically for one year, with the possibility of renewal subject to performance and funding.

To apply, please send a CV, a brief statement of research interests, and the names of at least two references to: Nate Foster, Jules Jacobs, Dexter Kozen, Alexandra Silva.

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled.

Positions on Formal Mathematics and AI at Mistral AI

Mistral AI is building a new formal mathematics team following our $2B funding round. We are looking for researchers and engineers at the intersection of formal math (Lean, Rocq, etc.) and AI.

The team works on creating a state-of-the-art prover, autoformalizer, and automatic proof agent, all integrated into a single model. Team members will join world-class researchers including Simon Sorg, Albert Jiang, Maxime Darrin, and Jason Rute, with support from Guillaume Lample.

Work environment highlights include:

  • Empowered team culture with freedom to take initiative
  • Access to hundreds of GPUs per capita and Mistral's cutting-edge reinforcement learning pipeline
  • Open research with publications
  • Industry-leading salary
  • Offices in Paris, London, and Palo Alto
  • Experience in AI required

To apply, send your CV and best work on AI and/or formal math to jason.rute@mistral.ai and aj@mistral.ai, using <formal> in the email title.

Applied Scientist in ML Compiler, Amazon Web Services (AWS), USA

The Automated Reasoning Group in the AWS Neuron Compiler team is looking for an Applied Scientist to work on the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and program analysis to raise the code quality bar in our state-of-the-art deep learning compiler stack. This stack is designed to optimize application models across diverse domains, including Large Language and Vision, originating from leading frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, and JAX. Your role will involve working closely with our custom-built Machine Learning accelerators, Inferentia and Trainium, which represent the forefront of AWS innovation for advanced ML capabilities, and is the underpinning of Generative AI.

In this role as an Applied Scientist, you'll be instrumental in designing, developing, and deploying analyzers for ML compiler stages and compiler IRs. You will architect and implement business-critical tooling, publish cutting-edge research, and mentor a brilliant team of experienced scientists and engineers. You will need to be technically capable, credible, and curious in your own right as a trusted AWS Neuron engineer, innovating on behalf of our customers. Your responsibilities will involve tackling crucial challenges alongside a talented engineering team, contributing to leading-edge design and research in compiler technology and deep-learning systems software. Strong experience in programming languages, compilers, program analyzers, and program synthesis engines will be a benefit in this role.

A background in machine learning and AI accelerators is preferred but not required.

Basic qualifications include:

  • Experience programming in Java, C++, Python, or a related language
  • Experience in any of the following areas: algorithms and data structures, parsing, numerical optimization, data mining, parallel and distributed computing, high-performance computing
  • PhD, or Master's degree and 2+ years of CS, CE, ML or related field experience

Preferred qualifications include:

  • Experience in professional software development
  • Publication record in automated reasoning or compiler construction
  • Knowledge of interactive theorem provers such as Lean
  • Experience with heuristic search, including fuzzers

More information and the full job posting can be found here .

PhD Position in Programming Languages and Formal Analysis at UNSW Sydney, Australia

A fully funded PhD position is available in the research group of Vineet Rajani at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney.

The candidate will broadly work in the area of programming languages and formal analysis, broadly construed. Depending on the interest of the applicant, possible research directions include building new methods (e.g. type theories or program logics) to reason about interesting properties (e.g. pertaining to security or privacy, secure and verified compilation, complexity/cost analysis) of programs (e.g. higher-order functional, imperative and/or probabilistic), including their mechanisation. More information about my work and research interests can be found here.

Information about the UNSW PhD program and the application process is available at here. The position is available immediately, and interested applicants are encouraged to contact Vineet Rajani before submitting a formal application.

Postdoctoral Research Position on Formal Methods for Hardware Security, University of North Carolina Charlotte, USA

We are seeking a highly-motivated Postdoctoral Fellow to join our team for the DARPA Bus-based Local Attack Detection and Elimination (BLADE) program, a groundbreaking collaborative project between UNC Charlotte, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and NVIDIA, to secure critical hardware bus systems. This position will lead the formal methods and verification thrust, focusing on providing mathematical assurances for the security of bus-based communications.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Formally model and verify the correctness of Forensic Observation Data (FODs) to ensure accurate vulnerability detection.
  • Investigate and define formal models of security properties of the PCIe bus and NVIDIA’s DPU, CPU, and NIC architectures.
  • Explore high-assurance languages and toolchains to implement a verified validation engine.
  • Collaborate with systems and cybersecurity teams to integrate formal analysis and verified components into the broader project.
  • Publish research in top-tier security and formal methods venues.

Required Qualifications:

  • Ph.D. (or expected completion) in Computer Science or a related field.
  • Strong research background in formal methods, including experience with model checking, theorem proving, or formal specification.
  • Interest in applying formal methods to real-world systems and security challenges.

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Experience with formal specification and verification tools (e.g., Lean, TLA+, Coq, SMT solvers).
  • Familiarity with high-assurance languages or provably correct software development.
  • Knowledge of low-level hardware protocols such as PCIe, computer architecture, or systems security.
  • Understanding of vulnerability analysis or anomaly detection.

To apply, please email the following materials to Dr. Meera Sridhar:

  • Curriculum Vitae (CV)
  • Cover letter describing your experience with formal methods tools and interest in systems security
  • Contact information for three professional references
  • One or two representative publications (preferably on formal verification or security)

Internship + PhD: Formally Verified Compilation of an Interaction-Oriented Programming Language, Toulouse, France

The LII team at ENAC is seeking a candidate for a PhD thesis on the formally verified compilation of the interaction-oriented programming language Smala in the Rocq prover. The work aims at developing an end-to-end verified compilation toolchain for interactive programs, with applications to critical systems such as avionics and air traffic control interfaces.

The ultimate goal of this research project is to provide an end-to-end formally verified toolchain for Smala, a fully-featured interaction-oriented language. To do so, we have identified several avenues to build on this preliminary work, at the level of semantics, verified compilation, and verification of source properties

The position is for a period of three years (starting in fall 2026) and may be preceded by an internship starting in spring 2026. Please check the offer description or contact Basile Pesin, Stéphane Conversy and Celia Picard for more information.