BCS-FACS is the BCS ''Formal Aspects of Computing Science'' Specialist Group.

Overview

The FACS group, inaugurated on 16 March 1978, organizes meetings for its members and others on

formal methods In computer science, formal methods are mathematically rigorous techniques for the specification, development, and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the expec ...

and related

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

topics. There is an associated journal, ''

Formal Aspects of Computing ''Formal Aspects of Computing'' (''FAOC'') is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Springer Science+Business Media, covering the area of formal methods and associated topics in computer science. The editors-in-chief are Jim Woodcock an ...

'', published by

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

, and a more informal ''FACS FACTS'' newsletter. The group celebrated its 20th anniversary with a meeting at the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 1998, with presentations by four eminent computer scientists,

Mike Gordon Michael Eliot Gordon (born June 3, 1965) is an American bass guitarist and vocalist most recognized as a founding member of the band Phish. In addition to bass, Gordon is an accomplished banjo player, and is proficient at piano and guitar. He ...

Tony Hoare Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare (Tony Hoare or C. A. R. Hoare) (born 11 January 1934) is a British computer scientist who has made foundational contributions to programming languages, algorithms, operating systems, formal verification, and c ...

Robin Milner Arthur John Robin Gorell Milner (13 January 1934 – 20 March 2010), known as Robin Milner or A. J. R. G. Milner, was a British computer scientist, and a Turing Award winner.

and

Gordon Plotkin Gordon David Plotkin, (born 9 September 1946) is a theoretical computer scientist in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Plotkin is probably best known for his introduction of structural operational semantics (SOS) and hi ...

, all

Fellows of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemati ...

. From 2002–2008 and since 2013 again, the Chair of BCS-FACS has been Jonathan Bowen.

Jawed Siddiqi Jawed Siddiqi FBCS is a Pakistani British computer scientist and software engineer. He is professor emeritus of software engineering at Sheffield Hallam University, England. He is the president of NCUP National Council of University Professors ...

was Chair during 2008–2013. In December 2002, BCS-FACS organized a conference on the ''Formal Aspects of Security'' (FASec'02) at

Royal Holloway Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, 21 academic departm ...

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

. In 2004, FACS organized a major event at

London South Bank University London South Bank University (LSBU) is a public university in Elephant and Castle, London. It is based in the London Borough of Southwark, near the South Bank of the River Thames, from which it takes its name. Founded in 1892 as the Borough Po ...

to celebrate its own 25th anniversary and also ''25 Years of CSP'' (CSP25), attended by the originator of CSP, Sir Tony Hoare, and others in the field. The group liaises with other related groups such as the

Centre for Software Reliability The Centre for Software Reliability (CSR) is a distributed British organisation concerned with software reliability, including safety-critical issues. It consists of two sister organisations based at Newcastle University, UK. and City, University ...

, Formal Methods Europe, the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh Mathematical S ...

Computer Committee, the Safety-Critical Systems Club, and the

Z User Group The Z User Group (ZUG) was established in 1992 to promote use and development of the Z notation, a formal specification language for the description of and reasoning about computer-based systems. It was formally constituted on 14 December 1992 du ...

. It has held joint meetings with other BCS specialist groups such as the Advanced Programming Group and

BCSWomen BCSWomen is a Specialist Group of the British Computer Society, The Chartered Institute for IT, that provides networking opportunities for all BCS professional women working in IT around the world, as well as mentoring and encouraging girls and w ...

. FACS sponsors and supports meetings, such as the Refinement Workshop. It has often held a Christmas event each year, with a theme related to formal aspects of computing — for example, teaching formal methods and formal methods in industry. BCS-FACS supported the ABZ 2008 conference at the BCS London premises. In 2015, FACS hosted a two-day ProCoS Workshop on "Provably Correct Systems", with many former members of the ESPRIT ProCoS I and II projects and Working Group of the 1990s.

Evening seminars

In recent years, a series of evening seminars have been held, mainly at the BCS London office. Speakers have included leading computer scientists, mainly from the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

but some from abroad, including

Samson Abramsky Samson Abramsky (born 12 March 1953) is Professor of Computer Science at University College London. He was previously the Christopher Strachey Professor of Computing at the University of Oxford, from 2000 to 2021. He has made contributions to t ...

FRS,

Jean-Raymond Abrial Jean-Raymond Abrial (born 1938) is a French computer scientist and inventor of the Z and B formal methods. Abrial's 1974 paper ''Data Semantics'' laid the foundation for a formal approach to Data Models; although not adopted directly by practit ...

(

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

), Farhad Arbab, Troy Astarte,

Dines Bjørner __NOTOC__ Professor Dines Bjørner (born 4 October 1937, in Odense) is a Danish computer scientist. He specializes in research into domain engineering, requirements engineering and formal methods. He worked with Cliff Jones and others on the V ...

(Denmark), Robin Bloomfield,

Richard Bornat Richard Bornat (born 1944), is a British author and researcher in the field of computer science. He is also professor of Computer programming at Middlesex University. Previously he was at Queen Mary, University of London. Research Bornat's res ...

(twice),

Egon Börger Egon Börger (born 13 May 1946) is a German-born computer scientist based in Italy. Life and work Börger was born in Bad Laer, Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Germany. Between 1965 and 1971 he studied at the Sorbonne, Paris (France), Université Cath ...

(

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

), Jonathan Bowen, Jan Broenink (

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

), Michael Butler,

Muffy Calder Dame Muffy Calder (née Thomas; born 21 May 1958) is a Canadian-born British computer scientist, Vice-Principal and Head of College of Science and Engineering, and Professor of Formal Methods at the University of Glasgow. From 2012 to 2015 she ...

OBE (twice),

Jack Copeland Brian John Copeland (born 1950) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and author of books on the computing pioneer Alan Turing. Education Copeland was educated at the University of Oxford, obta ...

(

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

), Tim Denvir, Cedric Fournet (France),

FRS, Anthony Hall, Mark Harman,

Martin Henson Martin Henson may refer to: * Martin Henson (computer scientist) * Martin Henson (photographer) {{hndis, Henson, Martin ...

, Rob Hierons,

Jane Hillston Jane Elizabeth Hillston (born 1963) is British professor of Quantitative research, Quantitative Scientific modelling, Modelling and Head of School in the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics, School of Informatics, University of Edinbur ...

Mike Hinchey Michael Gerard Hinchey (born 1969) is an Republic of Ireland, Irish computer scientist and former Director of the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre (Lero (software engineering), Lero), a multi-university research centre headquartered a ...

, Sir

FRS, Mike Holcombe,

Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over a ...

, Cliff Jones,

Marta Kwiatkowska Marta Zofia Kwiatkowska is a Polish theoretical computer scientist based in the United Kingdom. Kwiatkowska is Professor of Computing Systems in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, England, and a Fellow of Tri ...

(twice), Zhiming Liu,

Tom Maibaum Thomas Stephen Edward Maibaum Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) is a computer scientist. Maibaum has a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) undergraduate degree in pure mathematics from the University of Toronto, Canada (1970), and a Doctor of Phi ...

Ursula Martin Ursula Hilda Mary Martin (born 3 August 1953) is a British computer scientist, with research interests in theoretical computer science and formal methods. She is also known for her activities aimed at encouraging women in the fields of comput ...

CBE,

Peter Mosses Peter David Mosses (born 1948) is a British computer scientist. Peter Mosses studied mathematics as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Oxford, and went on to undertake a DPhil supervised by Christopher Strachey in the Programming Research G ...

, Ben Moszkowski,

Peter O'Hearn Peter William O'Hearn One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 13 July 1963 in Halifax, Nova Scotia), formerly a research scientist at Meta, is a Distinguished Engineer at Lacewor ...

FRS,

Steve Reeves Stephen Lester "Steve" Reeves (January 21, 1926 – May 1, 2000) was an American professional bodybuilder, actor, and philanthropist. He was famous in the mid-1950s as a movie star in Italian-made sword-and-sandal films, playing the protagon ...

(New Zealand), John Reynolds (USA), Peter Ryan, Steve Schneider, Joe Stoy, David Turner, John Tucker,

Phil Wadler Philip Lee Wadler (born April 8, 1956) is an American computer scientist known for his contributions to programming language design and type theory. He is the chair of Theoretical computer science, Theoretical Computer Science at the Laboratory ...

, among others. In 2010, a book of chapters based on some of these talks was published. Talks have been held annually with Formal Methods Europe and the

(at the LMS headquarters in central London). Since 2010, there has been an ''Annual Peter Landin Semantics Seminar'' held each December in memory of the British computer scientist

Peter Landin Peter John Landin (5 June 1930 – 3 June 2009) was a British computer scientist. He was one of the first to realise that the lambda calculus could be used to model a programming language, an insight that is essential to the development of bo ...

(1930–2009).

FACS FACTS newsletter

The ''FACS FACTS'' newsletter () is published periodically, originally on paper and now online. The editors are Tim Denvir and Brian Monahan.

F. X. Reid Michael ("Mike") William Shields is a British computer scientist. Overview Mike Shields has been an academic in the Department of Computing at the University of Surrey in Guildford, southern England. His research contributions have been in ...

has been a regular ''FACS FACTS'' newsletter contributor in the past. For example, he has been an enthusiast for the

COMEFROM In computer programming, COMEFROM (or COME FROM) is an obscure control flow structure used in some programming languages, originally as a joke. COMEFROM is the inverse of GOTO in that it can take the execution state from any arbitrary point in code ...

statement and an expert on its semantics. Apparently reports of FXR's death in 2006 were untrue and his musings continued after this time in the newsletter.

References

External links

BCS-FACS website

Alternative BCS-FACS website

BCS-FACS group
on

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...

Former BCS-FACS website
(2008) on

Archive.org The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bcs-Facs 1978 establishments in the United Kingdom Organizations established in 1978 Formal methods organizations FACS Non-profit organisations based in the United Kingdom

Overview

Evening seminars

FACS FACTS newsletter

See also

References

External links