The 5th Workshop on Membrane Computing and Biologically Inspired Process Calculi (MeCBIC 2011) will take place in Paris (Fontainebleau) on 23-24th August 2011 as a related event of CMC12, the 12th International Conference on Membrane Computing.
Biological membranes play a fundamental role in the complex reactions which take place in cells of living organisms. The importance of this role has been considered in two different types of formalisms recently introduced. Membrane systems were introduced as a class of distributed parallel computing devices inspired by the observation that any biological system is a complex hierarchical structure, with a flow of materials and information that underlies their functioning. The modeling and the analysis of biological systems has also attracted the interest of the process algebra research community. Thus the notions of membranes and compartments have been represented in several calculi, including Mobile Ambients and Brane Calculi. A cross fertilization of the two research areas has recently started. A deeper investigation of the relations between these related formalisms is interesting, as it is important to understand the similarities and the differences.
The main aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working in membrane computing, in biologically inspired process calculi (ambients, brane calculi, etc.) and in other related fields to present recent results and to discuss new ideas concerning such formalisms, their properties and relationships. Original research papers (including significant work-in-progress) on the membrane systems or biologically inspired process calculi are sought. Papers on the relationship between membrane systems and biologically inspired process calculi are particularly welcome. Related formal approaches in which cell compartments play an important role are also within the scope of the workshop. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
Papers must report previously unpublished work, and not be submitted concurrently to another conference or journal. Authors are invited to submit the source files of their revised papers prepared using LaTeX and mecbic.cls (see example.tex) by email at mecbic -at- info.uaic.ro and gabriel -at- iit.tuiasi.ro. The workshop proceedings will be available (electronically) for the meeting, being posted on arXiv.org. After the workshop, selected papers will be published in Scientific Annals of Computer Science, an open access journal indexed by SCOPUS, MathSciNet, Directory of Open Access Journals, DBLP, etc.
Past Events: The first edition of MeCBIC was held in Venice in 2006 (co-located with ICALP 2006). The second MeCBIC was held in Iasi in 2008, the third one took place in Bologna (as a satellite event of CONCUR 2009), and the forth one in Jena. The previous proceedings of the MeCBIC workshops have been published as ENTCS volumes 171 and 227 (2006, 2008), and EPTCS volumes 11 and 40 (2009, 2010).
| Paper Submission: | 06 July, 2011 |
| Notification: | 04 August, 2011 |
| Workshop version: | 11 August, 2011 |
| Meeting: | 23 August, 2011 |
| Journal Version: | 30 September 2011 |