@inproceedings{1103,
  abstract     = {We propose two parallel state-space-exploration algorithms for hybrid automaton (HA), with the goal of enhancing performance on multi-core shared-memory systems. The first uses the parallel, breadth-first-search algorithm (PBFS) of the SPIN model checker, when traversing the discrete modes of the HA, and enhances it with a parallel exploration of the continuous states within each mode. We show that this simple-minded extension of PBFS does not provide the desired load balancing in many HA benchmarks. The second algorithm is a task-parallel BFS algorithm (TP-BFS), which uses a cheap precomputation of the cost associated with the post operations (both continuous and discrete) in order to improve load balancing. We illustrate the TP-BFS and the cost precomputation of the post operators on a support-function-based algorithm for state-space exploration. The performance comparison of the two algorithms shows that, in general, TP-BFS provides a better utilization/load-balancing of the CPU. Both algorithms are implemented in the model checker XSpeed. Our experiments show a maximum speed-up of more than 2000 χ on a navigation benchmark, with respect to SpaceEx LGG scenario. In order to make the comparison fair, we employed an equal number of post operations in both tools. To the best of our knowledge, this paper represents the first attempt to provide parallel, reachability-analysis algorithms for HA.},
  author       = {Gurung, Amit and Deka, Arup and Bartocci, Ezio and Bogomolov, Sergiy and Grosu, Radu and Ray, Rajarshi},
  location     = {Kanpur, India },
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  title        = {{Parallel reachability analysis for hybrid systems}},
  doi          = {10.1109/MEMCOD.2016.7797741},
  year         = {2016},
}

@phdthesis{1130,
  abstract     = {In this thesis we present a computer-aided programming approach to concurrency. Our approach helps the programmer by automatically fixing concurrency-related bugs, i.e. bugs that occur when the program is executed using an aggressive preemptive scheduler, but not when using a non-preemptive (cooperative) scheduler. Bugs are program behaviours that are incorrect w.r.t. a specification. We consider both user-provided explicit specifications in the form of assertion
statements in the code as well as an implicit specification. The implicit specification is inferred from the non-preemptive behaviour. Let us consider sequences of calls that the program makes to an external interface. The implicit specification requires that any such sequence produced under a preemptive scheduler should be included in the set of sequences produced under a non-preemptive scheduler. We consider several semantics-preserving fixes that go beyond atomic sections typically explored in the synchronisation synthesis literature. Our synthesis is able to place locks, barriers and wait-signal statements and last, but not least reorder independent statements. The latter may be useful if a thread is released to early, e.g., before some initialisation is completed. We guarantee that our synthesis does not introduce deadlocks and that the synchronisation inserted is optimal w.r.t. a given objective function. We dub our solution trace-based synchronisation synthesis and it is loosely based on counterexample-guided inductive synthesis (CEGIS). The synthesis works by discovering a trace that is incorrect w.r.t. the specification and identifying ordering constraints crucial to trigger the specification violation. Synchronisation may be placed immediately (greedy approach) or delayed until all incorrect traces are found (non-greedy approach). For the non-greedy approach we construct a set of global constraints over synchronisation placements. Each model of the global constraints set corresponds to a correctness-ensuring synchronisation placement. The placement that is optimal w.r.t. the given objective function is chosen as the synchronisation solution. We evaluate our approach on a number of realistic (albeit simplified) Linux device-driver
benchmarks. The benchmarks are versions of the drivers with known concurrency-related bugs. For the experiments with an explicit specification we added assertions that would detect the bugs in the experiments. Device drivers lend themselves to implicit specification, where the device and the operating system are the external interfaces. Our experiments demonstrate that our synthesis method is precise and efficient. We implemented objective functions for coarse-grained and fine-grained locking and observed that different synchronisation placements are produced for our experiments, favouring e.g. a minimal number of synchronisation operations or maximum concurrency.},
  author       = {Tarrach, Thorsten},
  issn         = {2663-337X},
  pages        = {151},
  publisher    = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria},
  title        = {{Automatic synthesis of synchronisation primitives for concurrent programs}},
  doi          = {10.15479/at:ista:1130},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1134,
  abstract     = {Hybrid systems have both continuous and discrete dynamics and are useful for modeling a variety of control systems, from air traffic control protocols to robotic maneuvers and beyond. Recently, numerous powerful and scalable tools for analyzing hybrid systems have emerged. Several of these tools implement automated formal methods for mathematically proving a system meets a specification. This tutorial session will present three recent hybrid systems tools: C2E2, HyST, and TuLiP. C2E2 is a simulated-based verification tool for hybrid systems, and uses validated numerical solvers and bloating of simulation traces to verify systems meet specifications. HyST is a hybrid systems model transformation and translation tool, and uses a canonical intermediate representation to support most of the recent verification tools, as well as automated sound abstractions that simplify verification of a given hybrid system. TuLiP is a controller synthesis tool for hybrid systems, where given a temporal logic specification to be satisfied for a system (plant) model, TuLiP will find a controller that meets a given specification. © 2016 IEEE.},
  author       = {Duggirala, Parasara and Fan, Chuchu and Potok, Matthew and Qi, Bolun and Mitra, Sayan and Viswanathan, Mahesh and Bak, Stanley and Bogomolov, Sergiy and Johnson, Taylor and Nguyen, Luan and Schilling, Christian and Sogokon, Andrew and Tran, Hoang and Xiang, Weiming},
  booktitle    = {2016 IEEE Conference on Control Applications},
  location     = {Buenos Aires, Argentina },
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  title        = {{Tutorial: Software tools for hybrid systems verification transformation and synthesis C2E2 HyST and TuLiP}},
  doi          = {10.1109/CCA.2016.7587948},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1135,
  abstract     = {Time-triggered (TT) switched networks are a deterministic communication infrastructure used by real-time distributed embedded systems. These networks rely on the notion of globally discretized time (i.e. time slots) and a static TT schedule that prescribes which message is sent through which link at every time slot, such that all messages reach their destination before a global timeout. These schedules are generated offline, assuming a static network with fault-free links, and entrusting all error-handling functions to the end user. Assuming the network is static is an over-optimistic view, and indeed links tend to fail in practice. We study synthesis of TT schedules on a network in which links fail over time and we assume the switches run a very simple error-recovery protocol once they detect a crashed link. We address the problem of finding a pk; qresistant schedule; namely, one that, assuming the switches run a fixed error-recovery protocol, guarantees that the number of messages that arrive at their destination by the timeout is at least no matter what sequence of at most k links fail. Thus, we maintain the simplicity of the switches while giving a guarantee on the number of messages that meet the timeout. We show how a pk; q-resistant schedule can be obtained using a CEGAR-like approach: find a schedule, decide whether it is pk; q-resistant, and if it is not, use the witnessing fault sequence to generate a constraint that is added to the program. The newly added constraint disallows the schedule to be regenerated in a future iteration while also eliminating several other schedules that are not pk; q-resistant. We illustrate the applicability of our approach using an SMT-based implementation. © 2016 ACM.},
  author       = {Avni, Guy and Guha, Shibashis and Rodríguez Navas, Guillermo},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Embedded Software },
  location     = {Pittsburgh, PA, USA},
  publisher    = {ACM},
  title        = {{Synthesizing time triggered schedules for switched networks with faulty links}},
  doi          = {10.1145/2968478.2968499},
  year         = {2016},
}

@article{1148,
  abstract     = {Continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) models have become a central tool for understanding the dynamics of complex reaction networks and the importance of stochasticity in the underlying biochemical processes. When such models are employed to answer questions in applications, in order to ensure that the model provides a sufficiently accurate representation of the real system, it is of vital importance that the model parameters are inferred from real measured data. This, however, is often a formidable task and all of the existing methods fail in one case or the other, usually because the underlying CTMC model is high-dimensional and computationally difficult to analyze. The parameter inference methods that tend to scale best in the dimension of the CTMC are based on so-called moment closure approximations. However, there exists a large number of different moment closure approximations and it is typically hard to say a priori which of the approximations is the most suitable for the inference procedure. Here, we propose a moment-based parameter inference method that automatically chooses the most appropriate moment closure method. Accordingly, contrary to existing methods, the user is not required to be experienced in moment closure techniques. In addition to that, our method adaptively changes the approximation during the parameter inference to ensure that always the best approximation is used, even in cases where different approximations are best in different regions of the parameter space. © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd},
  author       = {Schilling, Christian and Bogomolov, Sergiy and Henzinger, Thomas A and Podelski, Andreas and Ruess, Jakob},
  journal      = {Biosystems},
  pages        = {15 -- 25},
  publisher    = {Elsevier},
  title        = {{Adaptive moment closure for parameter inference of biochemical reaction networks}},
  doi          = {10.1016/j.biosystems.2016.07.005},
  volume       = {149},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1166,
  abstract     = {POMDPs are standard models for probabilistic planning problems, where an agent interacts with an uncertain environment. We study the problem of almost-sure reachability, where given a set of target states, the question is to decide whether there is a policy to ensure that the target set is reached with probability 1 (almost-surely). While in general the problem is EXPTIMEcomplete, in many practical cases policies with a small amount of memory suffice. Moreover, the existing solution to the problem is explicit, which first requires to construct explicitly an exponential reduction to a belief-support MDP. In this work, we first study the existence of observation-stationary strategies, which is NP-complete, and then small-memory strategies. We present a symbolic algorithm by an efficient encoding to SAT and using a SAT solver for the problem. We report experimental results demonstrating the scalability of our symbolic (SAT-based) approach. © 2016, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.},
  author       = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Chmelik, Martin and Davies, Jessica},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
  location     = {Phoenix, AZ, United States},
  pages        = {3225 -- 3232},
  publisher    = {AAAI Press},
  title        = {{A symbolic SAT based algorithm for almost sure reachability with small strategies in POMDPs}},
  doi          = {10.1609/aaai.v30i1.10422},
  volume       = {2016},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1205,
  abstract     = {In this paper, we present a formal model-driven engineering approach to establishing a safety-assured implementation of Multifunction vehicle bus controller (MVBC) based on the generic reference models and requirements described in the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard IEC-61375. First, the generic models described in IEC-61375 are translated into a network of timed automata, and some safety requirements tested in IEC-61375 are formalized as timed computation tree logic (TCTL) formulas. With the help of Uppaal, we check and debug whether the timed automata satisfy the formulas or not. Within this step, several logic inconsistencies in the original standard are detected and corrected. Then, we apply the tool Times to generate C code from the verified model, which was later synthesized into a real MVBC chip. Finally, the runtime verification tool RMOR is applied to verify some safety requirements at the implementation level. We set up a real platform with worldwide mostly used MVBC D113, and verify the correctness and the scalability of the synthesized MVBC chip more comprehensively. The errors in the standard has been confirmed and the resulted MVBC has been deployed in real train communication network.},
  author       = {Jiang, Yu and Liu, Han and Song, Houbing and Kong, Hui and Gu, Ming and Sun, Jiaguang and Sha, Lui},
  location     = {Limassol, Cyprus},
  pages        = {757 -- 763},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Safety assured formal model driven design of the multifunction vehicle bus controller}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-319-48989-6_47},
  volume       = {9995},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1227,
  abstract     = {Many biological systems can be modeled as multiaffine hybrid systems. Due to the nonlinearity of multiaffine systems, it is difficult to verify their properties of interest directly. A common strategy to tackle this problem is to construct and analyze a discrete overapproximation of the original system. However, the conservativeness of a discrete abstraction significantly determines the level of confidence we can have in the properties of the original system. In this paper, in order to reduce the conservativeness of a discrete abstraction, we propose a new method based on a sufficient and necessary decision condition for computing discrete transitions between states in the abstract system. We assume the state space partition of a multiaffine system to be based on a set of multivariate polynomials. Hence, a rectangular partition defined in terms of polynomials of the form (xi − c) is just a simple case of multivariate polynomial partition, and the new decision condition applies naturally. We analyze and demonstrate the improvement of our method over the existing methods using some examples.},
  author       = {Kong, Hui and Bartocci, Ezio and Bogomolov, Sergiy and Grosu, Radu and Henzinger, Thomas A and Jiang, Yu and Schilling, Christian},
  location     = {Grenoble, France},
  pages        = {128 -- 144},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Discrete abstraction of multiaffine systems}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-319-47151-8_9},
  volume       = {9957},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1230,
  abstract     = {Concolic testing is a promising method for generating test suites for large programs. However, it suffers from the path-explosion problem and often fails to find tests that cover difficult-to-reach parts of programs. In contrast, model checkers based on counterexample-guided abstraction refinement explore programs exhaustively, while failing to scale on large programs with precision. In this paper, we present a novel method that iteratively combines concolic testing and model checking to find a test suite for a given coverage criterion. If concolic testing fails to cover some test goals, then the model checker refines its program abstraction to prove more paths infeasible, which reduces the search space for concolic testing. We have implemented our method on top of the concolictesting tool Crest and the model checker CpaChecker. We evaluated our tool on a collection of programs and a category of SvComp benchmarks. In our experiments, we observed an improvement in branch coverage compared to Crest from 48% to 63% in the best case, and from 66% to 71% on average.},
  author       = {Daca, Przemyslaw and Gupta, Ashutosh and Henzinger, Thomas A},
  location     = {St. Petersburg, FL, USA},
  pages        = {328 -- 347},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Abstraction-driven concolic testing}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-662-49122-5_16},
  volume       = {9583},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1234,
  abstract     = {We present a new algorithm for the statistical model checking of Markov chains with respect to unbounded temporal properties, including full linear temporal logic. The main idea is that we monitor each simulation run on the fly, in order to detect quickly if a bottom strongly connected component is entered with high probability, in which case the simulation run can be terminated early. As a result, our simulation runs are often much shorter than required by termination bounds that are computed a priori for a desired level of confidence on a large state space. In comparison to previous algorithms for statistical model checking our method is not only faster in many cases but also requires less information about the system, namely, only the minimum transition probability that occurs in the Markov chain. In addition, our method can be generalised to unbounded quantitative properties such as mean-payoff bounds.},
  author       = {Daca, Przemyslaw and Henzinger, Thomas A and Kretinsky, Jan and Petrov, Tatjana},
  location     = {Eindhoven, The Netherlands},
  pages        = {112 -- 129},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Faster statistical model checking for unbounded temporal properties}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-662-49674-9_7},
  volume       = {9636},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1256,
  abstract     = {Simulink is widely used for model driven development (MDD) of industrial software systems. Typically, the Simulink based development is initiated from Stateflow modeling, followed by simulation, validation and code generation mapped to physical execution platforms. However, recent industrial trends have raised the demands of rigorous verification on safety-critical applications, which is unfortunately challenging for Simulink. In this paper, we present an approach to bridge the Stateflow based model driven development and a well- defined rigorous verification. First, we develop a self- contained toolkit to translate Stateflow model into timed automata, where major advanced modeling features in Stateflow are supported. Taking advantage of the strong verification capability of Uppaal, we can not only find bugs in Stateflow models which are missed by Simulink Design Verifier, but also check more important temporal properties. Next, we customize a runtime verifier for the generated nonintrusive VHDL and C code of Stateflow model for monitoring. The major strength of the customization is the flexibility to collect and analyze runtime properties with a pure software monitor, which opens more opportunities for engineers to achieve high reliability of the target system compared with the traditional act that only relies on Simulink Polyspace. We incorporate these two parts into original Stateflow based MDD seamlessly. In this way, safety-critical properties are both verified at the model level, and at the consistent system implementation level with physical execution environment in consideration. We apply our approach on a train controller design, and the verified implementation is tested and deployed on a real hardware platform.},
  author       = {Jiang, Yu and Yang, Yixiao and Liu, Han and Kong, Hui and Gu, Ming and Sun, Jiaguang and Sha, Lui},
  location     = {Vienna, Austria},
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  title        = {{From stateflow simulation to verified implementation: A verification approach and a real-time train controller design}},
  doi          = {10.1109/RTAS.2016.7461337},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1335,
  abstract     = {In this paper we review various automata-theoretic formalisms for expressing quantitative properties. We start with finite-state Boolean automata that express the traditional regular properties. We then consider weighted ω-automata that can measure the average density of events, which finite-state Boolean automata cannot. However, even weighted ω-automata cannot express basic performance properties like average response time. We finally consider two formalisms of weighted ω-automata with monitors, where the monitors are either (a) counters or (b) weighted automata themselves. We present a translation result to establish that these two formalisms are equivalent. Weighted ω-automata with monitors generalize weighted ω-automata, and can express average response time property. They present a natural, robust, and expressive framework for quantitative specifications, with important decidable properties.},
  author       = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Henzinger, Thomas A and Otop, Jan},
  location     = {Edinburgh, United Kingdom},
  pages        = {23 -- 38},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Quantitative monitor automata}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-662-53413-7_2},
  volume       = {9837},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1341,
  abstract     = {In resource allocation games, selfish players share resources that are needed in order to fulfill their objectives. The cost of using a resource depends on the load on it. In the traditional setting, the players make their choices concurrently and in one-shot. That is, a strategy for a player is a subset of the resources. We introduce and study dynamic resource allocation games. In this setting, the game proceeds in phases. In each phase each player chooses one resource. A scheduler dictates the order in which the players proceed in a phase, possibly scheduling several players to proceed concurrently. The game ends when each player has collected a set of resources that fulfills his objective. The cost for each player then depends on this set as well as on the load on the resources in it – we consider both congestion and cost-sharing games. We argue that the dynamic setting is the suitable setting for many applications in practice. We study the stability of dynamic resource allocation games, where the appropriate notion of stability is that of subgame perfect equilibrium, study the inefficiency incurred due to selfish behavior, and also study problems that are particular to the dynamic setting, like constraints on the order in which resources can be chosen or the problem of finding a scheduler that achieves stability.},
  author       = {Avni, Guy and Henzinger, Thomas A and Kupferman, Orna},
  location     = {Liverpool, United Kingdom},
  pages        = {153 -- 166},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Dynamic resource allocation games}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-662-53354-3_13},
  volume       = {9928},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1390,
  abstract     = {The goal of automatic program repair is to identify a set of syntactic changes that can turn a program that is incorrect with respect
to a given specification into a correct one. Existing program repair techniques typically aim to find any program that meets the given specification. Such “best-effort” strategies can end up generating a program that is quite different from the original one. Novel techniques have been proposed to compute syntactically minimal program fixes, but the smallest syntactic fix to a program can still significantly alter the original program’s behaviour. We propose a new approach to program repair based on program distances, which can quantify changes not only to the program syntax but also to the program semantics. We call this the quantitative program repair problem where the “optimal” repair is derived using multiple distances. We implement a solution to the quantitative repair
problem in a prototype tool called Qlose
(Quantitatively close), using the program synthesizer Sketch. We evaluate the effectiveness of different distances in obtaining desirable repairs by evaluating
Qlose on programs taken from educational tools such as CodeHunt and edX.},
  author       = {D'Antoni, Loris and Samanta, Roopsha and Singh, Rishabh},
  location     = {Toronto, Canada},
  pages        = {383 -- 401},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{QLOSE: Program repair with quantitative objectives}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-319-41540-6_21},
  volume       = {9780},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1391,
  abstract     = {We present an extension to the quantifier-free theory of integer arrays which allows us to express counting. The properties expressible in Array Folds Logic (AFL) include statements such as &quot;the first array cell contains the array length,&quot; and &quot;the array contains equally many minimal and maximal elements.&quot; These properties cannot be expressed in quantified fragments of the theory of arrays, nor in the theory of concatenation. Using reduction to counter machines, we show that the satisfiability problem of AFL is PSPACE-complete, and with a natural restriction the complexity decreases to NP. We also show that adding either universal quantifiers or concatenation leads to undecidability.
AFL contains terms that fold a function over an array. We demonstrate that folding, a well-known concept from functional languages, allows us to concisely summarize loops that count over arrays, which occurs frequently in real-life programs. We provide a tool that can discharge proof obligations in AFL, and we demonstrate on practical examples that our decision procedure can solve a broad range of problems in symbolic testing and program verification.},
  author       = {Daca, Przemyslaw and Henzinger, Thomas A and Kupriyanov, Andrey},
  location     = {Toronto, Canada},
  pages        = {230 -- 248},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Array folds logic}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-319-41540-6_13},
  volume       = {9780},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1421,
  abstract     = {Hybridization methods enable the analysis of hybrid automata with complex, nonlinear dynamics through a sound abstraction process. Complex dynamics are converted to simpler ones with added noise, and then analysis is done using a reachability method for the simpler dynamics. Several such recent approaches advocate that only &quot;dynamic&quot; hybridization techniquesi.e., those where the dynamics are abstracted on-The-fly during a reachability computation are effective. In this paper, we demonstrate this is not the case, and create static hybridization methods that are more scalable than earlier approaches. The main insight in our approach is that quick, numeric simulations can be used to guide the process, eliminating the need for an exponential number of hybridization domains. Transitions between domains are generally timetriggered, avoiding accumulated error from geometric intersections. We enhance our static technique by combining time-Triggered transitions with occasional space-Triggered transitions, and demonstrate the benefits of the combined approach in what we call mixed-Triggered hybridization. Finally, error modes are inserted to confirm that the reachable states stay within the hybridized regions. The developed techniques can scale to higher dimensions than previous static approaches, while enabling the parallelization of the main performance bottleneck for many dynamic hybridization approaches: The nonlinear optimization required for sound dynamics abstraction. We implement our method as a model transformation pass in the HYST tool, and perform reachability analysis and evaluation using an unmodified version of SpaceEx on nonlinear models with up to six dimensions.},
  author       = {Bak, Stanley and Bogomolov, Sergiy and Henzinger, Thomas A and Johnson, Taylor and Prakash, Pradyot},
  location     = {Vienna, Austria},
  pages        = {155 -- 164},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Scalable static hybridization methods for analysis of nonlinear systems}},
  doi          = {10.1145/2883817.2883837},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1439,
  abstract     = {Fault-tolerant distributed algorithms play an important role in many critical/high-availability applications. These algorithms are notoriously difficult to implement correctly, due to asynchronous communication and the occurrence of faults, such as the network dropping messages or computers crashing. We introduce PSYNC, a domain specific language based on the Heard-Of model, which views asynchronous faulty systems as synchronous ones with an adversarial environment that simulates asynchrony and faults by dropping messages. We define a runtime system for PSYNC that efficiently executes on asynchronous networks. We formalize the relation between the runtime system and PSYNC in terms of observational refinement. The high-level lockstep abstraction introduced by PSYNC simplifies the design and implementation of fault-tolerant distributed algorithms and enables automated formal verification. We have implemented an embedding of PSYNC in the SCALA programming language with a runtime system for asynchronous networks. We show the applicability of PSYNC by implementing several important fault-tolerant distributed algorithms and we compare the implementation of consensus algorithms in PSYNC against implementations in other languages in terms of code size, runtime efficiency, and verification.},
  author       = {Dragoi, Cezara and Henzinger, Thomas A and Zufferey, Damien},
  location     = {St. Petersburg, FL, USA},
  pages        = {400 -- 415},
  publisher    = {ACM},
  title        = {{PSYNC: A partially synchronous language for fault-tolerant distributed algorithms}},
  doi          = {10.1145/2837614.2837650},
  volume       = {20-22},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1524,
  abstract     = {When designing genetic circuits, the typical primitives used in major existing modelling formalisms are gene interaction graphs, where edges between genes denote either an activation or inhibition relation. However, when designing experiments, it is important to be precise about the low-level mechanistic details as to how each such relation is implemented. The rule-based modelling language Kappa allows to unambiguously specify mechanistic details such as DNA binding sites, dimerisation of transcription factors, or co-operative interactions. Such a detailed description comes with complexity and computationally costly executions. We propose a general method for automatically transforming a rule-based program, by eliminating intermediate species and adjusting the rate constants accordingly. To the best of our knowledge, we show the first automated reduction of rule-based models based on equilibrium approximations.
Our algorithm is an adaptation of an existing algorithm, which was designed for reducing reaction-based programs; our version of the algorithm scans the rule-based Kappa model in search for those interaction patterns known to be amenable to equilibrium approximations (e.g. Michaelis-Menten scheme). Additional checks are then performed in order to verify if the reduction is meaningful in the context of the full model. The reduced model is efficiently obtained by static inspection over the rule-set. The tool is tested on a detailed rule-based model of a λ-phage switch, which lists 92 rules and 13 agents. The reduced model has 11 rules and 5 agents, and provides a dramatic reduction in simulation time of several orders of magnitude.},
  author       = {Beica, Andreea and Guet, Calin C and Petrov, Tatjana},
  location     = {Madrid, Spain},
  pages        = {173 -- 191},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Efficient reduction of kappa models by static inspection of the rule-set}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-319-26916-0_10},
  volume       = {9271},
  year         = {2016},
}

@inproceedings{1526,
  abstract     = {We present the first study of robustness of systems that are both timed as well as reactive (I/O). We study the behavior of such timed I/O systems in the presence of uncertain inputs and formalize their robustness using the analytic notion of Lipschitz continuity: a timed I/O system is K-(Lipschitz) robust if the perturbation in its output is at most K times the perturbation in its input. We quantify input and output perturbation using similarity functions over timed words such as the timed version of the Manhattan distance and the Skorokhod distance. We consider two models of timed I/O systems — timed transducers and asynchronous sequential circuits. We show that K-robustness of timed transducers can be decided in polynomial space under certain conditions. For asynchronous sequential circuits, we reduce K-robustness w.r.t. timed Manhattan distances to K-robustness of discrete letter-to-letter transducers and show PSpace-completeness of the problem.},
  author       = {Henzinger, Thomas A and Otop, Jan and Samanta, Roopsha},
  location     = {St. Petersburg, FL, USA},
  pages        = {250 -- 267},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Lipschitz robustness of timed I/O systems}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-662-49122-5_12},
  volume       = {9583},
  year         = {2016},
}

@article{1705,
  abstract     = {Hybrid systems represent an important and powerful formalism for modeling real-world applications such as embedded systems. A verification tool like SpaceEx is based on the exploration of a symbolic search space (the region space). As a verification tool, it is typically optimized towards proving the absence of errors. In some settings, e.g., when the verification tool is employed in a feedback-directed design cycle, one would like to have the option to call a version that is optimized towards finding an error trajectory in the region space. A recent approach in this direction is based on guided search. Guided search relies on a cost function that indicates which states are promising to be explored, and preferably explores more promising states first. In this paper, we propose an abstraction-based cost function based on coarse-grained space abstractions for guiding the reachability analysis. For this purpose, a suitable abstraction technique that exploits the flexible granularity of modern reachability analysis algorithms is introduced. The new cost function is an effective extension of pattern database approaches that have been successfully applied in other areas. The approach has been implemented in the SpaceEx model checker. The evaluation shows its practical potential.},
  author       = {Bogomolov, Sergiy and Donzé, Alexandre and Frehse, Goran and Grosu, Radu and Johnson, Taylor and Ladan, Hamed and Podelski, Andreas and Wehrle, Martin},
  journal      = {International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer},
  number       = {4},
  pages        = {449 -- 467},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Guided search for hybrid systems based on coarse-grained space abstractions}},
  doi          = {10.1007/s10009-015-0393-y},
  volume       = {18},
  year         = {2016},
}

