ARTIST2 PhD Course on: Automated Formal Methods for Embedded Systems

Participants

• The course had 10 participants (we issue 10 diplomas) grouped as follows:
   3 from our own institution: IMM/DTU
   1 from Roskilde University, Denmark
   2 from Aalborg University, Denmark
   1 from the IT-university, Copenhagen
   1 from Pisa University, Italy
   1 from Istanbul University, Turkey
   1 from ENST Paris, France
• I addition to that there were visitors from Aalborg (one person), Oldenburg University (2 persons), TU Braunschweig (2 persons) and TU Zurich (2 persons).
  
• A number of other persons showed interest in the course. But we decided to give the course quite late (less than two month before the start) and for some it was not possible to arrange to go for the course at this short notice. We strongly believe that the number of participants would have been much higher if the course were announced a couple of months earlier.

The course had a three parts:

• Part 1: First week
  Lectures by Martin Fränzle and lab sessions. In the lectures, we will introduce a comprehensive set of state-based models as well as automatic procedures for their analysis. The exercise classes will complement this by providing hands-on experience with appropriate verification tools.
• Part 2: Two days
  (a) Lectures by Simon Perathoner, Nikolay Stoimenov and Wolfgang Haid on Modular Performance Analysis with Real Time Calculus, and hands-on exercises with RTC.
  (b) Lectures by Arne Hamann and Razvan Racu on Symbolic Timing Analysis for Systems (SymTA/S), a system-level performance and timing analysis approach based on formal scheduling analysis techniques and symbolic simulation, and hands-on exercises with SymTA/S.
• Part 3: 1.5 weeks project work
  The students could take the course in two ways: The short version consisted of the first two parts, and long version included all parts.
  The IMM/DTU participants took the long version, all other the short one.

Conclusion

• The course was well received, in particular:
   The mixture with lectures and hands on experience with tools worked well.
   The mixture of topics worked well. There was something for the various topics and taste of the participants. It was good to see various approaches to compare them.
• We consider the course a big success and we will repeat it again June 2008 in more or less the same form.
   It is clear that we should announce the course much earlier and by doing so we think that the number of participants will be much higher next time.