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                            CALL FOR PAPERS

        5th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MOBILE AGENTS (MA 2001)
                          December 2-4, 2001
                         Atlanta, Georgia, USA

                   http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/MA2001/

       sponsored by IEEE Computer Society, pending final approval
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        IMPORTANT DATES

        - Paper submissions due              May 14, 2001
        - Tutorials proposals due            June 6, 2001
        - Paper notifications to authors     July 2, 2001
        - Camera-ready final papers due      September 13, 2001
        - MA 2001 Conference                 December 2-4, 2001

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Recent years have witnessed the appearance of new paradigms for designing
distributed applications where the application components can be relocated
dynamically across the hosts of the network. This form of code mobility lays
the foundation for a new generation of technologies, architectures, models,
and applications in which the location where the code is executed comes
under control of the designer, rather than simply as a configuration
accident.

Among the various flavors of mobile code, the mobile agent paradigm has
become particularly popular. Mobile agents are programs able to determine
autonomously their own migration to a different host, and yet retain their
code and state (or at least a portion thereof). Thus, distributed
computations do not necessarily unfold as a sequence of remote requests and
replies between clients and servers, rather they encompass one or more
visits of one or more mobile agents to the nodes involved.

Mobile code and mobile agents hold the potential to shape the next
generation of technologies and models for distributed computation. The first
steps of this process are already evident today: Web applets provide a case
for the least sophisticated form of mobile code, Java-based distributed
middleware makes increasing use of mobile code, and the first commercial
applications using mobile agents are starting to appear.

Nevertheless, the fluid environment defined by mobile code and mobile agents
undermines many of the traditional assumptions of distributed computing, and
poses novel research challenges that span all the abstract in levels. For
instance:

What are the right constructs to deal with mobility?
What is an appropriate granularity for the unit of mobility?
How to specify and reason about a mobile system?
How to coordinate the activities of mobile agents?
How to deal with communication among mobile agents?
How to guarantee fault-tolerant migration and communication?
How to enforce security properties in a mobile environment?

Besides these questions addressing the core research challenges, the
research community must also address some pragmatic questions, whose answers
will ultimately determine the success (or failure) of this approach:

When and why does it make sense to use mobile code or mobile agents? How big
are the payoffs?
Is the technology proposed thus far supporting or hampering the potential of
mobile code and mobile agents?
What applications are already available that can be used as "common sense
arguments" for mobility?

The ambitious goal of MA 2001 is to gather researchers and practitioners
from all over the world and shed some light on the open issues related to
this exciting research topic.

THE CONFERENCE

The first edition of this conference was held in 1997 in Berlin, and since
then it has been, by number of attendees and by quality and breadth of the
research disseminated, among the top events for the community of researchers
and practitioners interested in mobile code and mobile agents.
In the last two editions, this conference joined the International Symposium
on Agent Systems and Applications (ASA) in a single, joint ASA/MA event that
aimed at gathering researchers interested in all the flavors of agent
system, e.g., including also intelligent and non-mobile agents.
Although these joint events have been very successful, MA 2001 will be
presented as a stand-alone event, entirely focused on the original target of
mobile code and mobile agents. Our goal with this year's event and those to
come, is to strengthen the MA conference as the international venue where
the best and latest results in the topics of mobile code and mobile agents
are disseminated and discussed.

PAPERS

The Program Committee of MA 2001 seeks research contributions concerning all
aspects of research on mobile code and mobile agents. Topics include (but
are not limited to):

Technology:
  - Design issues in mobile systems;
  - Security;
  - Communication and coordination;
  - Fault tolerant migration and communication;
  - Naming and tracking mobile agents;
  - Support for strong mobility;
  - Resource control;
  - Benchmarking and performance characterization of mobile systems.

Models & Algorithms:
  - Languages, notations, calculi, logics for specifying
    and reasoning about mobility;
  - Coordination models;
  - Verification of protocols and algorithms for mobile code
    and mobile agents.

Applications & Experience Reports:
  - Original application domains for mobility;
  - Success stories from applying mobile code and mobile agents
    in the real world;
  - Qualitative and quantitative characterizations of mobile design
    vs. conventional ones.

Criteria that will drive the selection of papers:

Novelty: New systems or new process algebras or logic for mobility will be
considered only if their rationale and motivation is clearly stated and
critically evaluated against the existing body of research.

Experimental evidence: Whenever possible, and especially for papers focusing
on technology and applications, results should be backed by experimental
evidence (e.g., analytical evaluations, simulations, or measurements)
providing insights not only about the system/application being presented,
but also in relation to similar systems/applications documented in the
literature.

Finally, contributions that bridge the logical mobility of code and agents
and the physical mobility of hosts are particular welcome.

TUTORIALS

Tutorial proposals are sought that present consolidated material focused on
specific research topics. Proposals for half-day and full day tutorials are
both welcome. Tutorial proposals will be evaluated against their expected
impact and usefulness for the attendees of MA 2001. A travel reimbursement
up to $1000 will be provided, together with a honorarium of $500 for
half-day and $1000 for full-day tutorials.

POSTERS & RESEARCH DEMOS

A separate call for posters and research demos will be issued in a few
months. Come back later for more details.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE & PUBLICATION DETAILS

The proceedings of the conference will be published by Springer-Verlag
(http://www.springer.de/) in the Lecture Notes on Computer Science series
(http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/index.html). A selection of the best
papers of the conference will be published in a special issue of one or more
top-quality scientific publications.
Submissions should be at most 15 pages long in the LNCS style
(http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). Submissions will be handled
through an online conference management system whose URL will appear on the
conference web site soon.

ORGANIZERS

General Chair:           David Kotz        (Dartmouth College, USA)
Program Chair:           Gian Pietro Picco (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
Advertising Chair:       Marco Cremonini   (Dartmouth College, USA)
Registration Chair:      Lori A. Terino    (Dartmouth College, USA)
Local Arrangement Chair: Ashraf Saad       (Georgia Inst. of Technology,
USA)
Treasurer:               Robert S. Gray    (Dartmouth College, USA)

STEERING COMMITTEE

Robert S. Gray     (Dartmouth College, USA)
David Kotz         (Dartmouth College, USA)
Danny B. Lange     (General Magic, USA)
Friedemann Mattern (University of Darmstadt, Germany)
Gian Pietro Picco  (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
Kurt Rothermel     (University of Stuttgart, Germany)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Israel Ben-Shaul   (Israel Institute of Technology,
                    and Versedge Technologies, Israel)
Lubomir F. Bic     (University of California Irvine, USA)
Luca Cardelli      (Microsoft Research, UK)
Rocco De Nicola    (Universita di Firenze, Italy)
Andrzej Duda       (LSR-IMAG, France )
Robert S. Gray     (Dartmouth College, USA)
Shinichi Honiden   (National Institute of Informatics, Japan)
Guenter Karjoth    (IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Switzerland)
Dag Johansen       (University of Tromso, Norway)
Danny B. Lange     (General Magic, USA)
Thomas Magedanz    (IKV++, Germany)
Keith Marzullo     (University of California San Diego, USA)
Jose Meseguer     (SRI International, USA)
Amy L. Murphy      (University of Rochester, USA)
Kurt Rothermel     (University of Stuttgart, Germany)
Niranjan Suri      (University of West Florida, USA)
Anand Tripathi     (University of Minnesota, USA)
Christian Tschudin (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Giovanni Vigna     (University of California Santa Barbara, USA)
Franco Zambonelli  (Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy)