History

The EXPRESS workshops aim at bringing together researchers interested in the expressiveness of various formal systems and semantic notions, particularly in the field of concurrency. Their focus has traditionally been on the comparison between programming concepts (such as concurrent, functional, imperative, logic and object-oriented programming) and between mathematical models of computation (such as process algebras, Petri nets, event structures, modal logics, and rewrite systems) on the basis of their relative expressive power. The EXPRESS workshop series has run successfully since 1994 and over the years this focus has become broadly construed. The SOS workshops aim at being a forum for researchers, students and practitioners interested in new developments, and directions for future investigation, in the field of structural operational semantics. One of the specific goals of the SOS workshop series is to establish synergies between the concurrency and programming language communities working on the theory and practice of SOS. Reports on applications of SOS to other fields are also most welcome, including: modelling and analysis of biological systems, security of computer systems programming, modelling and analysis of embedded systems, specification of middle-ware and coordination languages, programming language semantics and implementation, static analysis software and hardware verification, semantics for domain-specific languages and model-based engineering. Since 2012, the EXPRESS and SOS communities have joined forces and organised a combined EXPRESS/SOS workshop. The past combined workshops were a success, so this year there will again be a combined workshop on the semantics of systems and programming concepts, and on the expressiveness of mathematical models of computation. This year marks the 28th edition of EXPRESS and the 18th edition of SOS.

The EXPRESS workshops were originally held as meetings of the HCM project EXPRESS, which was active with the same focus from January 1994 till December 1997. The first three workshops were held respectively in Amsterdam (1994, chaired by Frits Vaandrager), Tarquinia (1995, chaired by Rocco De Nicola), and Dagstuhl (1996, co-chaired by Ursula Goltz and Rocco De Nicola). EXPRESS'97, which took place in Santa Margherita Ligure and was co-chaired by Catuscia Palamidessi and Joachim Parrow, was organized as a conference with a call for papers and a significant attendance from outside the project. EXPRESS'98 was held as a satellite workshop of the CONCUR'98 conference in Nice, co-chaired by Ilaria Castellani and Catuscia Palamidessi, and like on that occasion EXPRESS'99 was hosted by the CONCUR'99 conference in Eindhoven, co-chaired by Ilaria Castellani and Björn Victor. The EXPRESS'00 workshop was held as a satellite workshop of CONCUR 2000, Pennsylvania State University, co-chaired by Luca Aceto and Björn Victor. The EXPRESS'01 workshop was held at Aalborg University as a satellite of CONCUR'01 and was co-chaired by Luca Aceto and Prakash Panangaden. The EXPRESS'02 workshop was held at Brno University as a satellite of CONCUR'02 and was co-chaired by Uwe Nestmann and Prakash Panangaden. The EXPRESS'03 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2003 in Marseille and was co-chaired by Flavio Corradini and Uwe Nestmann. The EXPRESS'04 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2004 in London and was co-chaired by Jos Baeten and Flavio Corradini. The EXPRESS'05 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2005 in San Francisco and was co-chaired by Jos Baeten and Iain Phillips. The EXPRESS'06 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2006 in Bonn and was co-chaired by Roberto Amadio and Iain Phillips. The EXPRESS'07 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2007 in Lisbon and was co-chaired by Roberto Amadio and Thomas Hildebrandt. The EXPRESS'08 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2008 in Toronto and was co-chaired by Daniele Gorla and Thomas Hildebrandt. The EXPRESS'09 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2009 in Bologna and was co-chaired by Sibylle Fröschle and Daniele Gorla. The EXPRESS'10 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2010 in Paris and was co-chaired by Sibylle Fröschle and Frank Valencia. The EXPRESS'11 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2011 in Aachen and was co-chaired by Bas Luttik and Frank Valencia.

The first SOS Workshop took place in London as one of the satellite workshops of CONCUR 2004. Subsequently, SOS 2005 occurred in Lisbon as a satellite workshop of ICALP 2005, SOS 2006 in Bonn as a satellite workshop of CONCUR 2006, SOS 2007 in Wroclaw as a satellite workshop of LICS and ICALP 2007, and SOS 2008 in Reykjavik as a satellite workshop of ICALP 2008. SOS 2009 was held as a satellite workshop of CONCUR 2009 in Bologna. SOS 2010 was held as a satellite workshop of CONCUR 2010 in Paris. Finally, SOS 2011 was held as a satellite workshop of CONCUR 2011 in Aachen.

The first combined EXPRESS/SOS workshop (EXPRESS/SOS 2012) was co-located with CONCUR 2012 in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and was co-chaired by Bas Luttik and Michel Reniers. The second combined EXPRESS/SOS 2013 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina and was co-chaired by Johannes Borgström and Bas Luttik. The combined EXPRESS/SOS 2014 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2014 in Rome, Italy and was co-chaired by Johannes Borgström and Silvia Crafa. The next year the combined EXPRESS/SOS 2015 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2015 in Madrid, Spain and was co-chaired by Silvia Crafa and Daniel Gebler. The combined EXPRESS/SOS 2016 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2016 in Québec City, Canada and was co-chaired by Daniel Gebler and Kirstin Peters. The combined EXPRESS/SOS 2017 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2017 in Berlin, Germany and was co-chaired by Kirstin Peters and Simone Tini. The combined EXPRESS/SOS 2018 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2018 in Beijing, China and was co-chaired by Jorge Perez and Simone Tini. The combined EXPRESS/SOS 2019 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2019 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and was co-chaired by Jorge Perez and Jurriaan Rot. The combined EXPRESS/SOS 2020 workshop was co-located with CONCUR 2020 in Vienna, Austria, held on-line, and was co-chaired by Ornela Dardha and Jurriaan Rot.

In these years some journal special issues dedicated to the mentioned events have been organised. A special issue of Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming on Structural Operational Semantics appeared in 2004; a special issue of Theoretical Computer Science dedicated to SOS 2005 appeared in 2007, and a special issue of Information & Computation on Structural Operational Semantics inspired by SOS 2006-2007 appeared in 2009. Special issues devoted to EXPRESS 2010 and 2011 were both published in the journal Mathematical Structures in Computer Science. A special issue of the Acta Informatica dedicated to EXPRESS/SOS 2016-2017 appeared in 2020. A special issue of Information & Computation dedicated to EXPRESS/SOS 2018 will appear soon. A special issue of Information & Computation dedicated to EXPRESS/SOS 2019-2020 is in preparation.