September)
*HIGHLIGHTS'25* is scheduled *from September 1 to September 5, 2025*
at the *University
of Saarland in Saarbrücken, Germany*. It will be followed by the *Highlights
Collaborative Research Week (HCRW)*, from *September 6 to 12, 2025*.
*HIGHLIGHTS'25* is the thirteenth in the series of international
conferences "Highlights of Logic, Games and Automata", aiming at
integrating the community working in algorithmic model theory, automata
theory, databases, games for logic and verification, logic and
verification. Papers from these areas are dispersed across many
conferences, which makes them difficult to follow. A visit to the
HIGHLIGHTS conference should offer a wide picture of the latest research in
the field and a chance to meet everybody in the community, not just those
who happen to publish in one particular proceedings volume. There are no
publications.
*HIGHLIGHTS'25* key features:
- HIGHLIGHTS is a conference without publications, where speakers give
short presentations of their best work.
- A chat of the conference is available during the event, and throughout
the year.
- There is an early round of submissions and notifications to help with
travel planning.
- The *Highlights' Collaborative Research Week* (*HCRW*) offers means
for research collaborations/discussions between participants. HCRW is
scheduled after the conference.
- The *Highlights Extended Stay Support Scheme* (*HESSS*) helps
participants find collaborators and organise visits in the vicinity of
HIGHLIGHTS.
We encourage you to attend and present your best work - be it already
published or not - at *HIGHLIGHTS'25*.
SCOPE
Representative areas include, but are not restricted to:
- Algebraic models of computation
- Algorithmic model theory
- Automata theory
- Databases
- Games for logic and verification
- Logic
- Verification
IMPORTANT DATES AND INFORMATION
- HIGHLIGHTS'25 webpage: https://highlights-conference.org/2025/
- Registration to the chat at
https://highlights-conference.org/2025/zulip (no need if you did it last
year)
- Submission page: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=highlights25
- Registration page: TBA
- Early submission deadline: April 16, 2025
- Early notification: May 7, 2025
- Regular submission deadline: May 28, 2025
- Notification: June 19, 2025
- Registration deadline: TBA
- Conference: September 1 - 5, 2025.
- *Highlights' Collaborative Research Week* (*HCRW*): September 6 - 12,
2025.
- Estimated registration fee: <=100€
MODALITIES OF ATTENDANCE
*HIGHLIGHTS'25* is an event that will take place on-site (barring
unforeseen circumstances), and the preferred form of participation is in
person. Remote attendance via a video stream will also be offered, but with
limited possible interactions for these participants.
Submission for a presentation at Highlights'25 is open to everyone, and
attendance to the conference is not a requirement. The selection procedure
will not take into account in-person attendance. Authors who do not intend
to attend Highlights'25 in-person must commit to this choice when
submitting their talk proposal. If accepted, authors of such talk proposals
will have the opportunity to share a prerecorded video of their talk, which
will be made available on the conference website.
Before coming from far away, please review how your trip and international
flights are contributing to climate change. We encourage you to take the
train as much as possible, possibly taking the opportunity for visiting
colleagues on the way and thus decomposing the travel into smaller pieces.
More generally, we encourage you to make the most of your stay. This means
extending your journey to the previous and/or following weeks for more
scientific activities in Saarbrücken and around. Several initiatives are
here to help you in this task:
- You can participate in the *Highlights' Collaborative Research
Week* (*HCRW
<https://highlights-conference.org/2025/hcrw>, September 6 - 12*) in the
week after HIGHLIGHTS, in Saarbrücken.
- You can use the *Highlights Extended Stay Support Scheme* (*HESSS
<https://highlights-conference.org/2025/hesss>*) for finding
collaborators and organising visits.
[EARLY] SUBMISSIONS AND GUIDELINES
Submissions should take the form of a short abstract describing the content
of the presentation and its interest. It should serve as a proposal for a
presentation. Hence, submissions should have a single author — the speaker.
They can concern any recently published, to be published, or ongoing work
of the speaker. We expect you to present your favourite result of the year,
so there should be at most one submission per speaker. The abstract should
list co-authors, if any. Optionally, an extended abstract of up to two
pages may be attached as a PDF file.
We encourage both young and senior researchers to present.
The *first early round of submissions is open until April 16*. By
submitting before this first deadline, you will profit from an *early
notification by May 7* which may help you in organising your journey. Other
presentations are to be submitted by May 28, with a notification by June
17.
Submissions will not lead to publications. There are no formal proceedings
and we encourage the presentation of work published or presented elsewhere.
The talk (which is short, around 10 minutes) can be doubled with a poster.
Further information about poster submissions will be provided.
*Submission page:* https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=highlights25
HIGHLIGHTS COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH WEEK (HCRW)
*HIGHLIGHTS'25* will be followed by the *Highlights' Collaborative Research
Week* (*HCRW*), *from September 6 to 12 at the University of Saarbrücken*.
Participants to HCRW are free to organise any scientific activity they
wish. Possibilities can be to
- meet someone in particular and work together,
- organise or attend a seminar/workshop/reading group,
- gather for solving open problems,
- solicit, offer and participate in a lecture.
Working spaces will be provided on site for these activities to take
place.
We encourage participants to declare their intent to come and offer
activities in advance using the chat of highlights.
HIGHLIGHTS EXTENDED STAY SUPPORT SCHEME (HESSS)
The *HESSS* is an incentive for collaborations between participants of the
conference and researchers working in research groups reachable by train
from the conference location. The objective is to foster interactions with
low carbon footprint. The mechanism is as follows:
- Research groups willing to participate in the scheme will be listed on
the webpage: https://highlights-conference.org/2025/hesss. These groups
are offering to fund collaborations between HIGHLIGHTS participants and
their members.
- The pair of a HIGHLIGHTS participant and a member of a listed research
group submit a proposal, which takes the form of an email containing names,
period of collaboration, and a sentence describing the planned activity. It
has to be sent to the *HESSS* contact person of the research unit.
- The decision of acceptance is up to the research group. In particular,
it may be subject to scientific scope, number of requests, or e.g.,
favouring distant participants.
- The only strict rule is that the visit should be around HIGHLIGHTS,
and no airplane should be taken by the visitor to travel from HIGHLIGHTS to
the visit location.
TUTORIALS AND INVITED TALKS
TBA
COMMITTEES PROGRAM COMMITTEE HIGHLIGHTS'25
Luca Aceto (Reykjavik University, Iceland, and Gran Sasso Science
Institute, L'Aquila, Italy)
Christel Baier (TU Dresden, Germany), chair
Marie van den Bogaard (Universite Gustav Eiffel, France)
Michael Blondin (University of Sherbrooke, Canada)
Agata Ciabattoni (TU Vienna, Austria)
Wojciech Czerwiński (University of Warsaw, Poland)
Anuj Dawar (University of Cambridge, UK)
Dana Fisman (Ben-Gurion University, Israel)
Marianna Girlando (University of Amsterdam, NL)
Ichiro Hasuo (National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan)
Antoine Mottet (TU Hamburg, Germany)
B. Srivathsan (Chennai Mathematical Institute, India)
Patrick Totzke (University of Liverpool, UK)
Mahesh Viswanathan (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US)
Thomas Zeume (Ruhr University, Germany)
ORGANISING COMMITTEE
- Benjamin Kaminski
STEERING COMMITTEE
- Antoine Amarilli (environmental chair)
- León Bohn (webmaster)
- Antonio Casares (publicity chair)
- Supratik Chakraborty
- Thomas Colcombet (chair)
- Bartek Klin
- Sławek Lasota
- Sophie Tison
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