[ecoop-info] Symposium honouring Grzegorz Rozenberg on the occasion of his 75th birthday

[CIE2017]

*Magic in Science*, June 17, 2017, Turku, Finland
http://combio.abo.fi/rozenberg75/

This symposium will be co-located with “Computability in Europe (CiE) 
2017“. It takes place on June 17, 2017, immediately after CiE. The 
symposium celebrates the 75th birthday of Prof. Grzegorz Rozenberg, 
University of Leiden, the Netherlands and University of Colorado at 
Boulder, USA (the actual birthday date is March 14).

Grzegorz Rozenberg is one of the world leaders in research on 
Theoretical Computer Science and Natural Computing. As a matter of fact, 
he is often called the guru of Natural Computing, having started 
promoting it as a coherent scientific discipline already from the 1970s 
– he gave this area its name and defined its scope. He played a central 
role in the development of theoretical computer science in Europe. His 
research is very broad in scope and it is a prime example 
of interdisciplinary research. He  has  authored exceptionally  many 
research  papers opening  new  vistas as  well  as  well-known books 
about  theoretical computer science and natural computing. He 
  supervised  numerous  Ph.D.  students,   many  of  whom  have  become 
  known scientists.

He serves or has served the international computer science community in 
numerous roles, including: president of the European Association for 
Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS); cofounder and president of the 
International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation, 
and Engineering (ISNSCE); chair of the steering committee of the DNA 
Computing Conference; cofounder and chair of the steering committee of 
the International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets; 
chair of the steering committee of the European Educational 
Forum; cofounder and chair of the steering committee of the 
International Conference on Developments in Language Theory; co-chair of 
the steering committee of the International Conference on Unconventional 
Computation and Natural Computation; and director of European 
Molecular Computing Consortium.

He also served on the editorial boards of many international journals 
and book series. He is the editor-in-chief and either the founder or a 
cofounder of some very well-known journals and book series: the 
journal Natural Computing, the journal Theoretical Computer Science C 
(Theory of Natural Computing), the book series Monographs and Texts in 
Theoretical Computer Science, the book series Natural Computing, and the 
book series Advances in Petri Nets. For over 20 years, he was the editor 
of the Bulletin of the European Association for Theoretical Computer 
Science. He edited four handbooks: on formal languages, on graph 
grammars and computing by graph transformations, on membrane computing, 
and on natural computing.

G. Rozenberg is a Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences and 
Letters, a member of Academia Europaea, and the holder of Honorary 
Doctorates of the University of Turku, Finland, the Technical University 
of Berlin, Germany, the University of Bologna, Italy, the Åbo 
Akademi University in Turku, Finland, the Warsaw University of 
Technology, Poland, and the University of Bucharest, Romania. He has 
received the Distinguished Achievements Award of the 
European Association for Theoretical Computer Science “in recognition of 
his outstanding scientific contributions to theoretical computer 
science”. He is an ISI highly cited researcher.

He has also a very active and creative life outside science. For 
example, he is a performing magician, which is also reflected in his 
research. His very impressive numerous scientific results are 
somehow sprinkled with a touch of magic: this explains the title of the 
symposium. Also, he is an expert in paintings of Dutch 
painter Hieronymus Bosch.

The talks given at the symposium will have an overview character and 
together they will cover a broad range of topics reflecting Grzegorz 
Rozenberg’s broad research interests. Among the topics covered are: P vs 
NP, stochastic search, natural computing, biologically-inspired models 
of computation, reaction systems, chemical reaction networks, membrane 
computing, graph isomorphism, graph polynomials, matroids, synthesis of 
concurrent systems, Petri nets, formal language theory and combinatorics 
on words, DNA rearrangements in ciliates, patterns in genomes, smart 
textiles, smart drones, magic squares, wonder cubes, and odor reproduction.


Speakers:

• David Harel, Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel – “On odor 
reproduction and how to test for it“
• Hendrik Jan Hoogeboom, University of Leiden, the Netherlands – “From 
DNA rearrangements in ciliates to elegant graph problems“
• Juraj Hromkovic, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, 
Switzerland  – “Why P vs. NP is so hard that even magicians failed to 
solve it“
• Natasha Jonoska, University of South Florida, USA – “Patterns emerging 
from a scrambled ciliate genome“
• Juhani Karhumäki, University of Turku, Finland – “Combinatorics on 
words and k-abelian equivalence“
• Jetty Kleijn, Leiden University, the Netherlands – “The spellbinding 
simplicity of complex reaction systems“
• Maciej Koutny, Newcastle University, UK – “Regions: the magic 
ingredient in synthesis of concurrent systems“
• Hermann Maurer, Academia Europaea and Graz University of Technology, 
Austria – “Some unusual applications of computer science“
• Giancarlo Mauri, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy – “Modelling and 
simulation of biochemical reaction systems“
• George Paun, Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Romania – 
“Borderlines or limits? (in Natural Computing)“
• Azaria Paz, Technion, Israel – “Linked magic squares on a cube. Theme 
and variations“
• Moshe Vardi, Rice University, USA – “The Automated-Reasoning 
Revolution: From Theory to Practice and Back“
• Erik Winfree, Caltech, USA – “Chemical reaction networks and 
stochastic local search“


Important dates:

• Registration deadline: June 5, 2017
• Symposium: June 17, 2017


Registration and fees:

• The registration can be done at http://combio.abo.fi/rozenberg75/