This grant will enhance participation in the third Midwest Verification Day 2011 (MVD 11), an informal workshop with the goal of developing a regional research network in the broad area of verification and formal methods. The long-term intention is to make MVD a regular annual event, rotating between universities in the midwest that have representation in the relevant research areas. A major focus of MVD is to provide undergraduate and graduate students a means for becoming familiar with ongoing research in the midwest region in the application of formal methods in hardware and software analysis. The workshop also aims to afford students a relaxed, non-competitive forum for presenting their own research to industrial participants and to students and faculty from neighboring universities.
For the significant number of graduate and undergraduate students who originate in the Midwest, such an event can help build the connections and the confidence to go on to graduate school, or advance further in academia. This helps strengthen the domestic talent pool for formal methods. MVD 11 will also strengthen the regional connections between academia and industry, which, over the long term, can have a potent regional economic effect.
This grant provided partial support for Midwest Verification Day 2011 (MVD'11), an informal annual workshop that was instituted with the goal of developing a research network in the midwestern Unites States in the broad area of computer system verification and the application of formal methods to hardware and software analysis. Towards this end, each edition of the workshop is intended to bring together students, faculty and industrial researchers from institutions in the midwest for a period of one to two days in early Fall on the campus of one of the universities in the region. The program for each of these meetings features technical talks, opportunities for informal discussions and social events, all aimed at acquainting students, post-docs and more established researchers with kind of research being done at nearby institutions and at exposing the possibilities for productive collaborations. The workshop puts a special emphasis on the collective development of graduate students, the future drivers of research in any area. The technical program accordingly emphasizes presentations by students towards affording them a relaxed, non-competitive forum for presenting their work and for obtaining suggestions and friendly criticism from peers and faculty not limited to their home institution. MVD'11 continued the tradition started by two previous MVDs that had been held in Fall 2009 and 2010 on the University of Iowa campus. MVD'11 was held on Sept 30 and Oct 1, 2011 on Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota. The two primary organizers of the meeting were Dr. Michael Whalen from the University of Minnesota Software Engineering Center and Dr. Andrew Gacek, Senior Systems Engineer at Rockwell Collins. The meeting had 41 participants from seven universities and several local industrial organizations. The technical program featured 20 presentations (16 by students), several of which elicited lively discussions and subsequent collaborations. At least four of the presentations benefited from the workshop to the extent of being developed into full length papers that were subsequently published at well-received international fora. A critical success criterion for MVD is its ability to draw participation from individuals who do not belong to the home institution. MVD'11 was able to do this due, in no small part, to support from NSF under this grant. In particular, the grant provided directly for the travel and accommodation at the meeting venue for fifteen individuals, 11 of whom were students. The grant likely impacted the participation of a larger number of individuals indirectly through phenomena such as car-pooling.
