1. Next Generation of Web Computing

In this special session on the design and implementation of distributed applications on the Web we will explore current and future trends in: 

• Group support systems 
• Web-based cooperation environments 
• Team computing systems
• Global network based groupware

• Cooperative Information Systems 
• Specification and Implementation of Groupware Systems 
• Groupware and Workflow 
• Designing and Implementing Collaborative Applications 
• Building Collaborative Systems with JAVA 
• Virtual Communities
• Community Networks 

Session Chair

Program Committee

Sonja Buchegger, UC Berkeley, USA
Andrea Clematis, IMA-CNR Genova, Italy
Schahram Dustdar, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Vincenzo De Florio, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Tom Gross, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany
Heiko Ludwig, IBM Yorktown Hights Research, USA
Eduardo Sanchez, USC, Santiago de Campostela, Spain
Francisco Tirado, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

Schedule

Papers due: June 30th, 2006
Paper notification: September 29th, 2006
Camera-ready papers: October 27th, 2006

2. Parallel and Distributed Image Processing, Video Processing, and Multimedia

In the recent years, computing with visual and multimedial data has emerged as a key technology in many areas.
However, the creation, processing, and management of these data types require an enormous computational effort, often too high for single processor architectures.
Therefore, this fact taken together with the inherent data parallelism in these data types makes image processing, video processing, and multimedia natural application areas for parallel and distributed computing.

This special session brings together practitioners and researchers working in all aspects of parallel and distributed computing in these fields. It will serve as a forum for exchange of novel ideas on corresponding hardware developments, software tools, system solutions, and all types of applications.

• Parallel and distributed architectures and algorithms
• Multimedia Cluster and Grid Computing
• Dynamically reconfigurable architectures
• Parallel DSP systems and Media processors
• Embedded Multimedia
• Image and Video Processing on Graphic Processing Units (GPUs)
• Application specific parallel architectures
• Languages, software environments and programming tools
• Parallel video and multimedia servers
• Networked multimedia systems
• Applications, e.g. remote sensing, medical imaging, satellite image processing, set-top boxes, computer graphics, virtual reality, HDTV, mobile multimedia, cameras

Session Chairs

Andreas Uhl
Salzburg University
Department of Computer Sciences
Jakob-Haringerstr.2
5020 Salzburg, Austria, Europe
andreas.uhl@sbg.ac.at

Manuel Prieto-Matias
Department of Computer Architecture
Complutense University
28040 Madrid, Spain
mpmatias@dacya.ucm.es

Program Committee (to be confirmed)

Suchendra (Suchi) Bhandarkar, Univ. of Georgia, Athens, USA
Laszlo Boezoermenyi, Univ. Klagenfurt, Austria
Michael Bove Jr., MIT Media Lab, USA
Arvind Dasu, Utah State University, USA
Eric Debes, Intel Corp., USA
Inmaculada García, University of Almeria, Spain
Dieter Kranzlmueller, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria
Sethuraman Panchanathan, Arizona State University, USA
Edwige Pissaloux, Univ. Rouen, France
Antonio J. Plaza, University of Extremadura, Spain
Viktor K. Prasanna, Univ. Southern California, USA
Ana Ripoll, Universidad Autónoma De Barcelona, Spain
Frank J. Seinstra, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Wayne Wolf, Princeton Univ., USA

Schedule

Papers due: June 30th, 2006
Paper notification: September 29th, 2006
Camera-ready papers: October 27th, 2006

3. Pervasive Computing Environments and Services

Recent advances in wireless technologies have enabled pervasive connectivity to Internet scale systems, which include heterogeneous mobile devices, such as mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants. This trend is generally referred to as Pervasive computing. The Pervasive Computing paradigm represents the emerging frontier for heterogeneous distributed computing. As a matter of fact, pervasive computing environments not only pool a large set of resources that can vary from powerful supercomputers and workstations to embedded systems and chips, but also provide a new, easier, interaction model to users since they are human-oriented. This underlies the possibility for users to come in the environment in a natural way and to approach services using their own devices, without any manual configuration operation. This leads to the need of providing high-quality, dependable services to applications which are partially deployed over wireless devices. Delivering dependable services in a pervasive computing context raises a number of challenging issues. In particular, environments must be able to self-configure, self-protect, and self-adapt to user’s needs. This session aims to provide a possibility to academics and professionals to discuss the latest progress in the area of pervasive computing environments and services, including models, developing methodologies, middleware platforms, software architectures, specific services for mobility, resource management, context-awarness, location-awarness, security, trustability, and so on.

• Dependability and trustability issues
• Security and privacy issues
• Autonomic computing
• Software infrastructures
• System architectures and platforms
• Service discovery mechanisms
• Middleware services and agent technologies
• Mobile/wireless computing, systems and services
• Intelligent environments
• Smart homes
• Context and location awareness
• Resource management in pervasive environments
• Applications and case studies

Papers dealing with practical experiences and industry projects are particularly welcome.

Session Chairs

Antonio Coronato
Development and Application of Territorial Information Systems Institute
National Research Council
coronato.a@na.drr.cnr.it

Giuseppe De Pietro
Institute for High Performance Computing and Networking
National Research Council
giuseppe.depietro@na.icar.cnr.it

Luigi Romano
Department for Technologies
University of Naples Parthenope
lrom@unparthenope.it

Program Committee (To be confirmed)

Alenka Krek, University of Vienna, Austria
Andrea Bondavalli, University of Florence, Italy
Bojan Cukic, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Christof Fetzer, University of Dresden, Germany
Douglas Schmidth, Vanderbilt University, USA
Eun-Sun Jung, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Korea
Jie Xu, University of Newcastel, UK
Jong Hyuk Park, R&D Institute at Hanwha S&C Co., Ltd, Korea
Neeraj Suri, University of Darmstadt, Germany
Paolo Prinetto, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Ravishankar Iyer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaing, USA
Ricardo Jimenez-Peris, Technical University of Madrid, Spain
Zbigniew Kalbarczyk, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaing, USA

Schedule

Papers due: June 30th, 2006
Paper notification: September 29th, 2006
Camera-ready papers: October 27th, 2006

4. Multi-Agent and Bio-Inspired Algorithms and Applications for Distributed Systems

Recently, the multi-agent paradigm is emerging for the development of solutions to very hard parallel and distributed computational problems. This paradigm is based either on the activity of “intelligent” – possibly mobile - agents which perform complex functionalities or on the exploitation of a large number of very simple agents that can produce an overall intelligent behaviour (the so called “swarm intelligence”), leading to the solution of alleged almost intractable problems. The multi-agent paradigm is often inspired by biologically systems. Bio-inspired algorithms such as genetic and evolutionary algorithms, ant colonies, and immune systems are routinely applied to hard and large problems in a variety of areas. Some examples are optimization through genetic algorithms, new ideas for developing routing algorithms in wireless networks inspired by honey bee behaviour, resource discovery and data mining computations in Grid and P2P frameworks achieved by ant-inspired algorithms, and so on. This session aims to gather scientists, engineers, and practitioners to share and exchange their experiences, discuss challenges, and report state-of-the-art and in-progress research on all aspects of Parallel and Distributed Multi Agent and Bio-Inspired Algorithms.
Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to:

• Multi-agent algorithms and applications in distributed systems
• Mobile agents algorithms and applications
• Parallel and distributed techniques of Swarm Intelligence: ant colonies, flock of birds
• Cellular automata
• Parallel and distributed evolutionary algorithms
• Cluster and Grid implementation of multi-agent and bio-inspired algorithms
• Performance evaluation of multi-agent and bio-inspired algorithms
• High performance tools for implementing bio-inspired algorithms

Session Chairs

Gianluigi Folino
Institute for High Performance Computing and Networking
National Research Council
folino@icar.cnr.it

Carlo Mastroianni
Institute for High Performance Computing and Networking
National Research Council
mastroianni@icar.cnr.it

Program Committee

Ivanoe De Falco, ICAR-CNR, Italy
Antonio Della Cioppa, University of Salerno, Italy
Francisco Fernández de Vega, Universidad de Extremadura, Spain
Giancarlo Fortino, University of Calabria, Italy
Dominic Greenwood, Whitestein Technologies, Switzerland
Antonio Nebro Urbaneja, Universidad de Málaga, Spain
Omer Rana, Cardiff University, UK
Giandomenico Spezzano, ICAR-CNR, Italy
Domenico Talia, University of Calabria, Italy
Ian Taylor, Cardiff University, UK
Guy Theraulaz,Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, France
Marco Tomassini, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Rainer Unland, University of Essen, Germany

Schedule

Papers due: June 30th, 2006
Paper notification: September 29th, 2006
Camera-ready papers: October 27th, 2006

5. Modeling, Simulation and Optimization of Peer-to-peer environments

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems allow to gather a wide range of computers into a single environment.
Performance of such environments is difficult to evaluate due to the heterogeneity and to the number of computers participating in the system. Therefore, modeling and simulation are now becoming more and more used in order to optimize the behavior of P2P environments.

The International Workshop on Modeling, Simulation and Optimization of Peer-to-peer environments aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia, industry and government to advance the state of the art in modeling, simulating and optimizing P2P environments. The workshop will also represent an occasion to share, to learn and to discuss the latest results in this field of research.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Modeling of P2P systems
• Performance evaluation of P2P systems
• Simulation of P2P systems
• Traffic management for P2P computing systems
• Algorithms for computing and performance implications in P2P environments
• Analytical modeling of Peer-to-Peer systems
• Quantitative analysis of Peer-to-Peer infrastructure and overlay networks
• Emulation of P2P sytems
• Protocols for resource management/discovery/reservation/scheduling and their evaluation
• Workload characterization for P2P systems

Session Chairs

Julien Bourgeois
LIFC
University of Franche-Comté, France
Julien.Bourgeois@univ-fcomte.fr

Giovanni Chiola
DISI
Università di Genova, Italy
chiolag@acm.org

Program Committee (to be confirmed)

Gabriel Antoniu, INRIA, France
Didier El Baz, CNRS, France
Michele Colajanni, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy
Gilles Fedak, INRIA Futurs, France
Adriana Iamnitchi, University of South Florida, USA
Sam Joseph, University of Hawaii, USA
Mark Jelasity, Università di Bologna, Italy
Andreas Mauthe, Lancaster University, UK
Alberto Montresor, University of Trento, Italy
George F. Riley, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Gaeta Rossano, Università di Torino, Italy
Matteo Sereno, Università di Torino, Italy
Francois Spies, University of Franche-Comte, France
Ralf SteinMetz, Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany

Schedule

Papers due: June 30th, 2006
Paper notification: September 29th, 2006
Camera-ready papers: October 27th, 2006

6. Parallel and Distributed Data Storage

Data storage systems dispersed over several computing nodes are required due to performance, dependability demands or even to provide storage capabilities for distributed applications in an efficient way. Research issues span from performance optimization, fault-tolerant coding schemes to properties like consistency and efficient parallel and non-contiguous access. Evident similarities appear to distributed memory systems, e.g. software-based VSM systems or application-specific utilization of distributed memory.

In this session, recent progress in the field of storage and memory systems under the aspect of distribution and parallel access shall be presented and discussed, bringing together experts from academia as well as industry.

• Massively parallel storage architectures
• Distributed storage systems
• Distributed/virtual shared memory architectures
• Data and meta-data consistency
• Storage integration in GRID systems
• Architecture of associative storages and memories respectively
• Allocation and utilization strategies for exploiting parallel and distributed memory
• Reliability issues for parallel and distributed storage
• Security techniques in networked storage systems

Session Chair:

Dr. Peter Sobe
Institute of Computer Engineering
University of Luebeck, Germany
sobe@iti.uni-luebeck.de

Submission Guidelines

Papers should be submitted in electronic form (pdf file) via the web site http://www.iti.uni-luebeck.de/PDP07-Session-Storage/ or sent directly by email to the session chair.
Length and formatting of papers must comply with the PDP'07 submission guidelines (see http://www.pdp2007.it/sub.html).
Accepted papers will be published along with the regular proceedings of the PDP'07 Conference.

Schedule

Papers due: Sept. 15, 2006
Paper notification: Oct. 6, 2006
Camera-ready papers: October 27th, 2006