BCS-FACS is the

BCS BCS may refer to: American football * Bowl Championship Series, a system that selected matchups for major college football bowl games between 1998 and 2013 * BCS conferences, the six FBS conferences with automatic major bowl bids under that sys ...

''Formal Aspects of Computing Science'' Specialist Group.

Overview

The FACS group, inaugurated on 16 March 1978, organizes meetings for its members and others on

formal methods In computer science, formal methods are mathematics, mathematically rigorous techniques for the formal specification, specification, development, Program analysis, analysis, and formal verification, verification of software and computer hardware, ...

and related

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

topics. There is an associated journal, ''

Formal Aspects of Computing ''Formal Aspects of Computing'' (''FAC'') is a peer-reviewed Gold Open Access journal published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and BCS (the British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute for IT). The journal is closely associated ...

'', published by

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

, and a more informal ''FACS FACTS'' newsletter. The group celebrated its 20th anniversary with a meeting at the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

in 1998, with presentations by four eminent computer scientists,

Mike Gordon Michael Eliot Gordon (born June 3, 1965) is an American bass guitarist and vocalist most recognized as a founding member of the band Phish. In addition to bass, Gordon plays banjo, piano, and guitar. He is a filmmaker ('' Rising Low'', '' Outs ...

Tony Hoare Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare (; born 11 January 1934), also known as C. A. R. Hoare, is a British computer scientist who has made foundational contributions to programming languages, algorithms, operating systems, formal verification, and ...

Robin Milner Arthur John Robin Gorell Milner (13 January 1934 – 20 March 2010) was a British computer scientist, and a Turing Award winner.Gordon Plotkin Gordon David Plotkin (born 9 September 1946) is a theoretical computer scientist in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Plotkin is probably best known for his introduction of structural operational semantics (SOS) and his ...

, all

Fellows of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

. From 2002 to 2008 and since 2013 again, the Chair of BCS-FACS has been

Jonathan Bowen Jonathan P. Bowen (born 1956) is a British computer scientist and an Emeritus Professor at London South Bank University, where he headed the Centre for Applied Formal Methods. Prof. Bowen is also the Chairman of Museophile Limited and an adjunc ...

. Jawed Siddiqi was chair during 2008–2013. In December 2002, BCS-FACS organized a conference on the ''Formal Aspects of Security'' (FASec'02) at

Royal Holloway Royal Holloway, University of London (RH), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public university, public research university and a constituent college, member institution of the federal University of London. It ...

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

. In 2004, FACS organized a major event at

London South Bank University London South Bank University (LSBU) is a public university in Elephant and Castle, London. It is based in the London Borough of Southwark, near the South Bank of the River Thames, from which it takes its name. Founded in 1892 as the Borough Po ...

to celebrate its own 25th anniversary and also ''25 Years of CSP'' (CSP25), attended by the originator of CSP, Sir Tony Hoare, and others in the field. The group liaises with other related groups such as the

Centre for Software Reliability The Centre for Software Reliability (CSR) is a distributed British organisation concerned with software reliability, including safety-critical issues. It consists of two sister organisations based at Newcastle University, UK. and City, Universit ...

Formal Methods Europe Formal Methods Europe (FME) is an organization whose aim is to encourage the research and application of formal methods for the improvement of software and computer hardware, hardware in computer-based systems. The association's members are drawn fr ...

, the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's Learned society, learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh ...

Computer Committee, the

Safety-Critical Systems Club The Safety-Critical Systems Club (SCSC) is a professional association in the United Kingdom. It aims to share knowledge about safety-critical systems, including current and emerging practices in safety engineering, software engineering, and p ...

, and the

Z User Group The Z User Group (ZUG) was established in 1992 to promote use and development of the Z notation, a formal specification language for the description of and reasoning about computer-based systems. It was formally constituted on 14 December 1992 du ...

. It has held joint meetings with other BCS specialist groups such as the

Advanced Programming Group The Advanced Programming Specialist Group (APSG) is a Specialist Group (SG) of the ''British Computer Society'' (BCS). It held its first meeting, when it was referred to as "BCS Study Group No. 5", at Bishop's House, High Holborn, London WC1, Eng ...

and BCSWomen. FACS sponsors and supports meetings, such as the Refinement Workshop. It has often held a Christmas event each year, with a theme related to formal aspects of computing — for example, teaching formal methods and formal methods in industry. BCS-FACS supported the ABZ 2008 conference at the BCS London premises. In 2015, FACS hosted a two-day ProCoS Workshop on "Provably Correct Systems", with many former members of the ESPRIT ProCoS I and II projects and Working Group of the 1990s.

Evening seminars

In recent years, a series of evening seminars have been held, mainly at the BCS London office. Speakers have included leading computer scientists, mainly from the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

but some from abroad, including

Samson Abramsky Samson Abramsky (born 12 March 1953) is a British computer scientist who is a Professor of Computer Science at University College London. He was previously the Christopher Strachey Professor of Computing at Wolfson College, Oxford, from 2000 t ...

FRS,

Jean-Raymond Abrial Jean-Raymond Abrial (6 November 1938 – 26 May 2025) was a French computer scientist and inventor of the Z and B formal methods. Abrial was a student at the École Polytechnique (class of 1958). Abrial's 1974 paper ''Data Semantics'' laid ...

(

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

), Farhad Arbab, Troy Astarte,

Dines Bjørner Dines Bjørner (born 4 October 1937) is a Danish computer scientist. He specializes in research into domain engineering, requirements engineering and formal methods. He worked with Cliff Jones and others on the Vienna Development Method (VDM) ...

(Denmark), Robin Bloomfield, Richard Bornat (twice), Egon Börger (

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, Jan Broenink (

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

), Michael Butler,

Muffy Calder Dame Muffy Calder (née Thomas; born 21 May 1958) is a Canadian-born British computer scientist, Vice-Principal and Head of College of Science and Engineering, and Professor of Formal Methods at the University of Glasgow. From 2012 to 2015 she w ...

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(twice),

Jack Copeland Brian Jack Copeland (born 1950) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and author of books on the computing pioneer Alan Turing. Education Copeland was educated at the University of Oxford, obt ...

(

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

Tim Denvir Tim Denvir (born 1939) is a British software engineer, specialising in formal methods. Denvir studied for a Mathematics degree at Trinity College, Cambridge during 1959–1962. Before his degree, during 1958–1959, Tim Denvir was an engineeri ...

, Cedric Fournet (France),

FRS, Anthony Hall, Mark Harman, Martin Henson, Rob Hierons,

Jane Hillston Jane Elizabeth Hillston (born 1963) is a British computer scientist who is professor of quantitative modelling and former head of school in the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Early life and education Hillston recei ...

, Mike Hinchey, Sir

FRS, Mike Holcombe,

Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Michael Jackson, one of the most culturally significan ...

, Cliff Jones,

Marta Kwiatkowska Marta Zofia Kwiatkowska (born 1957) is a Polish theoretical computer scientist based in the United Kingdom. Kwiatkowska is Professor of Computing Systems in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, England, and a Fell ...

(twice), Zhiming Liu,

Tom Maibaum Thomas Stephen Edward Maibaum Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) is a computer scientist. Maibaum has a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) undergraduate degree in pure mathematics from the University of Toronto, Canada (1970), and a Doctor of Phi ...

, Ursula Martin CBE,

Peter Mosses Peter David Mosses (born 1948) is a British computer scientist. Peter Mosses studied mathematics as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Oxford, and went on to undertake a DPhil supervised by Christopher Strachey in the Programming Research Gro ...

, Ben Moszkowski, Peter O'Hearn FRS,

Steve Reeves Stephen Lester Reeves (January 21, 1926 – May 1, 2000) was an American professional bodybuilder and actor. He was famous in the mid-1950s as a movie star in Italian-made sword-and-sandal films, playing the protagonist as muscular characters ...

(New Zealand), John Reynolds (USA), Peter Ryan, Steve Schneider,

Joe Stoy Joseph E. Stoy is a British computer scientist. He initially studied physics at Oxford University. Early in his career, in the 1970s, he worked on denotational semantics with Christopher Strachey in the Programming Research Group at the Oxford ...

, David Turner, John Tucker, Phil Wadler, among others. In 2010, a book of chapters based on some of these talks was published. Talks have been held annually with

and the

(at the LMS headquarters in central London). Since 2010, there has been an ''Annual Peter Landin Semantics Seminar'' held each December in memory of the British computer scientist

Peter Landin Peter John Landin (5 June 1930 – 3 June 2009) was a British computer scientist. He was one of the first to realise that the lambda calculus could be used to model a programming language, an insight that is essential to the development of both ...

(1930–2009).

FACS FACTS newsletter

The ''FACS FACTS'' newsletter () is published periodically, originally on paper and now online. The editors are Tim Denvir and Brian Monahan.

F. X. Reid Michael ("Mike") William Shields (20 January 1950 – 24 September 2023) was a British computer scientist. Overview Mike Shields undertook research on concurrent systems with Peter E. Lauer at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the late ...

has been a regular ''FACS FACTS'' newsletter contributor in the past. For example, he has been an enthusiast for the

COMEFROM In computer programming, COMEFROM (or COME FROM) is an obscure control flow structure used in some programming languages, originally as a joke. COMEFROM is the inverse of GOTO in that it can take the execution state from any arbitrary point in cod ...

statement and an expert on its semantics. Apparently reports of FXR's death in 2006 were untrue and his musings continued after this time in the newsletter.

References

External links

BCS-FACS website

Alternative BCS-FACS website

BCS-FACS group
on

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

Former BCS-FACS website
(2008) on

Archive.org The Internet Archive is an American non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including websites, software applic ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bcs-Facs 1978 establishments in the United Kingdom Organizations established in 1978 Formal methods organizations FACS Non-profit organisations based in the United Kingdom

Overview

Evening seminars

FACS FACTS newsletter

See also

References

External links