SCILL

To: linear@cs.stanford.edu
Subject: SCILL
From: wadler@dcs.gla.ac.uk
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 95 12:34:13 BST
Approved: types@dcs.gla.ac.uk


SCILL:  Syntactic Control of Interference and Linear Logic
Glasgow University
Monday 31 July -- Thursday 3 August 1995.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Reynold's Syntactic Control of Interference (SCI) and Girard's
Linear Logic (LL) appear to be connected, but the precise nature of
the connection remains elusive.  Outstanding mysteries include the
following:

* Various systems for adding state to functional languages have been
  proposed by Hudak, Odersky, Reddy, Wadler, and others.  These systems
  overlap with SCI, with LL, and with each other.  They possess clear
  similarities but also disturbing differences.  Is there a deep
  connection between them?

* In particular, each of the systems above has a notion of `read only'
  type.  How does this link with the `passive' types of SCI and the `of
  course' types of LL?

* Girard and Reynolds also contributed to notions of semantic
  parametricity, which O'Hearn and Tennant have shown also helps
  to model state.  Does parametricity have a role to play in
  understanding SCI and LL?

* Linear logic is categorically modeled by comonads (with some
  additional structure), while monads (with different additional
  structure) have been used to model state.  Is this similarity a
  mirage, or is there a true duality?

The goal of this workshop is to get together some of the main
developers of these ideas, in an attempt to bring out the relationships
between them.  It is proposed to have few participants and plenty of
time in order that the `work' in `workshop' can be taken seriously!
The focus will be on building understanding, and we hope new analyses
and syntheses will emerge.

Participation is by invitation only.  If you are interested in actively
exploring the interaction between SCI, LL, and state, please ask to be
invited.  Or let us know if there is someone we should invite.

	-- John Reynolds and Philip Wadler


SCILL is part of Glasgow's Computing Science Research Festival.
There is a SCILL home page:
	http://www.dcs.glasgow.ac.uk/~wadler/scillcall.html
And a useful list of related readings, prepared by Uday Reddy:
	http://vesuvius.cs.uiuc.edu:8080/sipl/scill.html

List of invitees

	Samson Abramsky, Imperial College London
	Andrew Barber, Edinburgh University (+)
	Nick Benton, Cambridge University (+)
	Andrzej Filinski, Carnegie-Mellon University (-)
	Jean-Yves Girard, CNRS, Marseille (-)
	Paul Hudak, Yale University (+)
	Yves Lafont, CNRS, Marseille (-)
	Martin Odersky, University of Karlsruhe (+)
	Peter O'Hearn, Syracuse University (+)
	Andrew Pitts, Cambridge University (+)
	Gordon Plotkin, Edinburgh University (-)
	Uday Reddy, University of Illinois (+)
	John Reynolds, Imperial College London (on leave from CMU) (+)
	Robert Tennent, Queen's University, Kingston (+)
	Philip Wadler, Glasgow University (+)

	(+) has accepted
	(-) has declined