RESEARCH GROUP FOR SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS AND FORMAL METHODS

SSFM RESEARCH GROUP FOR SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS AND FORMAL METHODS* Department of Computer Science University of Pretoria SSFM@cs.up.ac.za CURRENT MEMBERS Stefan Gruner, Nils Timm, and several postgraduate project students TABLE OF CONTENTS Recent Papers| Recent Editorials| Prototype Software FORMAL METHODS theoretical computer science in application| development, and testing, of formal systems| between theoretical and applied informatics| FORMAL with mathematical rigour| with logical rigour| METHOD (Greek hodos), path, way| (Greek meta), toward something, behind, beyond| scientific, objective, testable and repeatable| SYSTEM (Greek systema), the composite, togetherness| set of entities with non-arbitrary relations| FORMAL SYSTEM formal notation| formal calculus| NOTATION well-defined language {syntax} for descriptions| non-ambigous and lexically precise modelling| CALCULUS well-defined language [semantics] for reasoning| tool-supported discovery of relevant properties| deduction, derivation of logical conclusions| rule-based relation among formal entities| MOREOVER We also contribute to science-philosophical discourses concerning computing-science as a scholarly discipline| We regard LEIBNIZ and FREGE as forefathers of our work|

Footnote * The group was founded in August 2009 as research group for 'Software Science and Formal Methods'. In August 2013, due to some internal re-organisation in the Department of Computer Science, the group was re-named as research group for 'System Specifications and Formal Methods', such as to make room for a new software engineering research group. Our established acronym 'SSFM' has been preserved in the re-organisation.