Prof.dr. F. Arbab (Farhad) Faculty    Mathematics & Natural Sciences E-mail    farhad@cwi.nl Phone    020 592 4056     Study Computer Science Ph.D. December 1, 1982 Dissertation Requirements and Architecture of a CAM-Oriented CAD System for Design and Manufacture of Mechanical Parts Inaugural lecture October 28, 2005 Composition by interaction Subject Software composition

Keywords

Coordination models and languages, component based software composition, distributed and parallel programming, concurrency theory, semantics and formal models

My inspiration

Our societies increasingly depend on services offered by complex systems of concurrent, distributed, heterogeneous components. Composing a concurrent system out of autonomous black-box components involves coordination of their mutual interactions into a coherent collaboration, in which they were not necessarily pre-programmed to engage. Autonomy, interaction, collaboration and reconfiguration to adapt to an evolving environment naturally arise also in systems that do not strictly consist of software. They manifest themselves in a wide range of applications, such as coordination of dynamically evolving agencies, e.g., formed to respond to emergency incidents; coordination in systems biology; enterprise architectures; and business processes.
My research focuses on models of computation that emphasize interaction and its third-party coordination. It addresses core challenges such as exogenous coordination of interaction protocols among autonomous agents, compositional reasoning about the emergent behavior in distributed concurrent systems, their dynamically reconfigurable architectures necessitated by mobility, and the mathematical foundations of these concepts.

Titles of major publications

• (2004) F. Arbab. "Reo: A Channel-based Coordination Model for Component Composition", Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 1-38.
• (2003) F. Arbab. "Abstract Behavior Types: A foundation model for components and their composition", Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, Vol. 2852, pp. 33-70.
• (2003) F. Arbab and J.J.M.M. Rutten. "A Coinductive Calculus of Component Connectors", Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, Vol. 2755, pp. 35-56.
• (2000) M.M. Bonsangue, F. Arbab, J.W. de Bakker, J.J.M.M. Rutten, A. Scutella, and G. Zavattaro. "A Transition System Semantics for the Control-Driven Coordination Language Manifold", Theoretical Computer Science, Elsevier, Vol. 240, No. 1, pp. 3-47.
• (1998) F. Arbab, C.L. Blom, F.J. Burger, and C.T.H. Everaars. "Reusable Coordinator Modules for Massively Concurrent Applications", Software: Practice and Experience, John Wiley & Sons, Vol. 28, No. 7, pp. 703-735.

Links

http://www.cwi.nl/~farhad