Post-conference stats:
There were over 100 people registered, 85 different attended at different times from 34 countries and there were over 50 people connected on average for each session during the 3 days. We are glad to have been able to allocate registration scholarships waiving 100% of the fees (which were also very low and subsidised) to about 80% of the participants (thanks to our sponsors) helping usually under-represented residents in some countries to join.

AUTOMATA Online
(Hosted from Sweden and the UK)

Supported by Oxford Immune Algorithmics, the Algorithmic Dynamics Lab hosted the 26th International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems AUTOMATA 2020 from Stockholm Sweden and the UK, held on 10-12th August 2020 streamlined online.

​AUTOMATA 2020 innovated on various fronts related to challenges such as climate change and under-representation of minorities. We wanted to reduce the conference Carbon footprint through virtual attendance options (before COVID-19) and to promote the research of young researchers.

The workshop aims to:

  • Establish and maintain a permanent, international, multidisciplinary forum for the collaboration of researchers in the field of Cellular Automata (CA) and Discrete Complex Systems (DCS).
  • Provide a platform for presenting and discussing new ideas and results.
  • Support the development of theory and applications of CA and DCS (e.g. parallel computing, physics, biology, social sciences, and others) as long as fundamental aspects and their relations are concerned.
  • Identify and study within an inter- and multidisciplinary context, the important fundamental aspects, concepts, notions and problems concerning CA and DCS.

AUTOMATA 2020 focused on the theory and application of cellular automata and discrete dynamical systems in connection to complexity theory and algorithmic information. There was a special sessions and tutorials on Automata in Machine Learning and on Algorithmic Information Dynamics with a particular interest in aspects of computability in causation, and reprogrammability.
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The largest city in Scandinavia is a paradise on earth during the summer days with average temperatures of around 23 (day) and 18 (night) degrees Celsius and about 20 hours of sunlight every day.
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In its unique location, the city is in an archipelago surrounded by lakes that cross the city. The city itself is divided in various islands with beautiful parks, green and beautiful architecture merged in great harmony.

Invited Speakers
The Role of Emergence in Open-ended Systems
Dr. Alyssa Adams
University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S.A.
Collision-based Computing with Cellular Automata
Dr. Genaro Martínez
National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico &
​University of the West of England, U.K.
Constructor Theory of Life and its applications
Dr. Chiara Marletto
​University of Oxford, U.K.
Some control and observation issues in  Cellular Automata
​Dr. Samira El Yacoubi
University of Perpignan, France​
Topological Dynamical Properties in Turing Machines
​Dr. Rodrigo Torres-Aviles
Universidad del Bío-Bío, Concepción, Chile​
Navigating Isotropic Cellular Automata Rule-space
​Prof. Andrew Wuensche
​University of Sussex, U.K. & ​University of the West of England, U.K.
A New Kind of Automata, that May Be Our Universe
Dr. Stephen Wolfram 
Wolfram Research

Topics (non-exhaustive)
  • Dynamic, topological, ergodic and algebraic aspects of Cellular Automata and Discrete Dynamical Systems
  • Algorithmic complexity, information theory and other measures
  • Emergent properties of dynamical systems
  • Formal languages, grammars and automata
  • Algorithmic Information Dynamics
  • Symbolic dynamics and connections to continuous systems
  • Information theory
  • Tilings, rewriting and substitution systems
  • ​Computability theory
  • Models of parallelism and distributed systems
  • Synchronous versus asynchronous models
  • Applications of automata to areas such as machine & deep learning

Proceedings
There are two paper categories of submission:
  • Full papers
  • Exploratory papers
Full papers are meant to report more complete and denser research, while exploratory papers are meant to be short reports of recent discoveries, work-in-progress or partial results. Submissions of full papers are refereed and selected by the program committee. Exploratory papers go through a less rigorous evaluation process. All accepted papers must be presented at the conference. Accepted full papers will appear (to be confirmed) in the proceedings published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. Exploratory papers will not be included in the LNCS proceedings, but in local proceedings that will be distributed at the workshop.

Authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings templates, either for LaTeX or for Word, for the preparation of their papers. Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers. In addition, the corresponding author of each paper, acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, must complete and sign a Consent-to-Publish form. The corresponding author signing the copyright form should match the corresponding author marked on the paper. Once the files have been sent to Springer, changes relating to the authorship of the papers cannot be made.

Previous AUTOMATA LNCS volumes can be found here.

Special Issues
A special issue, collecting extended and improved versions of selected papers presented at the conference, will be published in the journal of Complex Systems.

Founded in 1987, Complex Systems was the first journal in the field of Complex Systems and has published some of the most important landmark papers in the area. Complex Systems has developed a uniquely broad base of readers and contributors from academia, industry, government and the general public in over 50 countries around the world. The topics of research covered by Complex Systems span a diverse array of areas, including mathematics, physics, computer science and biology.
​
Complex Systems is indexed/abstracted by Emerging Sources Citation Index (Web of Science), Scopus, SCImago (SJR), Computer and Control Abstracts, Current Contents, Electrical & Electronics Abstracts, Inspec, MathSciNet, Crossref, Physics Abstracts, Zentralblatt für Mathematik/Mathematics Abstracts and Google Scholar.

Important Dates
​»Submission deadline full papers (any number of pages): Closed
»Notification of acceptance full papers: July 1, 2020
»Final versions: July 15, 2020
»Registration deadline for full paper author: August 1, 2020
»Registration for exploratory paper author/other participants: August 1, 2020
»Final registration deadline: Aug 10, 2020

Submissions:Authors are invited to submit papers via EasyChair.

​Submissions should contain original research that has not previously been published. Submission must be formatted in LaTeX using the LNCS format and submitted in PDF. Papers authored or co-authored by PC members are also welcomed.

Previous Editions
The AUTOMATA series is the official annual event of IFIP WG 1.5, the Working Group 5 (on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems), of the Technical Committee 1 (on Foundations of Computer Science), of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP). Find other IFIP official events here.

In the last years the workshop has taken place in Guadalajara, Mexico (2019); Gent, Belgium (2018); Milan, Italy (2017); Zurich, Switzerland (2016); Turku, Finland (2015); Himeji, Japan (2014), and Gießen, Germany (2013).
Event organised and sponsored by
As advertised in Nature and the Computer Journal

Registration