Annual meeting 2023
2023-03-31
This was the first event on the VeTSS Seminar Series, one-day meetings with talks and panel discussions. The aim is to connect with VeTSS adjacent research, such as AI, Quantum Computing, Security and Machine learning, discuss state-of-the-art research and its open challenges and seek cross-pollination opportunities with VeTSS themes.
TALKS (recording and abstracts)
‘VeTSS: From Old to New’, Philippa Gardner, Imperial College London
‘On Operational Cyber Resilience’ Kerstin Eder, University of Bristol
‘Automatic verification of transparency protocols’, Mark Ryan, University of Birmingham with Vincent Cheval and José Moreira. ABSTRACT
‘Security and Legacy at Microsoft’ Matthew Parkinson, Microsoft Research. ABSTRACT
‘Benchmarking and verifying quantum computers’, Petros Wallden, The University of Edinburgh. ABSTRACT
‘Formal Verification and Bug Finding at Meta’, Jules Villard, Meta. ABSTRACT
‘The Research Institute for Trustworthy Interconnected Cyber-physical Systems’, Chris Hankin, Imperial College London. ABSTRACT
‘Design and Verification of Time-Critical Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Systems’, Vincent Rahli, University of Birmingham. ABSTRACT
‘CsmithEdge: More Effective Compiler Testing by Handling Undefined Behaviour Less Conservatively’, Karine Even-Mendoza, King’s College London. ABSTRACT
‘Rust on Morello’, Simon Cooksey, University of Kent. ABSTRACT

VeTSS Summer School 2023
2023-08-22 09:00 - 2023-08-24 17:00 UTC | University Of Surrey, Stag Hill, University Campus, Guildford, GU2 7XH, United Kingdom
VeTSS Summer School 2023 is a graduate school focused on program analysis, testing and verification.
This year’s school will take place at the University of Surrey, Guildford, UK, from Tuesday 22nd to Thursday 24th August 2023.
PROGRAMME
Over three full days, you will have the opportunity to attend talks and workshops led by experts in the field, meet with established researchers and other PhD students and learn new skills in a safe and welcoming space. You can see the programme here.

Fun in the REPL
2023-11-01 10:00 - 19:00 | Bristol Engine Shed, Station Approach, Redcliffe, Bristol, BS1 6QH, United Kingdom
S-REPLS is a regular meeting, based in the south of England, for anyone with an interest in the semantics and implementation of programming languages. Fun in the Afternoon is a seminar on functional programming and related topics. This site describes the arrangements for a joint meeting of these two communities at Bristol Engine Shed in November 2023.

Annual Meeting 2024
2024-05-21 08:30 - 17:00
This year’s event will be held at the Royal Academy of Engineering, London on Tuesday, 21st of May. You can find the address and full directions to the venue on this link.
Registration to the event is now closed as the meeting is at capacity.
The meeting with start at 9:00. Registration, with tea and coffee, is from 8:30. On arrival, please make your way up to the ERA Foundation room on the first floor. You will be able to collect your badge there.
We want to make every VeTSS event a respectful and friendly environment for all, and we ask that everyone attending the Annual meeting adheres to the VeTSS code of conduct.
Program

8:30 – 9:00
Registration, with Tea and Coffee

Session 1: Keynote Talk

9:00 – 9:15
Welcome

9:15 – 10:15
Keynote: Holistic security from code to cloud, Peter O’Hearn (Lacework and UCL)

10:15 – 10:45
Morning break

Session 2

10:45 – 11:15
Talk: Bit-Precise Neural Network Verification, Edoardo Manino (University of Manchester)

11:15 – 11:45
Talk: Object Capabilities as Guards – Specification, Verification, and open calls, Sophia Drossopolou (Imperial College London)

11:45 – 12:15
Talk: Contactless Payments made Private via Bisimilarity, Ross Horne (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland)

12:15 – 13:45
Lunch

Session 3: Industry Perspectives

13:45 – 14:15
Talk: Writing formal specifications at ARM, Jade Alglave (Arm)

14:15 – 14:35
Talk: RISC-V Processor Verification: Challenges And Opportunities For Formal, Ashish Darbari (Axiomise)

14:35 – 14:55
Talk: Verification and Legal Consequences, Peter Davies (Thales)

15:00 – 15:30
Afternoon break

Session 4

15:30 – 16:30
Project talks

SACRED-MA: Safe And seCure REmote Direct Memory Access, Guillaume Ambal, (Imperial College London) and Gregory Chockler, (University of Surrey)

TRUSTED: SecuriTy SummaRies for SecUre SofTwarE Development, Narges Khakpour (Newcastle University)

M4Secure: Faster and Secure Memory Management, Zheng Wang (University of Leeds)

16:30 – 16:50
Talk: Using program synthesis to make your code run faster, Elizabeth Polgreen (University of Edinburgh)

16:50 – 17:10
Talk: Secure Smart Contracts with Isabelle/Solidity, Diego Marmsoler, (University of Exeter)

17:10 – 17:15
Meeting ends

Workshop on Formal Methods and Tools for Security (FMATS)
2024-06-04 08:00 - 17:00
The Workshop on Formal Methods and Tools for Security (FMATS), inspired by the grand challenge of software verification, was established in 2011 by Professor Mike Gordon of the University of Cambridge, with the aim of bringing together academia, industry and government employees interested in an effort to properly understand and address the challenges in applying formal methods to security. Since then, several FMATS workshops have been held, supported by VeTSS, Microsoft Research Cambridge and the Royal Society. Please follow the links below for the previous editions of FMATS.
FMATS7 (2019) (replaced by the `Verified Software’ workshop)
FMATS6 (2018)
FMATS5 (2017)
FMATS4 (2015)
FMATS3 (2014)
FMATS2 (2013)
FMATS1 (2011)

Kent Concurrency Workshop
2024-07-18 08:00 - 2024-07-19 17:00 | University of Kent, Giles Ln, Canterbury, CT2 7NZ
We are very happy to be on of the sponsors of this year’s Kent Concurrency Workshop and S-REPLS 15, taking place at the University of Kent, Canterbury, on 18‐19 July, 2024.
The South of England Regional Programming Language Seminar (S-REPLS) is a regular and informal meeting open to everyone with a professional interest — whether it be academic or commercial — in the semantics and implementation of programming languages. This year it will be jointly held with the Concurrency Workshop which aims to bring together researchers who are working on the theory of concurrency and related areas. Registration for the event is free.
Important dates:
Submission deadline: 18th June.
Registration deadline: 5th July.

VeTSS Summer School 2024
2024-08-13 09:00 - 2024-08-15 17:00 | University of Bristol, Fry Building, Bristol, BS8 1UG, United Kingdom
VeTSS Summer School 2024 is a graduate school focused on program analysis, testing and verification.
This year’s school will take place at the University of Bristol from Tuesday 13th to Thursday 15th August 2024.
PROGRAMME
Over three full days, you will have the opportunity to attend talks and workshops led by experts in the field, meet with established researchers and other PhD students and learn new skills in a safe and welcoming space. You can see the programme here.

Formal Specification and Validation at Scale
2024-10-21 09:00 - 2024-10-22 17:00 | Isaac Newton Institute, 20 Clarkson Road, Cambridge, CB3 0EH, United Kingdom
This Open for Business event is part of an INI programme on Big Specification. It aims to provide a meeting ground to facilitate interactions and exchanges between representatives of academia, research and industry, relevant to the theme, with the objective of identifying points of mutual interest and possible co-activity.

Aims & Objectives
The aim of this Open for Business event is to evaluate the role of formal methods in industrial design, review the current and potential future capabilities of our tools and techniques, and discuss strategies for advancing their standardisation. The objective is to identify ways to progressively integrate formal methods into industrial processes and to outline possible next steps, including how government support can facilitate this progression.
The planned activities for the event include:

Talks by experts from academia, industry and government.
An afternoon session on “Formal Methods for Secure and Measurable Software Systems”, supported by the Office of the White House.
An afternoon session on “Formal Methods in Cyber Security”, supported by the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC).

This hybrid meeting will bring together an audience of invited experts and policymakers from across academia, industry, and government, all driven by a common goal to advance formal methods and strengthen cybersecurity. The event will be recorded, with an edited version made available on YouTube.
Registration and Venue
This is an invitation-only event. Registration for this event is open.
The workshop will take place at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Please visit the Isaac Newton Institute website for further information about the venue.
To maximise networking opportunities and interaction with speakers and other participants, we strongly encourage in-person attendance to this workshop. However, this event is also hosted as hybrid via Zoom.

TFP (and TFPiE) 2025
2025-01-13 - 2025-01-16
26th International Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming
13th to 16th January 2025, Oxford, UK
The symposium on Trends in Functional Programming (TFP) is an international forum for researchers with interests in all aspects of functional programming, taking a broad view of current and future trends in the area. It aspires to be a lively environment for presenting the latest research results, and other contributions.

The Value of Feminism in the Theory and Practice of Computer Science and Cyber Security
2025-03-27 10:00 - 15:00 | Bristol Watershed, 1 Canon's Rd, Bristol, BS1 5TX, United Kingdom
Join us on Thursday 27th of March 2025 for a one-day event dedicated to discussing the value of feminism in the theory and practice of Computer Science and Cyber Security. This interactive workshop will be held at the Bristol Watershed (1 Canon’s Rd, Bristol BS1 5TX) and will include a keynote from Felienne Hermans discussing her recent paper: ‘A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design’ (2024).
This event is a collaboration between The Research Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security (RISCS) and The Research Institute on Verified Trustworthy Software Systems (VeTSS), both funded by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
The aim of the event is to discuss the challenges affecting diversity in the theory and practice of Computer Science and Cyber Security, why change is desirable, and to initiate discussion about how the theoretical computer science and cyber security communities might address these challenges.
Registration for this event is now open.
RISCS/VeTSS Workshop Programme
· 10.00-10.30: Arrivals, Registration & Coffee
· 10.30-10.35: Welcome and Introductions – Brijesh Dongol (VeTSS Director) and Genevieve Liveley (RISCS Director)
· 10.35-11.30: Keynote – ‘A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design’ (Felienne Hermanns) (40 min paper + 15 min Q&A)
· 11.30-12.00: Break
· 12.00-1.00: Panel Discussion – Rebecca Jones, Sam Lindley, Wrenna Robson, Francois Dupressoir, Samantha Frohlich
· 1.00-2.00: Lunch and Networking
· 2.00-2.55: Roundtable Discussion – all
· 2.55-3.00: Closing Remarks – Samantha Frohlich (Bristol)
· 3.00: Close
You are welcome to stay on at the Watershed and continue the conversation

VeTSS Annual Conference 2025
2025-06-06 09:00 - 17:00 | RAE Prince Phiilip House, 3 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5DG, United Kingdom
This year’s event will be held at the Royal Academy of Engineering, Prince Philip House, London on Friday, 6th of June. You can find the address and full directions to the venue on this link.
Registration to the event is now open.

VeTSS Summer School 2025
2025-08-11 14:00 - 2025-08-14 14:00 | ARC, University of Glasgow, The Mazumdar-Shaw Advanced Research Centre, 11 Chapel Lane, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G11 6EW, United Kingdom
VeTSS Summer School 2025 is a graduate school focused on program analysis, testing and verification. This year’s school will take place at the Advanced Research Centre, University of Glasgow, 11-14 August 2025.
The school is open to PhD students and early career researchers working on program analysis, testing and verification. but participation is by invitation only. Registration is now open. Women and anyone currently underrepresented in the field of Computer Science are especially welcome to apply.
For information about the talks, please see the programme page. The detailed schedule will be updated periodically.

Specialist Meeting on AI Technologies for Code Vulnerability Detection
2025-10-27 09:00 - 17:00 | TechUK, 10 St Bride Street, London, EC4A 4AD, United Kingdom
As part of an NCSC-backed research initiative, Surevine and VeTSS are seeking diverse expertise from academia, startups and industry to discuss evaluation frameworks, self-hostable architectures, data sovereignty, and emerging techniques/products in this field.
We invite leading experts to contribute to a workshop exploring AI/LLM applications across the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) for improving security and identifying security vulnerabilities.
Primary Focus
Static Analysis and Testing: Applying LLMs for vulnerability detection and mitigation suggestions (e.g., during SAST)
Secondary Areas

Dynamic Testing (DAST) – ML/LLM support for runtime vulnerability detection
Code Creation – Security-aware IDE plugins preventing common pitfalls
Code Reviews – LLM assistance for independent code review processes
Testing – Automated generation of security-focused unit/integration tests
Production Monitoring – Vulnerability detection in live systems
Impact Metrics – Measuring AI-enabled detection effectiveness vs. conventional methods

Date: 27 October 2025
Venue: TechUK, London (10 St Bride Street, EC4A 4AD)

VeTSS Annual Conference 2026
2026-05-12 08:30 - 17:00 | RAE Prince Phiilip House, 3 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5DG, United Kingdom
The VeTSS Annual Conference is a one-day event featuring a programme of invited and contributed long and short talks. The conference aims to foster engagement with research areas closely aligned with VeTSS, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, security, and machine learning. It provides a forum to present state-of-the-art research, discuss open challenges, and identify opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration within VeTSS-related themes.
This year’s event will be on Tuesday, 12th of May, at the Royal Academy of Engineering. Confirmed speakers include:

Keynote by Kathleen Fisher (CEO, ARIA)
Dominic Mulligan (AWS)
Don Syme (Microsoft / Github)
David Chisnall (CHERI)
Stephen Dolan (Jane Street)
Petros Wallden (University of Edinburgh)
Hana Chockler (King’s College London)
Tom Chothia (University of Birmingham)

This year’s event will also announce the VeTSS Doctoral Dissertation Awards, recognising outstanding PhD research conducted in the UK. In addition, the recipients of the VeTSS Research Award 2025 will share highlights from their innovative and exciting research.
Registration is free but numbers are limited. To register your interest to attend, please complete this short form. We will then contact you as soon as we are able to confirm your place at the event.

VeTSS Summer School 2026
2026-08-03 14:00 - 2026-08-06 12:30 | Xfi Building, University of Exeter, Streatham Campus, Exeter, EX4 4QJ, United Kingdom
VeTSS Summer School 2026 is a graduate school focused on program analysis, testing and verification. This year’s school will take place at the University of Exeter, 3-6 August 2026.
Confirmed speakers include:

IR Memory Consistency Model, Simon Cooksey (NVIDIA)
Isabelle, Achim Brucker (University of Exeter)
LEAN, Wojciech Różowski (Lean FRO)
Safe AI, Edwin Hamel-de le Court (University of Manchester)
Patrick Totzke (University of Liverpool)
Protocols and Security, Tom Chothia (University of Birmingham)

The school is open to PhD students and early career researchers working on program analysis, testing and verification. but participation is by invitation only. Women and anyone currently underrepresented in the field of Computer Science are especially welcome to apply.
Registration is now closed.
