Invited Talks & Accepted Papers Programme Preliminary Proceedings Invited speakers Vincent Danos (Edinburgh, UK) Dale Miller (LIX, Ecole Polytechnique, FR) Joseph Sifakis (VERIMAG, FR) (joint speaker with ICE'08) Program Committee Wan Fokkink (Amsterdam, NL) Matthew Hennessy (Dublin, IE, co-chair) Bartek Klin (Warsaw, PL, co-chair) Catuscia Palamidessi (LIX, Ecole Polytechnique, FR) Iain Phillips (Imperial College, London, UK) Michel Reniers (Eindhoven, NL) Grigore Rosu (Urbana-Champaign IL, USA) Alex Simpson (Edinburgh, UK) Pawel Sobocinski (Southampton, UK) Simone Tini (Insubria, IT) Shoji Yuen (Nagoya, JP) Contact email: Workshop organisers: Matthew Hennessy Department of Computer Science Trinity College Dublin 2 Ireland Bartek Klin Warsaw University and University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics The King's Buildings Mayfield Road Edinburgh EH9 3JZ Scotland, UK Webpage: http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/bklin/SOS2008/

Aim: Structural operational semantics (SOS) provides a framework for giving operational semantics to programming and specification languages. A growing number of programming languages from commercial and academic spheres have been given usable semantic descriptions by means of structural operational semantics. Because of its intuitive appeal and flexibility, structural operational semantics has found considerable application in the study of the semantics of concurrent processes. It is also a viable alternative to denotational semantics in the static analysis of programs, and in proving compiler correctness. Moreover, it has found application in emerging areas of computing such as probabilistic systems and systems biology. Structural operational semantics has been successfully applied as a formal tool to establish results that hold for classes of process description languages. This has allowed for the generalisation of well-known results in the field of process algebra, and for the development of a meta-theory for process calculi based on the realization that many of the results in this field only depend upon general semantic properties of language constructs. This workshop aims at being a forum for researchers, students and practitioners interested in new developments, and directions for future investigation, in the field of structural operational semantics. One of the specific goals of the series of SOS workshops is to establish synergies between the concurrency and programming language communities working on the theory and practice of SOS. For the 2008 workshop we would also like to encourage novel applications of SOS techniques to research areas such as systems biology and hybrid or stochastic systems. Specific topics of interest include (but are not limited to): programming languages process algebras higher-order formalisms rule formats for operational specifications meaning of operational specifications compositionality of modal logics with respect to operational specifications congruence with respect to behavioural equivalences conservative extensions and translations of SOS specifications derivation of proof rules from operational specifications ordered, modular, and other variants of SOS comparisons of SOS with rewriting systems, reactive systems and other forms of operational specification comparisons between denotational, axiomatic and SOS methods for operational specification of probabilistic, timed, stochastic, hybrid and biological systems software tools that automate, or are based on, SOS. Papers reporting on applications of SOS to software engineering and other areas of computer science are welcome. History: The first SOS Workshop took place in London as one of the satellite workshops of CONCUR 2004. Subsequently, SOS 2005 occurred in Lisbon as a satellite workshop of ICALP 2005, SOS 2006 in Bonn as a satellite workshop of CONCUR 2006, and SOS 2007 in Wroclaw as a satellite workshop of LICS and ICALP 2007. A special issue of the Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming on Structural Operational Semantics appeared in 2004; a special issue of Theoretical Computer Science dedicated to SOS 2005 appeared in 2007, and a special issue of Information & Computation on Structural Operational Semantics inspired by SOS 2006-2007 is in preparation. Paper submission: The submission deadline has now passed. Proceedings: Preliminary proceedings will be available at the meeting. The final proceedings of the workshop will appear as a volume in the ENTCS series. If the quality and quantity of the submissions warrant it, the co-chairs plan to arrange a special issue of an archival journal devoted to full versions of selected papers from the workshop. We would expect this to be a joint special issue with ICE'08.