The 2010 Federated Logic Conference

FLoC (Federated Logic Conference) is a quadrennial two-week event that brings together eight top conferencesapplying methods of logic in computer science, and about 60 workshops. The area is of great importance to computing research: logic provides computer science with both a unifying foundational framework and a tool for modelling computing systems; it has been called ``the calculus of computer science,'' and played a crucial role in diverse areas such as artificial intelligence, computational complexity, distributed computing, database systems, hardware design, programming languages, and software engineering. The research of just over 20% of Turing award winners has been on the application of logic to computer science; in the UK, five of the current eight UKCRC grand challenges are in FLoC areas.The proposal is to enable us to invite top-level researchers to deliver plenaries and tutorials at FLoC, to makeFLoC particularly attractive to students and to make it easier for researchers from the UK and elsewhereto attend FLoC.

This is the first time that FLoC, one of the largest and most prestigious computer science conferences worldwide, has been held in the UK. It presents is a unique opportunity for UK-based students, researchers and industry to be exposed to cutting edge research in the area that is often described as the ``calculus of computer science''. EPSRC support will enable to us to invite world leading researchers to offer tutorials and plenary lectures which will be attended by UK-based students, academics and industrial researchers (clearly others, particularly from the--nearby--EU, will also benefit). The support will help bring registration costs down, especially student registration costs, so as many people as possible can benefit from this, essentially unique, occurrence of FLoC in the UK. Thanks to the experience they gain at FLoC, UK students will be better prepared to the challenges they will face, whether in their current research or after getting their PhD, be it in academia or industry. In general, FLoC will provide many networking opportunities, for students, academics and industrialists, helpful for continuing current relationships and essential for starting new ones. FLoC is of direct economic significance: the Edinburgh Convention Bureau estimates UK economic benefit at 4.7M pounds. Furthermore, running a successful conference of such a high visibility will make UK a more attractive place for other important conferences in computer science. Having such a major conference in the UK will help further cement the UK's already leading presence and image in formal methods and, more generally, the development and application of logical methods in computer science.