Presentation

Automata 2009 is the fifteenth workshop in a series of homonimous events established in 1995 by members of the Working Group 1.5, subordinated to the Technical Committee 1: Foundations of Computer Science, of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), the  previous editions having taken place in:

The original Working Group 1.5, denominated Cellular Automata and Machines, was dissolved in early 2004, and during the last couple of years, several discussions revealed that its scope was too narrow. The consensus of opinion led to the extension of its scope, from cellular automata to more general discrete complex systems. The Working Group 1.5 has just officially been re-established, and Automata 2009 will host its first annual meeting in the renewed, updated phase of the group, now denominated Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems, with the following attributions:

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

As such, Automata 2009 opens up to stressing all fundamental aspects of cellular automata and discrete complex systems, including:

	Dynamics
	Algebraic aspects
	Complexity issues
	Emergent properties
	Formal language processing
	Models of parallelism and distributed systems
	Phenomenological descriptions
	Scientific modeling
	Practical applications