Alceste Scalas

Alceste Scalas was a PhD student at the Department of Mathematics and Informatics of the University of Cagliari, supervised by Massimo Bartoletti, and supported by a grant from MIUR (Italian Ministry of University and Research). Since June 2015, he is a Research Associate at Imperial College London - Mobility Reading Group: see his new home page.

He earned his PhD in May 2015 (score: excellent). Before his PhD studies, he earned a BSc and a MSc in Informatics (both with honours) at the University of Cagliari, and has been involved in research and development projects at CRS4 (Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia).

Research interests

Formal methods, concurrency, distributed systems, contract-oriented computing, contracts, behavioural and session types, programming languages.

Peer-reviewed publications

• M. Bartoletti, M. Murgia, A. Scalas. R. Zunino. Verifiable abstractions for contract-oriented systems. Accepted for publication in Journal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming, 2015.
• A. Scalas, M. Bartoletti. The LTS WorkBench. Proc. ICE 2015, 4-5 June 2015, Granoble, France. For the implementation, see the LTS WorkBench page
• M. Bartoletti, J. Lange, A. Scalas, R. Zunino. Choreographies in the wild. Accepted for publication in Science of Computer Programming, 2014.
• M. Bartoletti, A. Scalas, R. Zunino. A semantic deconstruction of session types. Proc. CONCUR'14, 1-6 September 2014, Rome, Italy. (For an extended version with proofs, see the PhD thesis below)
• M. Bartoletti, M. Murgia, A. Scalas, R. Zunino. Modelling and verifying contract-oriented systems in Maude. WRLA'14, 5-6 April 2014, Grenoble, France. Extended version available on the TCS publications page.
• J. Lange, A. Scalas. Choreography synthesis as contract agreement. ICE 2013, 6 June 2013 , Florence, Italy. Extended version available on the TCS publications page.
• M. Bartoletti, A. Scalas, E. Tuosto, R. Zunino. Honesty by typing. FORTE/FMOODS'13, 3-6 June 2013, Florence, Italy. Extended technical report available on the TCS publications page.
• A. Scalas, G. Casu, P. Pili. High-performance technical computing with Erlang. ACM SIGPLAN Erlang Workshop (satellite event of ACM ICFP 2008), 27 September 2008, Victoria, BC, Canada.

Peer-reviewed workshops (without formal proceedings)

• M. Bartoletti, A. Scalas, R. Zunino. Towards a theory of honesty. HotSpot'14, 5 April 2014, Grenoble, France.
• M. Bartoletti, A. Scalas, E. Tuosto, R. Zunino. Honesty by typing (preliminar version). BEAT'13, 22 January 2013, Rome, Italy.
• M. Bartoletti, A. Scalas, E. Tuosto, R. Zunino. What if contracts are violated? (short paper). FLACOS'12, 19 September 2012, Bertinoro, Italy.

PhD Thesis

A semantic deconstruction of session types. Successfully defended on May 2015 (final score: excellent)

• PhD thesis reviewers: Simon Gay, Luca Padovani
• PhD commission: Rocco De Nicola (president), Marco Tarini, Nicoletta Dessì

Research projects

• During PhD:
  • Behavioural Types for Reliable Large-Scale Software Systems (BETTY) - EU COST Action IC1201 - WG1 (Foundations) and WG2 (Security).
  • Security Horizons - MIUR PRIN 2010-11.
  • TESLA - Autonomous Region of Sardinia grant L.R.7/2007-CRP2_120.
  • TRICS - Autonomous Region of Sardinia grant L.R.7/2007-CRP-17285.
• Past:
  • 2006-2010 (at CRS4): MIUR FAR 630 project "Innovative models and methodologies for control, diagnostics and management of combined gas-steam thermoelectric power plants, under highly variable and perturbed working conditions". Tasks: design, development and formal analysis of a framework for parallel and distributed real-time numerical computing, aimed at industrial applications. Author of the Foreign Function Interface for Erlang proposal (EEP 7).
    • 2001-2002 (at CRS4): MIUR LAPS Cluster 22, Project 41D "Laboratory for Advanced Design and Simulation". Tasks: analysis of existing volume/CSG rendering software, implementation of additional algorithms, evaluation for applicability on various tasks (medical imaging, industrial processes).

Other writings

• M. Bartoletti, T. Cimoli, A. Scalas. Notes on contract-oriented computing (2013).
• A. Scalas. On the security of social networks - Literature review on ReBAC policies and Sybil defences (2012).

Other public talks, seminars, etc.

• A. Scalas. A gentle introduction to concurrency theory.
  • CRS4, May 26, 2015.
• M. Bartoletti, A. Scalas, R. Zunino. A semantic deconstruction of session types.
  • Imperial College London, December 4, 2014.
  • University of Glasgow, February 3, 2015.
• M. Bartoletti, A. Scalas, E. Tuosto, R. Zunino. Contract-oriented computing in CO₂. Presented at:
  • University of Cagliari - MSc Seminar, course on "Foundations of security" (December 17-18, 2013)
  • OPLSS 2013 Student Talks (August 1, 2013)
  • University of Cagliari - PhD/MSc Seminar, course on "Foundations of security" (March 26, 2013)
  • University of Pisa - "Mauriana Pesaresi" PhD Seminars (December 13, 2012)
  • University of Leicester - PhD Seminars (October 4, 2012)
  • FOSAD 2012 - open session (September 8, 2012)

Other PhD activities

• 2013, 2014: Teaching assistant for the Automata and Formal Languages course (for the BSc degree in Informatics)
• 1 December 2014 - 13 February 2015: visiting student at Imperial College London (UK). Supervisor: Prof. Nobuko Yoshida.
• 15 October - 30 November 2012: visiting student at the University of Leicester (UK). Supervisor: Dr. Emilio Tuosto.
• Attended conferences, workshops, etc.:
  • ETAPS'15 and BETTY meeting - London, April 11-18, 2015
  • BETTY meeting, BEAT'14, TGC'14 - Rome, 31 August - 6 September 2014
  • ETAPS'14, PLACES'14 and BETTY meeting - Grenoble, 5-13 April 2014
  • BEAT 2 and BETTY meeting - Madrid, 23-26 September 2013
  • BETTY meeting - Rome, 24 March 2013
  • POPL'13 + tutorial sessions - Rome, 21-25 January 2013
• PhD schools:
  • BETTY Summer School 2014 - 30 June - 4 July 2014, Lovran (Croatia)
  • OPLSS 2013 - July 22 - August 3, University of Oregon, Eugene (USA)
  • BiSS 2013 - 3-9 March 2013, Bertinoro (Italy)
  • FOSAD 2012 - 3-8 September 2012, Bertinoro (Italy)
  • BiSS 2012 - 12-16 March 2012, Bertinoro (Italy)