The 31st International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems (AUTOMATA) will take place between June 30 and July 2, 2025 at the Université de Lille in France. It will be followed by the Workshop on Automata Networks (WAN) that will take place between July 2 and July 4, 2025.

Scope

Papers presenting original and unpublished research on all fundamental aspects of cellular automata (CA), and related discrete complex systems (DCS), such as automata networks and sandpile models, are sought.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Dynamic, topological, ergodic, algebraic and combinatorial aspects
• Algorithmic, computability and complexity issues
• Information-theoretic aspects
• Emergent properties
• Formal languages
• Symbolic dynamics and connections to continuous systems
• Tilings, rewriting and substitution systems
• Computability theory
• Models of parallelism and distributed systems
• Asynchronous versus synchronous models
• CA in machine and deep learning

The conference is not restricted to the more theoretical aspects of the topics listed above, all applications are also important and interesting topics for the conference.

Important Dates

Full Papers

• Submission deadline: 1 April
• Notification to authors:  1 May
• Camera-ready papers: 15 May

Exploratory Papers (and extended abstracts)

• Submission deadline: 15 May
• Notification to authors: 25 May
• Camera-ready papers: 30 May

Submission Guidelines

There are three categories of submission: full papers, exploratory papers and extended abstracts. Full papers are meant to report more complete and denser research, while exploratory papers allows quick reporting of recent discoveries, work-in-progress or partial results. Submissions in the full paper category are refereed and selected by the program committee. Exploratory papers go through a lighter evaluation process. All accepted papers must be presented at the conference.

Submissions should contain original research that has not previously been published. Concurrent submissions to other conferences/journals are not allowed. Supplementary material that exceeds the below mentioned page limits may be included as an appendix and will be considered at the committee’s discretion (note that appendices will not be published in the proceedings). 

Extended abstracts allows the presentation of topics that are intended to be interesting for the CA and DCS community. They may contain content that has already been published or new ideas that can be presented but are not fully matured.

Authors are invited to submit papers of no more than 16 pages for full papers, 8 pages for exploratory papers and 4 pages for extended abstracts. Submission must be formatted in LaTeX using the LNCS format and submitted in Portable Document Format (PDF).

All papers are to be submitted via the EasyChair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=automata2025). 

Proceedings and Journal Special Issue

Accepted full papers will appear in the proceedings published by Springer in the LNCS Series. Exploratory papers and extended abstracts will not be included in the LNCS proceedings, but will be published as local proceedings and uploaded on an open access repository.

A special issue of an international journal will be proposed for the publication of extended versions of some selected papers.

Invited Speakers

• Bastien Chopard, University of Geneva, Switzerland 
• Stefan Haar, INRIA Saclay, France
• Irène Marcovici, Universié de Rouen Normandie, France
• Barbara Wolnik, University of Gdansk, Poland 

Committees

Program Committee

• Jan Baetens, Ghent University, Belgium
• Pedro Paulo Balbi, Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, Brazil
• Kamalika Bhattacharjee, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India
• Alonso Castillo-Ramirez, Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico
• Alberto Dennunzio, Universita degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Italy
• Nazim Fatès, Inria Centre Université de Lorraine, France
• Paola Flocchini, University of Ottawa, Canada
• Enrico Formenti, Université Côte d'Azur, France
• Maximilien Gadouleau, Durham University, United Kingdom
• Anahí Gajardo, Universidad de Concepción, Chile
• Pierre Guillon, CNRS & Aix-Marseille Université, France
• Katsunobu Imai, Fukuyama University, Japan
• Jarkko Kari, University of Turku, Finland
• Kutrib Martin, Universität Gießen, Germany
• Jia Lee, Chongqing University, China
• Malcher Andreas, Universität Gießen, Germany
• Luca Manzoni, University of Trieste, Italy
• Perdo Montealegre, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
• Ollinger Nicolas, Université d'Orléans, France
• Kévin Perrot, Université Aix-Marseille, France
• Adrien Richard, CNRS & Université Côte d'Azur, France (chair)
• Sara Riva, Université de Lille, France (chair)
• Dipanwita Roy Chawdhury, IIT Kharagpur, India
• Ville Salo, University of Turku, Finland
• Guillaume Theyssier, CNRS & Université Aix-Marseille, France
• Ilkka Törmä, University of Turku, Finland
• Barbara Wolnik, University of Gdansk, Poland

Steering Committee

• Pedro Paulo Balbi, Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, Brazil
• Nazim Fatès, Inria Centre Université de Lorraine, France
• Luca Manzoni, University of Trieste, Italy
• Dipanwita Roy Chowdhury, IIT Kharagpur, India
• Maximilien Gadouleau, Durham University, United Kingdom

Organizing Committee

• Maxime Folschette, Centrale Lille Institut, France
• Clémence Prévost, Université de Lille, France
• Adrien Richard, CNRS et Université Côte d'Azur, France
• Sara Riva, Université de Lille, France
• Cristian Versari, Université de Lille, France

Contact

All questions should be emailed to automata-wan-2025@univ-lille.fr