M. Bernardo, E.P. de Vink, A. Di Pierro and H. Wiklicky (eds.)
Formal Methods for Dynamical Systems: advanced lectures of the 13th
international School on Formal Methods for the design of computer,
communication and software systems (SFM 2013), Bertinoro, Italy, June
2013

This volume presents a set of papers accompanying the lectures of the
13th Inter national School on Formal Methods for the Design of
Computer, Communication and Software Systems (SFM). The series of
schools addresses the use of formal methods in computer science as a
prominent approach to the rigorous design of the above-mentioned
systems. The main aim of the SFM series is to offer a good spectrum of
current research in foundations as well as applications of formal
methods, which can be of help for graduate students and young
researchers who intend to approach the field. 

SFM 2013 was devoted to dynamical systems and covered several topics
including chaotic dynamics, information theory, systems biology,
hybrid systems, quantum computing, and automata-based models and model
checking. This volume comprises 5 articles. The paper by Kopf and
Rybalchenko addresses the automation of the analysis of quantitative
information-theoretic confidentiality properties through approximation
and randomization techniques. Gratie, Iancu, and Petre introduce some
of the basics of modeling with ODEs in biology by focussing on
computational, numerical techniques for reaction-based models. The
paper by Brim, Ceska, and Safranek presents a selection of approaches
used for modeling biological systems and formalizing their interesting
properties in temporal logics, together with high performance
model-checking techniques. Bortolussi and Hillston describe recent
work on the use of fluid approximation techniques in the context of
stochastic model checking for population models in which a large
number of individual agents interact. Finally, Pachos's paper is an
introduction to topological quantum computation. 

We believe that this book offers a useful view of what has been done
and what is going on worldwide in the field of formal methods for
dynamical systems. We wish to thank all the speakers and all the
participants for a lively and fruitful school. We also wish to thank
the entire staff of the University Residential Center of Bertinoro for
the organizational and administrative support.