Welcome to the webpage of ANR project FANs. The project started the 1st of January 2019 and will finish at the end of December 2023.
An increasing number of interaction systems is being understood as computational processes. At the foundation of these, interactions and dynamics do combine in a fascinating way. Our understanding of such processes sheds light on real interaction systems, omnipresent in physics, in biology, in daily life.
The objective of FANs is precisely to develop further our knowledge of automata networks (ANs), a reference abstract model for such systems, through fundamental and in-depth studies on the characteristics of computational processes that govern them. In other words, FANs aims at “augmenting the theory of ANs”, via approaches from fundamental computer science. Our motivation comes from : 1) the fact that we think that fundamental computer science gives an appropriate framework for the study of such networks, 2) our interest for real life networks, which drives us to study AN per se rather than as a tool for modelling. Indeed, we are convinced that this constructive and innovative approach perfectly fits the objective of finding general laws, necessary for understanding real systems.
Despite the (deliberate) simplicity of ANs, they can at the same time simulate a Turing machine in constant space, catch the natural way of designing interactions, and model their dynamics as observed in real networks. However, even though this model has been introduced in the 1940s, the state of the art assesses a form of paradox between the interest given to ANs from the applicative point of view and the current weaknesses from the theoretical point of view. Yet, it seems essential to boil down this paradox by the development of AN theory, in order to renew applicative fallouts. In this sense, FANs is in favour of a come-back to the roots of AN theory, by paying attention to fundamental problems of dynamics, complexity, and computability.
FANs offers to study the dynamics of ANs with a special concern on the concept of intrinsic simulation. Although largely examined in the framework of cellular automata, tilings and self-assembly, the concept of intrinsic simulation has not yet been seen in depth in the context of ANs. Nevertheless, it is central for the understanding of what founds/builds information transmissions and computations operated in discrete dynamical systems. Thereby, FANs proposes to develop this innovative concept in order to better understand the dynamical and computational complexity of ANs. Moreover, another objective of FANs is to establish formal relations between static characteristics (i.e., their interaction graphs and their local functions) and dynamics (i.e., their transition graphs) of ANs, with a particular care on the links between cycles of interactions and their attractors and basins. Here, we propose to lead works combining dynamical system theory and combinatorics, by improving the existing bound on the number of fixed points of ANs admitting a given interaction graph. Towards this aim, we will consider the influence of negative feedback cycles, which has never been done before. Furthermore, we will initiate studies regarding the counting of complex attractors, which hardly depend on update modes. The latter organise updates over discrete time, and their influence will also be studied in order to better understand causal relations within the dynamics of AN. In the long term, these developments will also surely participate in understanding problems related to the synthesis and composition of such networks, which have strong applicative impacts in biology, on the nowadays key questions of functional modularity in gene regulatory networks and cellular reprogramming.
Sylvain Sené (head), Professeur des universités, Laboratoire d’Informatique et Systèmes, Université d’Aix-Marseille.
2019 January 25th
Kick-off meeting in Marseille (France).
2019 February 15th
Internal meeting on sequential programming in Marseille (St Charles).
2019 February 25th - March 3rd
Julio Aracena, Professor at the University of Concepción (Chile), comes to Marseille to visit us.
2019 March 1st
Internal meeting on simulation definitions in Marseille (St Charles).
2019 March 4th - March 8th
Kévin Perrot gives a talk on maximum fixed point problem at the International Conference on Algorithms, optimization and Learning in Dynamic Environments, AOL’19 in Hanoi (Vietnam), and visits Ha Duong Phan at the Institute of Mathematics of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology.
2019 March 11th - March 14th
Nicolas Durbec presents a poster on maximum fixed point problem at the GDR IM annual days in Orléans (France).
2019 April 2nd
Internal meeting on complexity questions in Marseille (Luminy).
2019 April 2nd
Group seminary with Pedro Balbi de Oliveira on Could density determination be solved with one-dimensional binary cellular automata with asynchronous update?.
2019 April 30th
Group seminary with Sylvère Gangloff on The search for a complexity notion for organised dynamical systems.
2019 May 6th
Group seminary with Eurico Ruivo on Inference and of elementary cellular automata limit-graphs.
2019 May 16th - May 17th
Jacques Demongeot and François Robert, resp. Professor emeritus and former Professsor at Grenoble University, come to Marseille to visit us.
2019 May 18th
Kévin Perrot gives a popularisation talk on complexity and computability - on solving problems with computers at the regional day of association of mathematics teachers in public schools (APMEP) in Marseille (Saint-Charles).
2019 May 20th
Sylvain Sené gives a popularisation talk on natural computation for life sciences, and vice versa! at the MPCI thematic school 2019 in Marseille (Château-Gombert).
2019 May 23th
Group seminary with Sara Riva on Solving equations on discrete dynamical systems.
2019 July 1st
Adrien Richard and Sylvain Sené become members of the scientific committee of the International Workshop on Boolean Networks 2020 (IWBN’20) that will take place in 2020 January in Concepcíon, Chile.
2019 July 9th
Group seminary with Enrico Formenti on Computational complexity of finite asynchronous cellular automata.
2019 July 15th
Florian Bridoux defends his PhD thesis in Marseille.
2019 July 19th
Florian Bridoux gives a talk on complexity and fixed points in Boolean networks at the conference Computability in Europe in Durham (UK).
2019 September 1st - 2020 June 31st
Kévin Perrot leads a MATh.en.JEANS group (one year of research with a group of pupils supervised by a math teacher) with lycée Mendes-France (Vitrolles) on Un zéro surprenant… (identity of a finite dynamical system, the sandpile group).
2019 September 1st - 2020 December 31st
Kévin Perrot visits I3S Lab. at Sophia Antipolis, thanks to his CNRS delegation.
2019 October 10th
Internal meeting on complexity questions and Rice theorem in Marseille (Luminy).
2019 October 15th
Internal meeting on simulation definitions in Marseille (Luminy).
2019 October 22nd
Internal meeting on complexity questions and Rice theorem in Marseille (Luminy).
2019 November 14th
Participation to the Automata Factory 2 workshop at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Santiago, Chile) of Kévin Perrot (talk on complexity of attractor problems in Boolean networks) and Pacôme Perrotin (talk on adding inputs to automata networks).
2019 November 25th - December 6th
Marco Montalva-Medel, Assistant Professor at the University Adolfo Ibañez (Chile), comes to Marseille to visit us.
2019 November 26th
Internal meeting on updating modes and clocks in Marseille (Luminy).
2019 November 28th
Internal meeting on complexity questions and Rice theorem in Marseille (Luminy).
2019 December 10th
Internal meeting on simulation definitions in Marseille (Luminy).
2019 December 20th
Internal meeting on simulation definitions in Marseille (St Charles).
2020 January 7th
Group seminary with Nicolas Schabanel on Simple intrinsic simulation of cellular automata in oritatami molecular folding model.
2020 January 8th
Florian Bridoux gives a talk on complexity of limit cycle problems in conjunctive networks with different schedules at the International Workshop on Boolean Networks, IWBN’20 in Concepcíon (Chile).
2020 January 8th
Adrien Richard gives a talk on synchronizing Boolean networks asynchronously at the International Workshop on Boolean Networks, IWBN’20 in Concepcíon (Chile).
2020 January 16th
Internal meeting on simulation definitions in Marseille (Luminy).
2020 February 3rd
Internal meeting on updating modes and complexity in Marseille (St Charles).
2020 February 7th
Internal meeting on simulation definitions in Marseille (Luminy).
2020 February 18th
Internal meeting on simulation definitions and complexity in Marseille (Luminy).
2020 March 1st - ...
COVID-19 pandemic constrains FANs activities.
2020 March 15th - 2020 May 15th
French COVID-19 1st confinement severely constrains FANs activities.
2020 April 14th
Group seminary with Marius Buliga on Molecular computers in artificial chemistry.
2020 June 12th
Internal meeting on complexity questions and Rice theorem in Marseille (St Charles).
2020 June 15th
Internal meeting on simulation questions in Marseille (St Charles).
2020 June 29th
Lucas Venturini gives an online talk on ♯P-completeness of counting update digraphs, cacti, and series-parallel decomposition method at the conference Computability in Europe, CiE’20 in Salerne (Italy).
2020 July 1st
Florian Bridoux gives an online talk on simulation in automata networks at the conference Computability in Europe, CiE’20 in Salerne (Italy).
2020 July 1st
Beginning of the organisation of the joint events AUTOMATA and WAN 2021.
2020 July 17th
Internal meeting on complexity questions and Rice theorem in Marseille (St Charles).
2020 August 11th
Florian Bridoux gives an online talk on commutative automata networks at the International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems, AUTOMATA’20 in Stockholm (Sweden).
2020 October 6th
Group seminary with Enrico Porreca on The semiring of dynamical systems.
2020 October 20th
Pacôme Perrotin gives an online talk on the complexity of acyclic modules in automata networks at the International Conference on Theory and Applications of Models of Computation, TAMC’20 in Changsha (China).
2020 October 27th
Group seminary with Guilhem Gamard on Rice-like theorems for automata networks.
2020 October 30th - 2020 December 15th
French COVID-19 2nd confinement severely constrains FANs activities.
2020 November 2nd
Online Meeting on AUTOMATA 2021 scientific organisation.
2020 November 20th
Online meeting on WAN scientific organisation.
2020 November 27th
Online participation to the Automata Factory 3 workshop organised by Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Santiago, Chile) of Guillaume Theyssier (talk on expansive automata networks).
2020 November 27th
Online participation to the SDA2 workshop organised by GREYC lab (Caen, France) of Guillaume Theyssier (talk on parametrized complexity of freezing dynamics).
2021 January 5th
Group seminary with Pacôme Perrotin on Simulation between natural computing models and automata network modularity.
2021 January 12th
Pacôme Perrotin defends his PhD thesis in Marseille.
2021 January 28th
Florian Bridoux gives an online talk on complexity of limit-cycle problems in Boolean networks at the International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, SOFSEM’21 in Bolzano-Bozen (Italy).
2021 February 2nd
Internal meeting on simulation in Marseille (St Charles).
2021 February 12th
Internal meeting on simulation in Marseille (St Charles).
2021 February 16th
Kévin Perrot gives a popularisation talk on some fun around cellular automata at C@fé de l’Association des Doctorants en Sciences et Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (ADSTIC) (Université Côte d’Azur).
2021 March 12th
Internal meeting on simulation in Marseille (St Charles).
2021 March 18th
Guilhem Gamard gives an online talk on Rice-like theorems for automata networks at the International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, STACS’21 in Saarbrücken (Germany).
2021 April 3rd - 2021 June 30th
French COVID-19 3rd confinement severely constrains FANs activities.
2021 May 31st
Martín Ríos Wilson defends his PhD thesis in Santiago (Chile).
2021 June 14th
Sylvain Sené gives a presentation on Boolean networks at the LACL Seminary in Créteil.
2021 July 12th - 2021 July 17th
AUTOMATA and WAN 2021
2021 July 13th
Amélia Durbec gives a presentation on graph subshifts at the International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems, AUTOMATA’21 in Marseille.
2021 July 14th
Pacôme Perrotin gives a presentation on associating parallel automata network dynamics and strictly one-way cellular automata at the International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems, AUTOMATA’21 in Marseille.
2021 July 14th
Sylvain Sené introduces the Workshop on Automata Networks, WAN’21 in Marseille.
2021 July 14th
Enrico Porreca gives a presentation on dynamical systems and their algebra at the Workshop on Automata Networks, WAN’21 in Marseille.
2021 July 15th
Pierre Guillon gives a presentation on the simulation notion at the International Workshop on Automata Networks, WAN’21 in Marseille.
2021 July 15th
Florian Bridoux gives a presentation on complete simulation in automata networks at the International Workshop on Automata Networks, WAN’21 in Marseille.
2021 July 16th
Guilhem Gamard gives a presentation on Rice-like theorems for automata networks at the International Workshop on Automata Networks, WAN’21 in Marseille.
2021 July 16th
Kévin Perrot gives a presentation on Complexities of block-sequential update modes at the International Workshop on Automata Networks, WAN’21 in Marseille.
2021 September 21st
Pacôme Perrotin gives an online presentation on optimising attractor computation in Boolean automata networks at International Conference on Language and Automata Theory and Applications, LATA’21 in Milan (Italy).
2021 November 4th
Group seminary with Shyan Shaer Akmal on Majority-3SAT (and related problems) in polynomial time.
2021 November 25th
Kévin Perrot gives a presentation on Sandpiles and Tutte polynomial at the seminar of ALMOST team from David laboratory, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.
2021 December 9th - 2021 July 10th
Online participation to the Automata Factory 4 workshop organised by Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Santiago, Chile) of Kévin Perrot (talk on Complexities of automata networks).
2022 March 8th
Kévin Perrot gives a presentation on Théorème du point fixe de Kleene en calculabilité at the seminar of CANA team.
2022 March 14th
Kévin Perrot gives a presentation on What computers cannot do at the internal seminar of CENTURI project.
2022 April 5th
Group seminary with Sara Riva on A pipeline for solving equations over discrete dynamical systems.
2022 May 21st - 2022 July 11th
Pablo Concha, PhD student from the University Adolfo Ibañez (Chile) in cotutelle with AMU co-supervised by Eric Goles, Pedro Montealegre and Kévin Perrot, comes to Marseille to visit us.
2022 June 3rd
Kévin Perrot gives a presentation on Automata network’s interaction graph and complexity at the GT Bioss seminar from GDR-IM.
2022 June 4th - 2022 July 14th
Eric Goles, Full Professor at the University Adolfo Ibañez (Chile), comes to Marseille to visit us.
2022 June 21st
Group seminary with Éric Rémila on Influence - a partizan scoring game on graphs.
2022 June 28th - 2022 July 12th
Martín Ríos Wilson, Assistant Professor at the University Adolfo Ibañez (Chile), comes to Marseille to visit us.
2022 July 5th
Dia Chileno at Luminy (blackboard exchanges gathering 11 people from the community) with our guests from Chile: Pablo Concha, Eric Goles and Martín Ríos Wilson.
2022 July 10th - 2022 July 17th
Lilian Salinas and Julio Aracena, resp. Associate and Full Professors at the University of Concepción (Chile), come to Marseille visit us.
2022 September 11th - 2022 October 28th
Ignacio Osorio, PhD student from the University of Concepción (Chile), come to Nice to visit Adrien Richard.
2022 October 4th
Group seminary with Aymeric Picard Marchetto on Interaction graphs of isomorphic automata networks.
2022 October 20th
Kévin Perrot gives a public talk on Le jeu de la vie : quand le complexe émerge du simple at the Alcazar library, for the outreach event La science pour tous of CENTURI project.
2023 February
The project FANs has been selected and will participate to the Festival On’R (ANR project FESTIV-On’R-1819 coordinated and obtained by AMU through the call SAPS-CSTI-Générique 18/19), which will take place in Marseille in May-June 2024 and will be dedicated to popularising science.
2023 March 13th
Group seminary with Ekaterina Timofeeva on Generation and decomposition of dynamical systems.
2023 March 22nd - 2023 March 23rd
ANs’ Days on finite dynamical systems and complexity in Marseille.
2023 May 2nd
Group seminary with Eurico Ruivo on An asynchronous solution to the synchronisation problem for binary one-dimensional cellular automata.
2023 May 30th
Group seminary with Van-Giang Trinh on Trap spaces of Boolean networks are conflict-free siphons of their Petri net encoding.
2023 June 5th - 2023 March 9th
Sylvain Sené is an invited Professor at the CNRS Bioregul thematic research school, and gives a course on automata networks.
2023 June 14th
Half-day on locality, grouping together members of FANs and members of the DALGO research group of LIS.
2023 June 20th
Group seminary with Enrico Formenti on An introduction on formal series I.
2023 July 4th
Group seminary with Enrico Formenti on An introduction on formal series II.
2023 October 8th
Kévin Perrot gives a public lecture on the Game of Life cellular automaton, at lycée Marseilleveyre (13008), for the national event Fête de la science.
2023 October 18th - 2023 October 20th
Two entire days in between Marseille and Nice, grouping together members of FANs to work on automata networks, far from the everyday life.
2023 October 23rd - 2023 October 27th
Kévin Perrot guides a group of two teenagers on the generation of Long cycles in Boolean automata networks, during the autumn Cigales school at CIRM.
2023 November 7th
Group seminary with Enrico Formenti on An introduction on formal series III.
2023 November 14th
Group seminary with Athénaïs Vaginay on From reaction networks to Boolean networks - why and how.
2023 November 28th
Group seminary with Augusto Modanese on tba.
2023 December 12th
Group seminary with Célia Biane on Biological networks - from Boolean models in computational precision oncology to experimental neurosciences.
Julio Aracena, Adrien Richard, and Lilian Salinas. Maximum number of fixed points in AND-OR-NOT networks. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 80:1175–1190, 2014.
Julio Aracena, Adrien Richard, and Lilian Salinas. Number of fixed points and disjoint cycles in monotone Boolean networks. SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, 31:1702–1725, 2017.
Florian Bridoux, Pierre Guillon, Kévin Perrot, Sylvain Sené, and Guillaume Theyssier. On the cost of simulating a parallel Boolean automata network by a block-sequential one. Proceedings of TAMC’17, LNCS 10185, 112–128, 2017.
Jacques Demongeot, Mathilde Noual, and Sylvain Sené. Combinatorics of Boolean automata circuits dynamics. Discrete Applied Mathematics, 160: 398–415, 2012.
Maximilien Gadouleau and Adrien Richard. Simple dynamics on graphs. Theoretical Computer Science, 628:62–77, 2016.
Tarek Melliti, Damien Regnault, Adrien Richard, and Sylvain Sené. Asynchronous simulation of Boolean networks by monotone Boolean networks. Proceedings of ACRI’16, LNCS 9863, 182–191, Springer, 2016.
Tarek Melliti, Mathilde Noual, Damien Regnault, Sylvain Sené, and Jérémy Sobieraj. Asynchronous dynamics of Boolean automata double-cycles. Proceedings of UCNC’15, LNCS 9252, 250–262, Springer, 2015.
Tarek Melliti, Damien Regnault, Adrien Richard, and Sylvain Sené. On the convergence of Boolean automata networks without negative cycles. Proceedings of AUTOMATA’13, LNCS 8155, 124–138, Springer, 2013.
Mathilde Noual and Sylvain Sené. Synchronism vs asynchronism in monotonic Boolean automata networks. Natural Computing, 17:393–402, 2018.