Test-of-Time Tool Award

The test-of-time tool award is granted to tools from the ETAPS community that has proved its impact and qualities over past years.

Call for Nominations

Research tools are a corner stone of our work.

To acknowledge the importance of reliable and well-maintained research tools and the significant effort that their creation and maintenance entails, ETAPS has established a test-of-time award for research tools that have had a lasting effect on our community.

To this end, the award committee is soliciting award nominations.

Eligibility Criteria

Tools eligible for receiving the award should be at least 5 years old, counting from the first publication related to it, and must have a clear and significant link to ETAPS. The nomination template provides further details and options. Self-nominations are possible.

Nomination and Selection Procedures

Nominations should be sent by 1 March 2024 (any time zone) to the ToTT award committee.

Send Nomination

Please send your nominations to award committee by 1 March 2024 (any time zone) attaching the nomination text following the provided template.

The award committee will select a research tool from the nominations based on the tool’s lasting community impact.

The nominations will remain valid for 5 years, that is, once nominated, the tools will be reconsidered.

Award Presentation

The award will be presented for the first time at ETAPS 2023. The awardee will receive an award certificate and an unrestricted gift of 1000 €, and will be given the opportunity to present the tool at ETAPS.

Award Committee

  • Dirk Beyer (committee chair)
  • Stefan Winter
  • Andrzej Wąsowski
  • Holger Hermanns
  • Vasco Vasconcelos
  • Anton Wijs

Award Winners

2024

The 2024 ETAPS Test-of-Time Tool Award went to Marta Kwiatkowska, Gethin Norman, and David Parker for their tool PRISM.

PRISM is a probabilistic model checker. It has been developed and maintained at Oxford University over the past 25 years.

It is THE software tool that demonstrated that probabilistic model checking is feasible. And easy-to-use. And easy-to-install. And applicable across a very large spectrum of problems. From Ethereum smart contracts to ribosome kinetics.

At its core, the tool supports formal modeling and analysis of systems with random or probabilistic behavior, and it can analyze a wide spectrum of models based on Markov chains and probabilistic automata. It by now features many extensions, is actively maintained, and very broadly applied, also in various communities that do not know about ETAPS.

PRISM is released under an open-source license. The software tool is actively developed and shows 18 code contributors. The publications describing the tool have had considerable impact on very many research projects. In summary, the award committee wants to recognize this fantastic tool and the contribution of PRISM to the ETAPS research community by awarding it the second ETAPS Test-of-Time Tool Award.

The awarded developers are three distinguished members of our community. Many congratulations!

Award Committee

Dirk Beyer (chair), Stefan Winter, Andrzej Wąsowski, Holger Hermanns, Vasco Vasconcelos, Anton Wijs

2023

The 2023 ETAPS Test-of-Time Tool Award went to Hubert Garavel, Frédéric Lang, Radu Mateescu, and Wendelin Serwe for their tool CADP: Construction and Analysis of Distributed Processes.

CADP is a verification tool box that originates from VERIMAG and has for many years been developed at INRIA Grenoble. The toolbox comprises over 40 interconnected components that altogether support the construction, verification and testing of concurrent systems. CADP is distinguished by a development history of more than three decades (even older than ETAPS), and thus is one of the earliest tools developed in our community.

Yet, it is very actively and professionally developed, features plenty of industrial use cases in a spectrum from Airbus to Google, and various publications describing the tool advancement have been published at ETAPS.

So, the committee wants to recognize this enormous research and engineering effort, and the contribution of CADP to the ETAPS community by awarding it the very first ever Test-of-Time Tool Award.

Award Committee

Dirk Beyer (chair), Stefan Winter, Andrzej Wąsowski, Holger Hermanns, Brigitte Pientka, Anton Wijs