Luxembourg wins bid to host SPLC 2024
Luxembourg has been chosen to host the Systems and Software Product Line Conference 2024. The event will be held over several days in the first half of September 2024, with the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) and the University of Luxembourg serving as the main hosts. The SPLC is a forum for practitioners, researchers, and educators to present themselves and talk about “the most recent ideas, innovations, trends, experiences, and concerns in systems and software product lines and systems and software product family engineering,” according to the organisation.
Dr. Maxime Cordy, a research scientist at SnT, played a key role in bringing the event to Luxembourg. With an extensive background in SPLC-related fields such as software engineering, software quality assurance, model checking, and applied artificial intelligence, he has attended many editions of the SPLC and has served as chair for other conferences. His efforts to bring SPLC 2024 to Luxembourg were aided by fellow researchers and the event team at SnT, the University of Luxembourg, the Luxembourg Convention Bureau, and other partners.
The Grand Duchy is an ideal location for such a conference, as the University of Luxembourg hosts three strong software engineering research groups headed by world-class researchers. These include Security, Reasoning and Validation (SeRVal), which is headed by Prof. Yves Le Traon; Software Verification and Validation (SVV), led by Prof. Lionel Briand; and Trustworthy Software (TruX), overseen by Prof. Jacques Klein. These researchers have published papers in SPLC research in top SPLC and software engineering journals.
Prof. David Benavides, Chair of the SPLC, says that Luxembourg was also selected in large part thanks to the compelling proposal put forth by the Luxembourg Convention Bureau. Outside of the academic and research excellence, the main draws include the attractiveness of the location, the centrality of Luxembourg, and the ease of travelling to it.
As SPLC has never been held in Luxembourg, it will leave a strong scientific heritage for the university and the business community, not only in Luxembourg, but in the entire Greater Region that also comprises parts of France, Belgium, and Germany. Delegates will also make personal connections with the practitioners, researchers, and educators in Luxembourg, and they will discover the research done on site.
SPLC also confers a substantial economic boost. As the gathering is expected to draw up to 300 attendees, it will create for Luxembourg an economic impact of nearly €1.5 million, according to estimates.
The SPLC is an international collaboration that unites two former large-scale sector events, one based in the U.S. and another that originated in Europe, making it a truly trans-Atlantic conference. The SPLC was created almost three decades ago with a focus on software product lines, but since then it has grown into a sizable event for many closely related areas including configurable systems, product configuration, and software variability.
