Call for Papers: FMCAD 2025

FMCAD 2025, the twenty-fifth conference in the series on the theory and applications of formal methods in hardware and system verification, will be held in Menlo Park, California, USA, from October 6 to October 10, 2025.

FMCAD provides a leading forum for researchers in academia and industry to present and discuss groundbreaking methods, technologies, theoretical results, and tools for reasoning formally about computing systems. The conference covers formal aspects of computer-aided system design including verification, specification, synthesis, and testing.

FMCAD 2025 is co-located with HWMCC 2025 and VSTTE 2025, and includes the FMCAD Student Forum.

General Information

• Conference Website: https://fmcad.org/FMCAD25/
• Conference Location: SRI Headquarters, Menlo Park, California, USA
• Conference Dates: October 6-10, 2025

Topics of Interest

FMCAD welcomes submission of papers reporting original research on advances in all aspects of formal methods and their applications to computer-aided design. Topics include (but are not limited to):

• Model checking, theorem proving, equivalence checking, abstraction and reduction, compositional methods, decision procedures at the bit- and word-level, probabilistic methods, combinations of deductive methods and decision procedures.
• Synthesis and compilation for computer system descriptions, modeling, specification, and implementation languages, formal semantics of languages and their subsets, model-based design, design derivation and transformation, correct-by-construction methods.
• Application of formal and semi-formal methods to functional and non-functional specification and validation of hardware and software, including timing and power modeling, verification of computing systems on all levels of abstraction, system-level design and verification for embedded systems, cyber-physical systems, automotive systems and other safety-critical systems, hardware-software co-design and verification, and transaction-level verification.
• Experience with the application of formal and semi-formal methods to industrial-scale designs; tools that represent formal verification enablement, new features, or a substantial improvement in the automation of formal methods.
• Application of formal methods to verifying safety, connectivity and security properties of networks, distributed systems, smart contracts, block chains, and IoT devices.
• Application of formal methods to the analysis of machine learning systems, and applications of machine learning to enhance formal methods techniques.

Important Dates

All deadlines are 11:59 pm AoE (Anywhere on Earth)

• Abstract Submission Deadline: April 20, 2025 April 28, 2025 April 30, 2025
• Paper Submission Deadline: April 27, 2025 May 5, 2025
• Author Response: June 17 - June 20, 2025
• Author Notification: July 1, 2025
• Camera-Ready Version Deadline: TBD
• Student Forum Abstract Submission: Monday, July 7, 2025
• Student Forum Submission: Sunday, July 13, 2025
• Student Forum Notification: Monday, August 11, 2025
• Early registration Deadline: TBD
• Late registration Deadline: TBD

Submission Guidelines

Submissions must be made electronically in PDF format via Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences?conf=fmcad2025

Two categories of papers are invited: Regular papers and Tool & Case Study papers.

• Regular papers: Expected to offer novel foundational ideas, theoretical results, or algorithmic improvements to existing methods, along with experimental impact validation where applicable.
• Tool & Case Study papers: Expected to report on the design, implementation or use of verification (or related) technology in a practically relevant context (which need not be industrial), and its impact on design processes.

Both Regular and Tool & Case study papers must use the IEEE Transactions format on letter-size paper with a 10-point font size. Preferably, use the FMCAD template for papers.

Papers in both categories can be either 8 pages (long) or 4 pages (short) in length excluding references. Short papers that describe emerging results, practical experiences, or original ideas that can be described succinctly are encouraged.

Authors will be required to select an appropriate paper category at abstract submission time.

Submissions may contain an optional appendix, which will not appear in the final version of the paper. The reviewers should be able to assess the quality and the relevance of the results in the paper without reading the appendix.

Submissions in all categories must contain original research that has not been previously published, nor is concurrently submitted for publication. Any partial overlap with published or concurrently submitted papers must be clearly indicated.

FMCAD employs a rigorous peer-review process and each submission will be reviewed by at least four members of the program committee. The review process is single-blind. The review process will incorporate a feedback and rebuttal period during which authors will have the opportunity to formally respond to reviewer comments.

Artifact Evaluation

FMCAD 2025 introduces optional artifact evaluation to enhance transparency and the usability of research outcomes. Authors reporting experimental results are strongly encouraged to publish their final data in a long-term repository (e.g. zenodo). With artifacts serving as supplementary evidence, high-quality artifacts can improve the likelihood of paper acceptance. Artifact evaluation will be integrated into the main review process, with one selected program committee member assessing the quality of the artifact alongside the paper. Details on artifact evaluation are available on the artifacts page.

Publication and Registration

Accepted papers are published by TU Wien Academic Press under a Creative Commons license (the authors retain the copyright) and distributed through the IEEE XPlore digital library. IEEE CEDA is a technical co-sponsor of FMCAD. There are no publication fees.

Authors of accepted contributions will be required to sign the FMCAD copyright transfer form found here: https://fmcad.or.at/pdf/copyright.pdf.

For each accepted paper, at least one unique author must register for the conference. Moreover, authors of accepted papers ensure that at least one of them will attend the conference and present the work.

Student Forum

Continuing the tradition of the previous years, FMCAD 2025 will host a Student Forum that provides a platform for graduate students at any career stage to introduce their research to the wider Formal Methods community, and solicit feedback.

Submissions for the student forum must be short reports describing research ideas or ongoing work that the student is currently pursuing, and must be within the scope of FMCAD. Work that has been partly published previously might be considered; the novel aspect to be addressed in future work must be clearly described in such cases. All submissions will be reviewed by a select group of FMCAD student forum committee members. Details on the student forum are available on the student forum page.