Everyday life depends upon the security and reliability of computers and system software. As more and more of our economy, defense, government and social life moves online, software reliability will only become more important. The main aim of the school is to offer a spectrum of current research on tools for the development of reliable software systems ranging from foundational materials on logic and type systems to advanced techniques for detecting code defects using program analyses, model checking, theorem proving and dynamic program monitoring tools. In addition, we will teach students how these technologies can be applied in practical systems. Some of the tools we will discuss finding bugs in the C programs that make up much of our current critical software infrastructure. Other lectures will focus on analyzing more modern languages such as Microsoft's .NET framework and the Java platform.

At all times, material will be presented at a tutorial level that will help graduate students and researchers from academia or industry understand the critical issues and open problems confronting the field. We hope that students will be able to apply what they learn at the school in their own research.

There are no formal prerequisites for attending the summer school. However, we recommend that students attending the school know some basic programming language theory and/or logic as taught at an advanced undergraduate level. If you do not have this background, a good way to prepare for the summer school is to read and do some exercises from Pierce's text "Types and Programming Languages," particularly chapters 1-11, 13, 14 and 23, or Harper's textbook "Programming Languages: Theory and Practice," chapters 1-10 and 19-20, which is available on line.