Conference Program
Last updated: June 19, 2026
The conference sessions and all the coffee breaks and lunches will be in the first floor of Building D of the main campus of the University of Trieste. Please check on how to reach the campus in the venue page
Conference Rooms:
- Monday June 22, 2026: Aula 1_A Conferenze
- From Tuesday June 23, 2026 to Friday June 26, 2026: Aula 1_B
Coffee breaks and lunches will be in the Sala Atti a few meters from the conference room
Registration will be open every day from 9:00 outside the conference room in the first floor.
| Monday June 22, 2026 | |
|---|---|
| 9:15-9:30 | Opening |
| 9:30-10:30 | Keynote Talk - Carina Curto, “Network dominoes: composable building blocks for recurrent networks” |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break |
| 11:00-12:00 | Regular papers session 1 |
| 12:00-13:00 | Tutorial - Eric Goles Chacc, “Fungal Automata: dynamics and complexity” |
| 13:00-14:00 | Lunch |
| 14:00-15:30 | Cellular Automata and Boolean Automata Networks Workshop |
| 15:30-16:00 | Coffee Break |
| 16:00-18:20 | Cellular Automata and Boolean Automata Networks Workshop |
| Tuesday June 23, 2026 | |
|---|---|
| 9:30-10:30 | Reaction Systems Workshop |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break |
| 11:00-13:00 | Reaction Systems Workshop |
| 13:00-14:00 | Lunch |
| 14:00-15:30 | Reaction Systems Workshop |
| 15:30-16:00 | Coffee Break |
| 16:00-17:00 | Reaction Systems Workshop |
| Wednesday June 24, 2026 | |
|---|---|
| 9:30-10:30 | Keynote Talk - Hiroki Sayama, “Swarm systems as a platform for open-ended evolutionary dynamics” |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break |
| 11:00-12:00 | Regular papers session 2 |
| 12:00-13:00 | Keynote Talk - Penousal Machado, “Creative Evolutionary Computation in the Age of Generative AI” |
| 13:00-13:05 | Presentation of UCNC 2027 |
| 13:05-14:00 | Lunch |
| 17:00-19:00 | Social event - Guided tour of the city |
| 19:30-22:00 | Social dinner at the the Casa Pepe Restaurant |
The guided tour will start at 15:00 17:00 in Piazza Attilio Hortis.
The guided tour has been moved from 15:00 to 17:00 due to the high temperatures expected for the day.
The social dinner will be in Casa Pepe Restaurant in Via del Coroneo 19.
| Thursday June 25, 2026 | |
|---|---|
| 9:30-10:30 | Keynote Talk - The recipient of the G. Rozenberg Natural Computing Award Carme Torras, “Assistive robotics: Research challenges, co-design, and technoethics education” |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break |
| 11:00-12:00 | Regular papers session 3 |
| 12:00-13:00 | Tutorial - Constantine Evans, “DNA tile assembly for all seasons” |
| 13:00-14:00 | Lunch (including poster session) |
| 14:00-15:00 | Keynote Talk - Cristian Micheletti, “Quantum computing for polymer physics” |
| 15:00-15:30 | Late breaking abstracts and posters session |
| 15:30-16:00 | Coffee Break (including poster session) |
| 16:00-16:30 | Regular papers session 4 |
| 16:30-17:00 | Short papers session |
| Friday June 26, 2026 | |
|---|---|
| 9:30-10:30 | Quantum Computing Workshop |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break |
| 11:00-13:00 | Quantum Computing Workshop |
| 13:00-14:00 | Lunch |
| 14:00-14:30 | Regular papers session 5 |
| 14:30-15:30 | Tutorial - Eric Medvet, “Evolutionary Modular Robotics” |
| 15:30-15:45 | Closing |
Detailed Program
Regular papers session 1 - Monday June 22, 2026 - 11:00-12:00
- Alonso Espinoza, Eric Goles and Marco Montalva-Medel
“Reduction and Dynamical Analysis of a Boolean Network for Drug Resistance in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer” - Alain Finkel, Gaspard Fougea and Stéphane Le Roux
“Modeling the global neuronal workspace with communicating timed automata” - Erik D. Demaine, Timothy Gomez, Markus Hecher, Ryan Knobel, Marco Rodriguez, Robert Schweller and Tim Wylie
“Understanding Counting Complexity Through Tile Assembly Systems” - Victoria Capovilla, Andrea Gasparin, Andrea Bertolini and Lorenzo Castelli
“A Genetic Algorithm for the Network Pricing Problem Using Game-Theoretic Replicator Dynamics”
Regular papers session 2 - Wednesday June 24, 2026 - 11:00-12:00
- Henning Hillebrandt, Andreas Padalkin, Christian Scheideler, Daniel Warner and Julian Werthmann
“Logarithmic-Time Geodesically Convex Decomposition in Programmable Matter” - Nazifa Khan, William Bushell, Mik Cieslak and Ian McQuillan
“Learning L-system Models of Plants Matching Real Images Using Genetic Algorithm” - Sandro Erba, Giuditta Franco and Claudio Zandron
“Towards a lightweight Spiking Neural P system for image recognition” - Henning Fernau, Lakshmanan Kuppusamy and Jana Schulz “Forbidden-Context & Ordered Grammar Systems”
Regular papers session 3 - Thursday June 25, 2026 - 11:00-12:00
- Tomoki Ono and Suthee Ruangwises
“A Complexity Hierarchy of Shuffles in Card-Based Protocols” - Gabriel Acuña, Eric Goles, Hans J. Herrmann and Gonzalo A. Ruz
“Dynamics of the three-population Potts-Sakoda Model” - Futa Ito, Shiho Terunuma, Yang Li, Kazuo Sakiyama and Daiki Miyahara
“Physical Zero-Knowledge Proofs for the Another Solution Problem with a Case Study on Sudoku” - Erik D. Demaine, Timothy Gomez and Celine Zhang
“Designing Card-Based Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Cellular Automata Problems”
Late breaking abstracts and posters session - Thursday June 25, 15:00-15:30
- Giacomo di Tollo, Gianni Filograsso and Gabriele Sbaiz
“Adaptive Particle Swarm for Long-Short Portfolio Selection” - Davide De Dominicis, Andrea Gasparin, Alex Dagri, Gianmichele Palumbo and Lorenzo Castelli
“Efficient Bi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms for Resilient Scheduling” - Maya Jackson
“Reduction-Mediated Biological Computation: An Experimental Study Using Slime Mold and Euclidean Steiner Trees” - Arthur Penty and Gunnart Tufte
“Evolving Competitive Nanomagnetic Creatures” - Vesna Mitrovic “High-Fidelity Universal Quantum Gates and Logical States in ADP at Physiological Conditions”
- Niousha Sadjadi, Pablo Millan Arias, Camila Pedroso Estevam de Souza, Gurjit Randhawa, Kathleen Hill and Lila Kari
“KmeX: A computational tool linking DNA sequences and k-mer frequency profiles”
Regular papers session 4 - Thursday June 25, 2026 - 16:00-16:30
- Sampreet Kalita, Benjamin W. Butler, Susan Stepney and Viv Kendon
“Novel models of computation from novel physical substrates: a bosonic example” - Sofie De Weer, Jiacong Sun, Toon Bettens, Wim Dehaene, Giuseppe Sarda and Marian Verhelst
“Beyond Max Cut: A Systematic Cross-Problem Evaluation of Ising Solvers on Constrained Combinatorial Optimization”
Short papers session - Thursday June 25, 2026 - 16:30-17:00
- Natasha Jonoska, Yoel Ohayon, Van Pham, Bhavneet Saini, Masahico Saito, Ruojie Sha, Simon Vecchioni, and Karol Woloszyn “Levels of Chirality in DNA Nanostructures”
- Sanyam Agarwal, Anurag Pandey and Alexander Rogovskyy
“Immune Cell Pathogen Detection as Memory-Dependent Graph Search Algorithm”
Regular papers session 5 - Friday June 26, 2026 - 14:00-14:30
- Kamil Khadiev and Ilnur Valeev
“Circuits of Quantum Hashing and Quantum Fourier Transform for a Cactus as a Qubit Connectivity Graph” - Kamil Khadiev, Aliya Khadieva, Vladislav Remidovskiy and Timur Bikmullin
“Quantum Algorithm for Searching for the Longest Segment and the Largest Empty Rectangle”
Cellular Automata and Boolean Automata Networks Workshop
| Monday June 22, 2026 | |
|---|---|
| 14:00-14:10 | Workshop opening |
| 14:10-15:00 | Jarkko Kari “Relaxing Spatial Uniformity in Cellular Automata: Effects on Classical Theorems” |
| 15:00-15:30 | First Session |
| 15:30-16:00 | Coffee break |
| 16:00-17:30 | Second Session |
| 17:30-18:20 | Luca Mariot “Cellular Automata and Cryptography: Recent Advances and Open Problems” |
Cellular Automata and Boolean Automata Networks Workshop: First Session
- Rocco Ascone, Pedro Montealegre and Martín Ríos-Wilson
On the counting complexity of asynchronous threshold networks - Tommaso Paladini, Eva Tuba and Luca Mariot
Self-Repairing Neural Networks based on Neural Cellular Automata
Cellular Automata and Boolean Automata Networks Workshop: Second Session
- Samuel Humeau and Kévin Perrot
Easy and Hard Problems on Bounded-Degree Boolean Automata Networks - Firas Ben Ramdhane
On the Dynamics of 2D Cellular Automata over Besicovitch and Weyl Spaces - Joanne Hall, Kerri Morgan, Stella Stylianou and Vindya Warnakulasooriyage
Isotopic Latin Squares from Cellular Automata - Franco Bagnoli, Samira El Yacoubi, Bassem Sellami, Amira Mouakher and Sara Dridi
Control theory of linear cellular automata - Rocco Ascone, Antonio E. Porreca and Marius Rolland
Polynomial equations over bijective dynamical systems and their semiring extensions - Amelia Kunze, Enrico Formenti and Davide La Torre
Convex Combination Operators on CAMs
Reaction Systems Workshop
| Tuesday June 23, 2026 | |
|---|---|
| 9:30-9:35 | Workshop opening |
| 9:35-10:30 | Paolo Bottoni “Invited talk: Nature vs. Nurture: When environment matters” |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee break |
| 11:00-13:05 | First Session |
| 13:05-14:00 | Lunch |
| 14:00-14:55 | Linda Brodo “Invited talk: When Reactions meet Processes: a flexible compositional framework” |
| 14:55-15:45 | Second session |
| 15:45-16:15 | Coffee break |
| 16:15-17:00 | Reaction Systems Community: General assembly meeting |
Reaction Systems Workshop: First Session
- Rocco Ascone, Antonio E. Porreca
Irreducible dynamics in reaction systems - Linda Brodo, Roberto Bruni, Moreno Falaschi, Roberta Gori, Paolo Milazzo
From Probabilistic Boolean Networks to Probabilistic Reaction Systems: algebraic formulation and analysis methods - Victor Mitrana, Andrei Paun, Mihaela Paun
Multiset Reaction Systems With Minimum Effective Concentration - G. Michele Pinna
On Reversibility in Reaction Systems - Linda Brodo, Roberto Bruni, Emilio Tuosto, Dragisa Zunic
Reaction Systems and Trading Venues
Reaction Systems Workshop: Second Session
- Paolo Bottoni, Anna Labella, Ion Petre
Counting arguments in the analysis of multiset reaction systems with persistence - Daniela Genova
Connecting Cellular Automata and Reaction Systems
Quantum Computing Workshop
| Friday June 26, 2026 | |
|---|---|
| 9:30-10:10 | Mika Hirvensalo “Multiple Ways to Quantum Future” |
| 10:10-10:30 | Yueying Wu “Complete characterization of perfect quantum strategies in quantum magic rectangle games” |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee break |
| 11:00-11:30 | Zornitza Prodanoff and James Gao “From Schmidt Decomposition to Quantum Entanglement Geometry” |
| 11:30-11:50 | Somayeh Mehrabankar “Interplay of Source Temperature and Squeezing in Secure Gaussian Quantum Teleportation through Noisy Channels” |
| 11:50-12:10 | Berat Kutay Badurlu “Evolutionary Quantum Gate Synthesis in Disordered Titanium Spin Networks” |
| 12:10-12:30 | Farah Naaz “Categorical Symmetries in Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation: Non-Invertible Defects, Non-Clifford Gates, and Open Hardware Questions” |
| 12:30-13:00 | Daniel Santavicca “Superconducting Electronics for Classical, Quantum, and Neuromorphic Computing” |