UCNC 2026

Program

Preliminary Program

  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
16:00-17:00 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
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-22:00 Social event and social dinner
  Thursday June 25, 2026
9:30-10:30 Keynote Talk - the winner of the G. Rozenberg Natural Computing Award
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)
16:00-17:00 Regular papers session 4
  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 Short papers session
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”
  • Henning Fernau, Lakshmanan Kuppusamy and Jana Schulz “Forbidden-Context & Ordered Grammar Systems”

Regular papers session 2 - Wednesday June 24, 2026 - 11:00-12:00

  • Victoria Capovilla, Andrea Gasparin, Andrea Bertolini and Lorenzo Castelli
    “A Genetic Algorithm for the Network Pricing Problem Using Game-Theoretic Replicator Dynamics”
  • 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”

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

TBA

Regular papers session 4 - Thursday June 25, 2026 - 16:00-17:00

  • 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”
  • 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”

Short papers session - Friday June 26, 2026 - 14:00-14:30

  • Natasha Jonoska, Van A.B. Pham, Masahico Saito and Bhavneet Saini
    “Levels of Chirality in DNA Nanostructure”
  • Sanyam Agarwal, Anurag Pandey and Alexander Rogovskyy
    “Immune Cell Pathogen Detection as Memory-Dependent Graph Search Algorithm”

News

Preliminary program available

The preliminary program for the UCNC 2026 conference and its workshops is now available!

Deadline for final version extended

The deadline for submitting the final version of the accepted regular and short papers has been extended May 19, 2026

Submission deadline extended

The submission deadline has been extended from March 13, 2026 to March 27, 2026