Probabilistic programs are a structured way to describe computations or models with access to some source of randomness. They appear naturally in various safety-, security-, and privacy-critical applications, including randomized algorithms, security protocols, and autonomous systems working in uncertain environments, e.g., due to imprecise sensors.
The behavior of probabilistic programs is often counterintuitive — a consequence of the well-known fact that humans have difficulties reasoning about stochastic processes. In combination with their importance in emerging safety-critical domains, the counterintuitive nature of probabilistic programs means that ensuring their correctness must be based on verification and analysis techniques that are rigorous, tool-supported, and, ideally, largely automated. However, such tools have not kept up with the increasing usage and popularity of probabilistic programs.
In part, the lack of tool support can be explained by the fact that research on probabilistic programs is spread over multiple fields. In addition to the classical understanding of probabilistic programs as randomized algorithms, probabilistic programs have received rapidly increasing attention as a modeling formalism for complex probability distributions in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science.
This workshop will provide a forum for research on the automated verification of probabilistic systems that are in some way described by a programming language, with a particular focus on both symbolic methods and compositional approaches.
Invited Speakers
- Alejandro Aguirre, Aarhus University
- Stefan Kiefer, University of Oxford
- Francesca Randone, University of Trieste
- Anne-Kathrin Schmuck, MPI Kaiserslautern
Program
Time | Author(s) | Title |
---|---|---|
9:00 | Alejandro Aguirre | TBA |
9:45 | Krishnendu Chatterjee, Ehsan Kafshdar Goharshady, Petr Novotný and Đorđe Žikelić | Refuting Equivalence in Probabilistic Programs with Conditioning |
10:00 | Niki Omidvari, Fredrik Dahlqvist | Symbolically Evaluating Probabilistic Programs Using Cylindrical Algebraic Decomposition |
10:15 | Diptarko Roy, Mirco Giacobbe, Alessandro Abate | Probabilistic Omega-Regular Verification with Supermartingales |
10:30 | Coffee Break | |
11:00 | Anne-Kathrin Schmuck | TBA |
11:45 | Kittiphon Phalakarn, Yun Chen Tsai, Ichiro Hasuo | Widest Path Games and Maximality Inheritance in Bounded Value Iteration for Stochastic Games |
12:00 | Lunch (provided) | |
14:00 | Stefan Kiefer | Strategies in Infinite Stochastic Systems |
14:45 | Filip Macák, Roman Andriushchenko, Milan Češka, Sebastian Junges | PAYNT: A Framework for Controller Synthesis Under Uncertainty |
15:00 | Bahare Salmani, Vincent Derkinderen | Relating Probabilistic Model Checking and Weighted Model Counting |
15:15 | Yun Chen Tsai | Chance and Mass Interpretations of Probabilities in Markov Decision Processes |
15:30 | Coffee Break | |
16:00 | Francesca Randone | TBA |
16:45 | Luko van der Maas, Sebastian Junges | Learning Verified Monitors for Hidden Markov Models |
17:00 | Francesco Pontiggia, Ezio Bartocci, Michele Chiari | Exact Inference for Nested Discrete Probabilistic Programs |
Call for Presentations
VeriProP 2025, co-located with CAV, aims to bring together researchers interested in the tool-supported verification of probabilistic programs, models, and systems. This includes probabilistic model checking, program verification in the presence of a source of randomness, or formal guarantees for statistical machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence systems.
We solicit contributed short presentations. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Symbolic approaches to the verification of Markov models
- Exact inference techniques
- Abstract interpretation for probabilistic programs
- Domain-specific probabilistic programming languages
- Verification of inference algorithms
- Automation of deductive approaches to verifying probabilistic programs-
- Probabilistic program reasoning in safety, security, or privacy
- Synthesis of probabilistic programs
We call for extended abstracts (1-2 pages in pdf format) describing either ongoing research or an overview of past research in the workshop’s scope. We welcome abstracts covering work that has been previously published or is currently under review. There will be no formal proceedings.
Submission
Submission deadline: May 9th 23rd, 2025 AOE
Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=veriprop2025
Attending
The workshop will take place on July 22rd, the day before CAV. Please register via the official CAV website.
Travel Funding
Students who are giving a contributed presentation may apply for travel funding by contacting Fredrik Dahlqvist. Since the available budget is limited, we kindly ask students to apply only if they cannot fund their trip by any other means.
Organization
The workshop is chaired by:
- Kevin Batz, University College London
- Michele Chiari, TU Wien
- Maximilian Weininger, IST Austria
Steering committee:
- Michele Chiari, TU Wien
- Fredrik Dahlqvist, Queen Mary University of London
- Sebastian Junges, Radboud University
- Benjamin Kaminski, Saarland University and University College London
- Christoph Matheja, Technical University of Denmark