Machines, Computations and Universality, MCU 2026

Machines, Computations and Universality, MCU 2026

This conference series focuses on investigating language describing formalisms (automata, grammars, etc.) that are equivalent to Turing machines (or close to being it). The International conference series MCU traces its roots back to the mid 1990's, and has always been concerned with gaining a deeper understanding of computation and universality. The 11th edition of this conference will take place in Trier during 27.7-29.7.2026.

Registration will be the same procedure as for the main event, which is CiE, as we expect participants to stay over the whole week. There, you could also find all further organizational information.

Program

The program of MCU can be found together with the one of CiE.

Submissions

Deadline for submissions (first round): May 10th AoE, 2026

Submissions server: Easychair

All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. We expect non-anonymous submissions up to 15 pages in LNCS format, including “everything” apart from a possible appendix (read at the discretion of the PC); alternatively, include a link to an ArXiv version.

Author notification (first round): June 15th, 2026

The submission server will open again on May 25th and allow a second round of submissions until May 31st AoE, 2026, following the same rules as those for the first round.

Author notification (second round): June 29th, 2026

Publications

MCU 2026 will have its own LNCS volume, published as post-proceedings.

Authors of accepted papers will be asked to submit the final versions of their papers to this LNCS volume by August 15th, 2026.

Selected extended papers will be also invited for a Special Issue of some journal. Details will be published soon.

Program Chairs

Henning Fernau, Trier University, Germany
Serghei Verlan, University Paris Est Créteil, LACL, France

What is special about this edition? It is co-located with CiE and other conferences and workshops.

Invited Speakers

Martin Kutrib (Gießen, Germany): Reversible Machines -- How Much Does It Cost to Keep Coming Back?
Olivier Bournez (Paris, France): he will give a tutorial at CiE entitled Ordinary Differential Equations as a Universal Language for Computability and Complexity: From Polynomial Time to the Hyperarithmetical Hierarchy

Confirmed Contributed Presentations

Péter Battyányi. Reaction systems with approximation spaces
Marco B. Caminati. A strengthening of the MCFL-ness of O₂
Julianne Cruz, Sho Glashausser, Neil Lutz. One Adaptive Trailing Head Can Outperform Many Oblivious Trailing Heads
Rudolf Freund, Artiom Alhazov and Sergiu Ivanov. Simple P Systems with Non-negative Activation and Blocking of Rules
Eric Goles, Augusto Modanese, Martín Ríos-Wilson, Domingo Ruiz, Thomas Worsch. Embedding Boolean circuits into fungal automata with arbitrary update sequences
Aliénor Goubault-Larrecq, Kévin Perrot, Colin Geniet. Complexity lower bounds for succinct binary structures of bounded clique-width with restrictions
Markus Holzer, Michal Hospodár and Viktor Olejár. Accepting-State Spectrum of Proportional Removals and Additions on Subregular Language Classes
Jihoon Hyun, Holger Thies, Martin Ziegler. Towards Algorithmic Cost in Exact Real Computation
M Gayathri Lakshmi, Kalyani T, D Gnanaraj Thomas. On Generative Powers of Parallel Contextual Array Insertion Deletion P Systems and Pure 2D Eilenberg P Systems
Benedek Nagy. On 5'->3' String Assembly Systems
Matteo Palazzo, Robert Glück, Luca Roversi. A List-Based Primitive Recursive Programming Language and its Timed Self-Interpreter
Victor Selivanov. Non-Collapse of the Fine Hierarchy of Sentences
Georgii Sirotenko, Ivan Titov. S2a-reducibility and differentiation in Martin-Löf random reals
Eduardo Skapinakis, Philip Boeken, Konstantin Genin. Statistics meets Computability
Taylor Smith. Complexity of Universality and Related Decision Problems for Unary Two-Dimensional Automata
Michael Wehar and András Z. Salamon. A Collection of Slowest Growing Computable Functions
Guohua Wu, Jia Li Zheng. Computability-theoretic Aspects of the Convergence Rank
Soowhan Yoon. Graetzer-Schmidt theorem in arithmetical transfinite recursion

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to

Analog computation
Automata theory
Cellular automata
Classical computability and degree structures
Computability theoretic aspects of programs
Computable structures and models
Continuous computing
Decidability of theories
DNA computing, self-assembly and tiling
Dynamical systems and computational models
Emerging and non-standard models of computation
Finite model theory
Generalized recursion theory
Higher type computability
Hyper-computational models
Infinite time Turing machines
Membrane computing
Molecular computation
Morphogenesis and developmental biology
Multi-agent systems models
Natural computation and hybrid systems
Neural nets and connectionist models
Physics and computability
Proof theory and computability
Quantum computing and information
Randomness and Kolmogorov complexity
Relativistic computation
Swarm intelligence and self-organisation
Theory of Petri nets
Turing, Counter, Register, Signal machines
Universality of systems

Program Committee

Artiom Alhazov (Chisinau, Moldova)
Péter Battyányi (Debrecen, Hungary)
Song Bosheng (Hunan, China)
Olivier Bournez (Paris, France)
Erzsébet Csuhaj-Varjú (Budapest, Hungary)
Jérôme Durand-Lose (Orléans, France)
Rudi Freund (Vienna, Austria)
Daniela Genova (North Florida, USA)
Dora Giammarresi (Rome, Italy)
Mika Hirvensalo (Turku, Finland)
Jarkko Kari (Turku, Finland)
Lila Kari (Waterloo, Canada)
Tomas Masopust (Olomouc, Czech Republic)
Benedek Nagy (Famagusta, Cyprus)
Matthew Patitz (Rio Grande Valley, USA)
Simon Perdrix (Vandœuvre lès Nancy, France)
Agustín Riscos-Núnez (Sevilla, Spain)
Shinnosuke Seki (Tokyo, Japan)
KG Subramanian (Chennai, India)
György Vaszil (Debrecen, Hungary)
Tomoyuki Yamakami (Fukui, Japan)