Advanced Separation of Concerns (ASOC) 

Separation of concerns is at the heart of software engineering. Recent workshops at ECOOP and OOPSLA have galvanized a vigorous community of researchers to develop new modularization and composition mechanisms for identifying, encapsulating, and manipulating artifacts that overlap, interact, and crosscut software design spaces. 
The ASOC workshop at ICSE – chaired by Peri Tarr and Harold Ossher – broke new ground in this rapidly developing field. Whereas previous workshops had focussed on programming languages and code-level issues, ASOC at ICSE witnessed new approaches to separating concerns throughout and across the software lifecycle. New directions explored the scale of concerns, access control, impact on process development, and concern lifetime. Also new to this workshop was a special session on concern analysis and verification.
The importance of these emerging contributions was underscored by challenging problems from industry. In particular, practitioners expressed an eagerness for results in this area to grapple with the multi-dimensional concerns common to software product lines. Future workshops on ASOC will occur in June at ECOOP and in October at OOPSLA. The workshop co-chairs also hope to return to ICSE again next year. 
— Scott M. Pike