The first program was dedicated to the research work of Rodney G. Downey, in celebration of his 60th birthday. The second program covered automata theory whereby researchers investigate the other end of computation, namely the computation with finite automata, and the intermediate level of languages in the Chomsky hierarchy (like context-free and context-sensitive languages).
This volume contains 17 contributions reflecting the current state-of-art in the fields of the two programs.