To encourage submissions of papers in frontier topics, submissions in selected areas are encouraged. Paper submitted to special sessions will be treated as regular submitted papers, they will be peer reviewed, and subject to the same quality requirements. A special session with accepted papers on the selected topics will be organised during the conference. This year selected topics are: 

• Smart Energy Systems over the Cloud 
  We solicit contributions dealing with quantitative analysis, verification, and performance evaluation of models of networks of smart devices interconnected physically and over the cloud, and in particular within the technological context of smart energy, dealing with smart buildings, the smart grid, or with modern power networks. Instances of problems of interest are energy management in smart buildings, demand response over smart grids, or frequency control over power networks. We are interested in configurations related to cyber-physical systems, of systems of systems, and of the Internet of things, and on models encompassing continuous and digital components, and uncertainty (either environmental, adversarial, or probabilistic).

• Machine Learning and Formal Methods 
  We call for contributions on the fusion of formal methods and machine learning techniques. In particular, we are interested in the use of machine learning approaches, such as reinforcement learning, learning automata, decision trees, gradient based methods, etc. in (statistical) model checking, controller synthesis, program analysis and synthesis, timed systems, compositional verification, etc. The main aim is to disseminate learning based techniques that have potential of improving theory and practice of formal methods.