ACRI'96 is the second conference on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry; the first one was held in Rende (Cosenza), on September 29-30, 1994. This second edition confirms the growing interest in Cellular Automata currently present both in the scientific community and within the industrial applications world. Cellular Automata-based computational models, besides capturing the attention of scientists working in different fields, open new perspectives of intersection between different and historically distant areas of scientific knowledge, from Physics to Biology, to Computer Science. ACRI'96 aims at providing a forum both for researchers working in the Cellular Automata field, and for those who foresee the possibility to verify on concrete domains of application the impact of their solutions, as well as for those who are looking for a possibility of reflection upon the specific concept of parallel and distributed computation provided by Cellular Automata. This book contains the works presented at the conference. The invited papers cover different aspects of Cellular Automata. T. Worsch gives a classification of Cellular Automata mapping on the existent computational frameworks for the simulation of their behavior. One of the most mature areas where Cellular Automata showed their value is Physics: B. Chopard illustrates recent results on wave modeling, and some possible applications. According to the general purpose of ACRI'96 of transfering research results to the industrial world, F.

Cover design or artwork by: L. Moroni, S. Cessaroni