LASER Summer School on Software Engineering

Speakers

The 2005 LASER school brings together six of the best experts in the field:

• Jayadev Misra, University of Texas at Austin 
  Jayadev Misra is a professor and holder of the Schlumberger Centennial chair in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. in 1972 from the Johns Hopkins University. He has been a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin since 1974, except for a sabbatical during 1983-1984 spent at Stanford University.
  
  His research interests are in the area of concurrent programming, with emphasis on rigorous methods to improve the programming process. He has been the past editor of several journals in this area, including: Computing Surveys, Journal of the ACM, Information Processing Letters and the Formal Aspects of Computing. He is the author of two books:
  • Parallel Program Design: A Foundation, Addison-Wesley, 1988, co-authored with Mani Chandy,
  • A Discipline of Multiprogramming, Springer-Verlag, 2001.

Misra is a fellow of ACM and IEEE; he held the Guggenheim fellowship during 1988-1989. He was the Strachey lecturer at Oxford University in 1996, and he held the Belgian FNRS International Chair of Computer Science in 1990.

• Laura K. Dillon, Michigan State University
  Laura K. Dillon is a professor and holder of the chair in Computer Science and Engineering at the Michigan State University. She has been a faculty member at MSU since 1997. Before that, Laura was a professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara.
  
  Her research interests include: formal methods in specifcation, design, and validation of concurrent systems, software engineering, programming languages. Laura has been a member of Editorial/Advisory Boards of several renowned journals:
  • ACM SIGSOFT Member-at-Large, (2001 - present),
  • ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (2004 - present),
  • IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (1993 - 2000),
  • Communications of the ACM (1994 - 1996).
  
  She received an MS in Mathematics from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1976, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1984.

• Amir Pnueli, Weizmann Institute of Science and New York University 
  Prof. Pnueli is mainly known for the introduction of temporal logic into Computer Science; his work on the application of temporal logic and similar formalisms for the specification and verification of reactive systems; the identification of the class of "Reactive Systems" as systems whose formal specification, analysis, and verification require a distinctive approach; and the development of a rich and detailed methodology, based on temporal logic, for the formal treatment of reactive system; extending this methodology into the realm of real-time systems; and more recently, introducing into formal analysis the models of hybrid systems with appropriate extension of the temporal-logic based methodology.
  
  Beside his more theoretical work, concerning a complete axiom system and proof theory for program verification by temporal logic, he also contributed to algorithmic research in this area. He developed a deductive system for linear-time temporal logic and model-checking algorithms for the verification of temporal properties of finite-state systems. Together with David Harel, Pnueli worked on the semantics and implementation of Statecharts, a visual language for the specification, modeling, and prototyping of reactive systems. This language has been applied to avionics, transport, and electronic hardware systems. His current research interests involve synthesis of reactive modules, automatic verification of multi-process systems, and specification methods that combine transition systems with temporal logic.
  
  Together with Zohar Manna, he is the author of a textbook series on Temporal Logic and its application to Reactive Systems of which the first two volumes are:
  • Z. Manna and A. Pnueli. The Temporal Logic of Reactive and Concurrent Systems: Specification. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1991.
  • Z. Manna and A. Pnueli. Temporal Verification of Reactive Systems: Safety. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1995.

• Bertrand Meyer, ETH Zürich/Eiffel Software
  Bertrand Meyer is Professor of Software Engineering at ETH Zürich and Chief Architect of Eiffel Software. His current research interests include object technology, Trusted Components, proofs of classes, object-oriented concurrency. He is the author of Object-Oriented Software Construction and other books on software engineering, object technology, and programming languages.
  
  
• Joseph Sifakis , VERIMAG/UJF Grenoble 
  Joseph Sifakis is CNRS researcher and the Director of the Verimag laboratory, in Grenoble, France. He studied Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Athens and Computer Science at the University of Grenoble.

Joseph Sifakis worked on both theoretical and practical aspects of Concurrent Systems Specification and Verification. He contributed to the development of the state of the art in verification methods and tools by model-checking for both untimed and timed systems. His current research interests include modeling, design and analysis of real-time systems with a focus on composability and compositionality.

Joseph Sifakis is a member of the editorial board of several journals, co-founder of the CAV (Computer Aided Verification) conference and a member of the Steering Committee of the EMSOFT (Embedded Software) conference. He is the recipient of the CNRS Silver Medal in 2001.

Joseph Sifakis is the scientific coordinator of the European Network of Excellence ARTIST2 on Embedded Systems Design.

• Wolfgang Pree, University of Salzburg
  Wolfgang Pree has been a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Salzburg, Austria, since March 2002 and Head of the Department of Computer Science since March 2004. He holds a Dipl.-Ing. degree (1987) and a Dr.techn. degree (1992) in Computer Science from Kepler University in Linz, Austria.
  
  He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis (1992-93), a guest scientist at Siemens AG Munich (1994-95), a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Constance, Germany (1996-2000), and recently spent a sabbatical at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on software construction, in particular methods and tools for automating the development of real-time embedded software and for improving the reusability through component software.