Description
Leader of the group Formal Methods: Frank de Boer.
In the Formal Methods group, our research involves finding solutions to highly pragmatic real-world problems by reducing their complexity through the elegance and beauty of mathematics. We formulate problems to reveal their complexity and make them amenable to elegant solutions.
Our work yields technological foundations that underpin software engineering and service-oriented computing. With everything we do, we aim to add stability and reliability to those foundations and so to the third-party applications built on them. In this way, we cut the costs of technological failure for business and society and make life easier for programmers, developers and ultimately users.
Our no-nonsense approach relies on the smooth transfer of knowledge between senior and junior researchers, reaching back through our rich history as one of CWI’s original research groups. Our work is grounded in our collaborations with partners in business and industry.
Vacancies
PhD Student on the subject of development of dynamic data analysis pipelines on distributed data clusters
The Formal Methods group at CWI has an open positions for a PhD student to work in the project Evolutionary changes in Distributed Analysis (ECiDA). This project involves development of dynamic data analysis pipelines on distributed data clusters.
News
Cum laude for new method making parallel programming easier
Due to the increase of multicore processors used in smart phones, game consoles and other computers, parallel programming has become increasingly important. To prevent software errors, concurrent calculations must always exactly be executed in the correct order. This is not easy, because existing programming techniques for enforcing such orders - interaction protocols - are very hard to use. PhD student Sung-Shik Jongmans of Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and Leiden University investigated a new programming method to simplify this.
FACS Best Paper Award for Formal Methods researchers
During the FACS2015 conference three researchers associated with the CWI Formal Methods research group were awarded the Best Paper Award for their article ‘Composing Constraint Automata, State-by-State’. The conference was held in Niterói, Brazil, from 14-16 October 2015.
Cum laude for PhD student Jurriaan Rot
Infinite data structures can be studied with a simplified technique, thanks to research done by PhD student Jurriaan Rot. He received his PhD degree with honours (cum laude) for his thesis ‘Enhanced Coinduction’ at Leiden University on 15 October 2015. This thesis belongs to the 5% best dissertations in the field of computer science.
TCS journal honours Jan Rutten
Jan Rutten from CWI’s Formal Methods research group was recently awarded by the journal Theoretical Computer Science (TCS) for his much cited article Universal Coalgebra – a theory of systems, on the occasion of the journal’s 40th anniversary.
Members
Associated Members
Publications
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de Boer, F.S, & Bjorner, N. (2018). Preface for the special issue “FM15”. Acta Informatica (pp. 1–2). doi:10.1007/s00236-018-0323-z
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Salamanca Tellez, J.R. (2018, April 24). Coequations and Eilenberg-type Correspondences (No. 2018-3). Institute for Programming research and Algorithmics Dissertation Series.
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Bezirgiannis, N. (2018, April 17). Abstract behavioral specification: unifying modeling and programming. Institute for Programming research and Algorithmics Dissertation Series.
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Dokter, K.P.C, Gadducci, F, & Santini, F. (2018). Soft constraint automata with memory. In F.S de Boer, M.M Bonsangue, & J.J.M.M Rutten (Eds.), It's All About Coordination. Essays to Celebrate the Lifelong Scientific Achievements of Farhad Arbab (pp. 70–85). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-90089-6_6
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de Boer, F. (Frank), Bonsangue, M.M, & Rutten, J.J.M.M. (2018). Preface. In F.S de Boer, M.M Bonsangue, & J.J.M.M Rutten (Eds.), It's All About Coordination. Essays to Celebrate the Lifelong Scientific Achievements of Farhad Arbab (p. I–XII).
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Apt, K.R, & Shoja Talatappeh, E. (2018). Self-stabilization through the lens of game theory. In F.S de Boer, M.M Bonsangue, & J.J.M.M Rutten (Eds.), It's All About Coordination. Essays to Celebrate the Lifelong Scientific Achievements of Farhad Arbab (pp. 21–37). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-90089-6_2
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de Boer, F.S, Bravetti, M, Lee, M.D, & Zavattaro, G. (2018). A Petri net based modeling of active objects and futures. Fundamenta Informaticae, 159(3), 197–256. doi:10.3233/FI-2018-1663
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de Boer, F.S, Serbanescu, V.N, Hähnle, R, Henrio, L, Rochas, J, Din, C.C, … Yang, A.M. (2017). A survey of active object languages. ACM Computing Surveys, 50(5). doi:10.1145/3122848
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Jongmans, S.-S.T.Q, Kappé, T.W.J, & Arbab, F. (2017). Constraint automata with memory cells and their composition. Science of Computer Programming, 146, 50–86. doi:10.1016/j.scico.2017.03.006
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Dokter, K.P.C, & Arbab, F. (2017). Exposing latent mutual exclusion by work automata. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science/Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (pp. 59–73). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-68953-1_6
Software
Extensible Coordination Tools: plug-ins for the Eclipse platform
ECT: The Extensible Coordination Tools consist of a set of plug-ins for the Eclipse platform to facilitate development of concurrency protocols and distributed applications based on the coordination language Reo.
SAGA: A run-time verifier for Java programs
SAGA is a run-time verifier for single-threaded as well as multi-threaded Java programs.
Current projects with external funding
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Evolutionary changes in Distributed Analysis (ECiDA)
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Enhancing efficiency and expressiveness of the coinduction proof method (EcoPro)
Related partners
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Anchormen
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Vitens