Moshe Y. Vardi has been appointed honorary doctor at the IT Faculty
Professor Moshe Y. Vardi, Rice University Texas, has been appointed honorary doctor at the IT Faculty for 2020.
Summary of the nomination text:
Professor Moshe Y. Vardi has made considerable contributions to the usage of logic in various fields in computer science. Most notably the logical theory of databases, reasoning about knowledge, the automata-theoretic approach to program verification, and finite-model theory. His contributions were recognized by multiple awards. Professor Vardi is a member of the US national academy of sciences and of engineering and the European Academy of Sciences. He is a prolific writer with a vast number of scientific publications, co-authored with more than 300 co-authors.
In addition to this scientific contribution, Professor Vardi’s service work to the field of computer science is also of a similar magnitude. He has been Editor in chief of the Communications of the ACM for more than ten years and is responsible for a major revival of the journal. He is also very active in the popularization of computer science and has contributed greatly to debates related to the effects Artificial Intelligence has on society and economy and the future of our field.
This unique combination of scientific contributions and service work that promotes the entire computer science community make him a worthy candidate for an honorary doctorate.
Professor Vardi’s connection with the University of Gothenburg is mainly through his long-time collaboration with Dr Nir Piterman from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. They have worked together on applications of temporal logic to verification and reactive synthesis, automata theory, as well as applications of logic and verification to biological modelling.