April 7 – Byron Cook

Proving Program Termination (and more)

PLATO Lecture Series Spring, 2014 – Greeners on the Cutting Edge
Monday April 7, 1:30-3 pm, LH1

Byron Cook, Ph.D. Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research,  MSR-NYC and MSR-Cambridge.

A new frontier in computer science is finding approximations to solutions to undecidable or intractable problems. In this talk I will discuss research advances that led to practical tools for proving program termination and related properties. I will also discuss applications of these research to device drivers, cloud computing, and cancer research.

Dr. Byron Cook is professor of computer science at University College London, and Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in New York City. Byron graduated from Evergreen in 1995. See Byron’s Home Page for more information.

Companion Reading:

  1. We suggest you read this article first (it provides a gentle introduction tothe more technical article by Byron):  Gary Stix, Send in the Terminator – A Microsoft tool looks for programs that freeze up. Scientific American (Nov. 2006).
  2. Byron Cook, A. Podelski,A, Tybalchenko, Proving Program TerminationCACM, May 2011, 54-5, DOI :10.1145/1941487.1941509.

To contact Byron:  bycook AT microsoft DOT com