New professor of computer science wants to ensure that vital software doesn’t fail

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Apps that suddenly shut down and computers that crash. Most of us have experienced that software sometimes fails. A common recommendation is to turn off the software and restart it, which usually works. But what if this happens to software related to medical equipment, cars or equipment used on space explorations?

"A failure in these kinds of software could be catastrophic. We need better techniques to make sure that they won’t fail. The techniques that are produced in my field of research are used for that" says Nir Piterman.

A PhD from Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel

Nir Piterman got his PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Since then, he has worked as a researcher and teacher at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, the Imperial College in London and the University of Leicester. Today he works at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, a department that is divided between the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology.

"It’s a huge sense of achievement as I have worked so hard over so many years to reach this point" says Nir. 

Representing mathematical systems

In his day-to-day research, Nir thinks about how to represent mathematical systems and their computations. He explains:

”In my research I think a lot about how to use logic to write what we expect programs to do and how to check that they indeed do it – and how, in extreme cases, we can go directly and algorithmically from a description of what a system need to do to an implementation of a system that fulfills this.”

You can learn more about Nir Piterman's research by watching the video.