[Sci-all-l] Moshe Vardi -- Matthew Vassar Lecture, Monday April 9th

[Luke Hunsberger]

Moshe Vardi, the Karen Ostrum George Professor in Computational
    Engineering and Director of the Computer and Information
    Technology Institute, is coming to Vassar College on Monday, April
    9th to give a Matthew Vassar Lecture entitled "And Logic Begat
    Computer Science: When Giants Roamed the Earth".  This talk is
    open to the entire Vassar community.

In addition, Prof. Vardi will be giving a more technical talk,
entitled "Automated Verification = Graphs, Automata, and Logic",
on Tuesday, April 10th.  

The details for each talk are given below and are available
on the Computer Science Department's web site (http://www.cs.vassar.edu).

--------------------------
  MATTHEW VASSAR LECTURE
--------------------------

  Speaker:    Moshe Vardi (Rice University)
  Title:      "And Logic Begat Computer Science: When Giants Roamed the Earth"
  Sponsors:   Mathematics and Computer Science departments
  Time:       5:00 pm
  Date:       Monday, April 9, 2007
  Location:   RH 300, Vassar College
  Note:       Tea at 4:30 p.m.)
    
  Abstract:
    
     During the past fifty years there has been extensive, continuous,
     and growing interaction between logic and computer science. In
     fact, logic has been called "the calculus of computer
     science". The argument is that logic plays a fundamental role in
     computer science, similar to that played by calculus in the
     physical sciences and traditional engineering
     disciplines. Indeed, logic plays an important role in areas of
     computer science as disparate as architecture (logic gates),
     software engineering (specification and verification),
     programming languages (semantics, logic programming), databases
     (relational algebra and SQL), artificial intelligence (automated
     theorem proving), algorithms (complexity and expressiveness), and
     theory of computation (general notions of computability). This
     non-technical talk will provide an overview of the unusual
     effectiveness of logic in computer science by surveying the
     history of logic in computer science, going back all the way to
     Aristotle and Euclid, and showing how logic actually gave rise to
     computer science.  

 Speaker Bio:    Moshe Y. Vardi is the Karen Ostrum George Professor in
                 Computational Engineering and Director of the
                 Computer and Information Technology Institute. His
                 interests focus on applications of logic to computer
                 science, including database theory, finite-model
                 theory, knowledge in multi-agent systems,
                 computer-aided verification and reasoning, and
                 teaching logic across the curriculum.

=====================================================

-----------------------
  More Technical Talk
-----------------------

  Speaker:    Moshe Vardi
  Title:      "Automated Verification = Graphs, Automata, and Logic"
  Sponsors:   Mathematics and Computer Science departments
  Time:       11:00 a.m.
  Date:       Tuesday, April 10, 2007
  Location:   RH 200, Vassar College
  
  Abstract:  In automated verification one uses algorithmic techniques
             to establish the correctness of the design with respect
             to a given property. Automated verification is based on a
             small number of key algorithmic ideas, tying together
             graph theory, automata theory, and logic. In this
             self-contained talk I will describe how this "holy
             trinity" gave rise to automated-verification tools.