Paula Herber, Universität Münster (D)
To celebrate the achievements of IPN in the past 25 years, IPN is organising a special, online series of colloquia in which world-renowned computer scientists give their view on the progress in, and future of the field of computer science. These colloquia will feature thought-provoking presentations that are of interest to a broad (academic) computer science audience. Although these colloquia are initially aimed at the Dutch computer science community, they are open to interested people around the world!
Abstract
Modern embedded systems increasingly control safety-critical functionality, from automotive controllers to medical devices and industrial automation. Yet despite their importance, assurance of safety often still relies on testing, simulation, and engineering intuition—approaches that can provide confidence, but no guarantees. Formal methods enable a shift from hope to proof by providing mathematically grounded guarantees of safety properties in embedded systems. In this talk, I will briefly survey key techniques such as formal modeling, specification, and verification, and illustrate how they can be integrated into embedded system design processes. Through selected examples, I will show how formal reasoning can uncover subtle design errors, and support the construction of systems that are safe by design. The goal is to demonstrate the potential of formal methods for building trustworthy embedded systems in an increasingly safety-critical world, but also to show limitations and open research problems.
Bio
Prof. Dr. Paula Herber is a full professor, head of the Embedded Systems Group, and managing director of the Computer Science Department at the University of Münster, Germany. Since May 2021, she is also a part-time full professor at the University of Twente in the Formal Methods and Tools (FMT) group in the Netherlands. She has received her Ph.D. from TU Berlin in 2010. Her academic career includes positions as a postdoctoral researcher at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, California; substitute professor at the University of Potsdam; and postdoctoral researcher and independent research group leader in the Software Engineering and Embedded Systems Group at TU Berlin. Her main research interests include quality assurance for embedded systems, test automation, and formal methods. She is best known for her contributions to the formalization of industrially used system design languages such as SystemC and Simulink, and for advancing techniques that improve the practical applicability of formal methods for embedded and cyber-physical systems.
Date, Time, Location
The colloquium will take place on February 19, 2025, 16:00 – 17:00 (CEST).
The colloquium will be hosted as a Teams webinar. You can join the colloquium here.
We are looking forward to seeing you there!
Afterwards you can find the recording and other recordings on the IPN colloquia overview page.