***** Symposium "Pioneers of Computer Science: From Turing to Harel" ***** Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), April 26th, 2012, http://www.win.tue.nl/dharel/
Honorary Doctorate for David Harel from TU/e David Harel, one of the leading computer scientists in the world, will receive an honorary doctorate from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) on April 27, 2012 during the Dies Natalis of TU/e. Professor Harel has made important contributions to a wide range of topics in computer science. He invented and developed the well-known Statecharts visual formalism. Today, Statecharts are widely used in software and systems engineering. For example, they are one of the core notations of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) used by most software engineers. Statecharts are just one of the many seminal contributions of this remarkable Israeli computer scientist. Professor Harel completed his Master's thesis in 1976 under the supervision of Turing Award winner Amir Pnueli (Tel-Aviv University). He then obtained a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in a record time of just 20 months. Since 1980 he has been working at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, where he also served for many years first as Department Head and later as Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. In the early years of his career he focused on theoretical computer science (computability, logics of programs, automata theory, and database theory). In 1982, he got involved in a project for the Israel Aircraft Industry (IAI) as a one-day-a-week consultant. This was a turning point in his career, as he was able to identify first-hand the problems systems engineers were facing. Systems were specified by producing enormous informal, and often inconsistent, documents, which were then used by programmers and hardware engineers to build the actual system. This led Harel to develop Statecharts. Over the last 30 years he has made various other contributions, addressing the gap between informal requirements and executable programs. He has put forward the grand challenge of liberating system development from the straightjackets of programming. He has pointed out that making specifications and programs separately and then proving their consistency can be counterproductive. This resulted in the development of Live Sequence Charts (LSCs), where the desired behavior is simply "played-in" such that no conventional programming is needed. The recorded behavior can be "played-out" later, i.e., scenarios result in a running system. This approach, which is now being called Behavioral Programming, has matured significantly in recent years, and he has now also developed versions in conventional languages such as Java. It is remarkable to see how Harel has contributed to very different fields of computer science. For example, in addition to the topics mentioned before, he has been working on the layout of diagrams, the modeling of biological systems using tools and ideas from software and systems, and on visual languages in general. He also worked on the synthesis and communication of smell. He was the first to publish a viable scheme for electronically transmitting smell from one location to another. The scheme utilizes an electronic nose (the "sniffer") that generates a fingerprint of an odor which is then analyzed in a complex manner, producing instructions for an output device (the "whiffer") to produce a mixture of several tens of odorants that mimic the smell at another location and another time. Much research has been done by Harel and others since then to work out the means for carrying the analysis that would make the scheme implementable. This example illustrates the pioneering role of Harel in different areas. During his career, Professor Harel has put a lot of emphasis on the practical realization of his ideas. He was involved in the development of Statemate, Rhapsody, the Play-Engine, and, more recently, PlayGo. These software tools help to further disseminate and validate his ideas. He was also the co-founder of I-Logix, Inc. in 1984, which is now part of IBM. The link between solid theoretical results and the actual realization of concrete systems fits very well with the engineering spirit of TU/e. David Harel has written eight authoritative books on topics ranging from dynamic logic and algorithmics to scenario-based programming and the boundaries of computing. His work is highly cited and has influenced many computer scientists. He also helped to expose the beauty of computer science to a broader audience. For example, he has presented lectures series on Israeli radio and television. He has received the ACM's highest awards both in education (1992) and in software systems (2007), as well as the prestigious Israel Prize, and honorary degrees from the University of Rennes, the Open University of Israel, and the University of Milano-Bicocca. He is a Fellow of the ACM, the AAAS and the IEEE, and is a member of the Academia Europaea and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The TU/e is delighted that David Harel accepted TU/e's offer to become the 2012 Doctor Honoris Causa. Professor Wil van der Aalst of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of TU/e will be the honorary supervisor. About the Symposium "Pioneers of Computer Science: From Turing to Harel" (26-4-2012) On April 26th, i.e., the day before David Harel receives his honorary doctorate, TU/e will host a symposium to honor professor Harel. The title of the symposium is "Pioneers of Computer Science: From Turing to Harel". Besides a keynote talk from Harel, there will be invited talks by prof. Grzegorz Rozenberg (Leiden University), prof. Jan Friso Groote (TU/e), and prof. Jan van Leeuwen (Utrecht University). The title of Harel's keynote is "Standing on the Shoulders of a Giant: One Person's Experience of Turing's Impact". He will link his work to Alan Turing's pioneering and ingenious inventions. Turing, who was born 100 years ago, is generally seen as the founder of modern computer science. Some of the contributions of David Harel can be seen as continuations of Turing's work. Like Turing, Harel has done pioneering work in different fields of computer science. This explains the title of the symposium: "Pioneers of Computer Science: From Turing to Harel". 13.50 - 14.00 Welcome by prof. Wil van der Aalst 14.00 - 14.40 Invited talk by prof. Jan van Leeuwen (Utrecht University) 14.40 - 15.20 Invited talk by prof. Jan Friso Groote (TU/e) 15.20 - 16.00 Invited talk by prof. Grzegorz Rozenberg (Leiden University and University of Colorado at Boulder) 16.00 - 16.30 Break 16.30 - 17.30 Keynote by prof. David Harel (Weizmann Institute of Science): "Standing on the Shoulders of a Giant: One Person's Experience of Turing's Impact" 17.30 - Reception Location: Zwarte Doos, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). For more information, see http://www.win.tue.nl/dharel/. Registration Attendance is free but you are kindly invited to register for the symposium before April 24th, 2012. Please contact the secretariat of the Information Systems Group (IS), Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, e-mail: [email protected].
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