Model Checking pioneer will lecture in Suzhou, China

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has named Edmund M. Clarke, the FORE Systems University Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, an Einstein Professor for 2013.

As part of the professorship, Clarke will visit the Suzhou Institute for Advanced Study of the University of Science and Technology of China later this year. He subsequently will host a Chinese scholar for several months at Carnegie Mellon.

The Einstein Professorship Program is a key initiative of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Its goals are to strengthen exchanges between the Einstein chairs and Chinese scientists and to enhance the training of future generations of Chinese scientists. The academy each year invites 20 top scientists and technologists to spend one or two weeks in China, where they present lectures, preside at interdisciplinary workshops and interact with faculty and students.

Clarke is a pioneer in the field of Model Checking, an automated method for finding design errors in computer hardware and software. Clarke's role in creating Model Checking was recognized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) with the 2007 Turing Award, the most prestigious award in computing. In 2008, Carnegie Mellon named him a University Professor, the highest rank the university confers on its faculty members.

He directs the Computational Modeling and Analysis of Complex Systems project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The multidisciplinary project is extending formal verification techniques, such as Model Checking, to provide new insights into a variety of complex systems, from embedded computer systems to cancer and other diseases.

In 2008, Clarke was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious learned societies. Last year, the Vienna University of Technology awarded him an honorary doctorate.

He has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals and is a co-founder of the annual International Conference on Computer-Aided Verification, the major forum for research in the field of formal verification. He received a Technical Excellence Award from the Semiconductor Research Corporation in 1995, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Harry M. Goode Memorial Award in 2004. He is a fellow of both the ACM and the IEEE, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2005.

Clarke received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in mathematics from Duke University. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from Cornell University, and has taught at Harvard and Duke.