Verification Mentoring Workshop (VMW)

The verification mentoring workshop will be virtual this year.

The purpose of the Verification Mentoring Workshop is to provide mentoring and career advice to early-stage graduate students, to attract them to pursue research careers in the area of computer-aided verification. The workshop will particularly encourage participation of women and underrepresented minorities.

The workshop program will include a number of talks and interactive sessions. The talks will give an overview of the field along with brief introductions to the varied topics highlighted at CAV 2020. Other talks will provide mentoring and career advice, from academia and industry.

Dates

Workshop: July 19 and July 20, 2020

Virtual Attendance

Please read the instructions for virtual attendance.

All VMW talks will be streamed live on YouTube. You can find the livestream links in the program below and in the VMW slack channel. Please use sli.do to ask questions during the talks. You can find the event codes and direct links in the program below, and also in the VMW slack channel. Access to the VMW slack and the interactive activities at the workshop is restricted to participants registered for CAV who have selected VMW.

Program

Session times are indicated in Pacific Daylight Time (PDT = UTC-7) and Central European Summer Time (CEST = UTC+2).

Sunday 19th July
PDT CEST
5:45 – 6:00 14:45 – 15:00 Welcome and introductory remarks
6:00 – 7:00 15:00 – 16:00 Rajeev Alur (University of Pennsylvania)
A Brief Introduction to Computer-Aided Verification


Livestream: https://youtu.be/ZkDC4aizsqQ

For questions: use sli.do event code #vmw_Alur or the direct link https://app.sli.do/event/syc0lpht/live/questions
Please use your full name when asking questions on Slido.

Abstract: In this talk, I will briefly survey the evolution of the field of computer-aided verification and the CAV conference over the past four decades.

Bio: Rajeev Alur is Zisman Family Professor of Computer and Information Science at University of Pennsylvania. His research is focused on formal methods for system design, and spans cyber-physical systems, programming languages, and theoretical computer science.

7:00 – 8:00 16:00 – 17:00 Rupak Majumdar (MPI-SWS)
How to do research


Livestream: https://youtu.be/ZkDC4aizsqQ

For questions: use sli.do event code #vmw_Majumdar or the direct link https://app.sli.do/event/evsr1tc3/live/questions
Please use your full name when asking questions on Slido.

Abstract: I will tell you all the secrets “they” don’t want you to know! Oh who am I kidding: I’ll tell you that there is no royal road to research and describe some advice compiled from other scientists that I have personally found useful.

Bio: Rupak Majumdar is a Scientific Director at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. His research interests are in algorithmic formal methods and cyber-physical systems.

8:00 – 8:30 17:00 – 17:30 Break (on Disco)
8:30 – 9:30 17:30 – 18:30 Eva Darulova (MPI-SWS)
Analyzing and Optimizing Finite-Precision Programs


Livestream: https://youtu.be/jCsJq5tladI

For questions: use sli.do event code #vmw_Darulova or the direct link https://app.sli.do/event/pyjtufhh/live/questions
Please use your full name when asking questions on Slido.

Abstract: Finite-precision arithmetic may look scary, after all, 0.1 + 0.2 != 0.3. I will show you how we use static analysis to make programming with finite precision a bit less scary.

Bio: Eva Darulova is a tenure-track faculty at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. Her research interests are program verification, synthesis and approximate computing.

9:30 – 10:30 18:30 – 19:30 Ice Breaker (Interactive Activity on Disco)
10:30 – 19:30 – Post-VMW Social

Monday 20th July
PDT CEST
6:00 – 7:00 15:00 – 16:00 Niki Carroll (George Mason University)
Introductory Discussions on Anti-racism


Livestream: https://youtu.be/rY1MM4P1cVQ

Abstract: Including anti-racism topic into mentorship spaces can be intimidating. We’re going to use our VMW survey as a jumping off point to start looking at how to talk about racial issues.

Bio: Niki Carroll is an undergraduate Computer Science student at George Mason University. They started advocating for racial justice when working with their local LGBTQ+ community.

7:00 – 8:00 16:00 – 17:00 Panel Discussion
Topic 1: Career paths and choices
Topic 2: Work-life balance


Livestream: https://youtu.be/1hplzZQ_Ohc

Swarat Chaudhuri
The University of Texas at Austin
Liana Hadarean
Amazon
Justin Hsu
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Marta Kwiatkowska
University of Oxford
8:00 – 10:00 17:00 – 19:00 CAV Tutorials
10:30 – 11:00 19:30 – 20:00 Break (on Disco)
11:00 – 12:00 20:00 – 21:00 Ken McMillan (Microsoft Research)
The Model Checking Paradigm


Livestream: https://youtu.be/b0sVcFQAf50

For questions: use sli.do event code #vmw_McMillan or the direct link https://app.sli.do/event/qhhek7ta/live/questions
Please use your full name when asking questions on Slido.

Abstract: Model checking, broadly defined, is one of the most widely studied approaches in verification, especially at CAV, and continues to be an active area of research. We’ll examine the model checking paradigm and some of the most common strategies for research within the paradigm, highlighting these strategies with example techniques that apply them.

Bio: Ken McMillan is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington. He works in formal verification and light-weight formal methods, particularly in applications to hardware and distributed protocols. His main interest is in tools, languages and methodologies that can be applied practically in an engineering environment.

12:00 – 13:00 21:00 – 22:00 Ranjit Jhala (University of California, San Diego)
How to design talks


Livestream: https://youtu.be/b0sVcFQAf50

For questions: use sli.do event code #vmw_Jhala or the direct link https://app.sli.do/event/i933wwle/live/questions
Please use your full name when asking questions on Slido.

Abstract: I will tell you how to design talks so that you can get your message across without losing audience members to the siren song of candy-crush.

Bio: I am a Professor of Computer Science at UC San Diego and a Scholar at AWS. I like to program programs that analyze other programs, using some combination of types, model checking, program analysis and automated deduction.

13:00 – 13:15 22:00 – 22:15 Concluding remarks
13:15 – 22:15 – Post-VMW Social (on Disco)

Organizers

Roopsha Samanta (chair)
Purdue University

Rayna Dimitrova
University of Sheffield

Jean-Baptiste Jeannin
University of Michigan

Arjun Radhakrishna
Microsoft

James Wilcox
Certora

Sponsors