Computer Science News

Alexandra Silva Receives BCS Roger Needham Award 2018

We are delighted to announce that Professor Alexandra Silva was awarded the BCS Roger Needham Award 2018 sponsored by Microsoft Research Cambridge last month. The award has been made in recognition of her outstanding work which has been instrumental in fostering the field of coalgebraic modelling and reasoning – and has made a significant impact to automata learning and program verification.

Alexandra Silva is Professor of Algebra, Semantics, and Computation at University College London. Previously recognised in 2017 with the EATCS Presburger Award, the Roger Needham Award recognises the prestige of Professor Silva's research on semantics of programming languages and modular development of algorithms, partly drawing on coalgebra, a mathematical framework established in recent decades. 

Professor Silva said: “I am honoured and delighted to have received the 2018 Roger Needham award. I am happy to see fundamental research being recognised by the BCS and I hope it gives incentive to young researchers to pursue theoretical ideas. I am deeply indebted to the many co-authors and students who have inspired me and with whom I have collaborated in my research efforts."

"I am also grateful that I have had the luck of having many mentors along my career. My family, life partner, and close friends provide invaluable support at all times and there are no words that would do them justice! The Department of Computer Science at UCL has provided a stimulating environment for my group which includes my students, post-docs, and visitors who never stop surprising me with their talents and ideas!”

Andy Gordon, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Cambridge said: “Alexandra Silva is a very deserving winner of the prestigious Roger Needham Award because of her ground-breaking work on mathematical semantics of programming languages and systems. She is an authority in the topic of Kleene algebra and coalgebra, and one recent highlight of her work is on NetKAT, a network specification language that allows to model and reason about concurrency in computer networks. Formal semantics is one of the UK’s strengths in computer science, and Alexandra Silva is a deep thinker who has delivered key insights in the area. Roger Needham would have been proud!”

Professor John Shawe-Taylor, Head of Department of Computer Science said: “UCL Computer Science is very proud of what Alex has achieved and we are delighted that she is receiving recognition for her work with the Roger Needham award. The award is highly prestigious but also very exciting in its focus on exceptional young researchers.”

 

Please join us in congratulating Professor Silva for this outstanding achievement!

You can read Alexandra Silva's full biography on her website.

For further information on the Roger Needham Award and Lecture here.

Find out more about the British Computing Society here.

 

 


Posted 13 Aug 18 08:03
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