Short biography

Qualifications

1997 DPhil in Computer Science Oxford University
1990 MSc in Computer Science Universidade Federal de Pernambuco
1987 BSc in Computer Science Universidade Federal de Pernambuco


Appointments

2018 - present, Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies.
2013 – present Professor, University of York
2012 – 2017, Wolfson Research Merit Award Holder Royal Society
2010 – 2013 Reader, University of York
2004 – 2010 Senior Lecturer, University of York
2009 & 2011 Visiting Professor, Universite de Paris Sud
2003 – 2007 Royal Society Industry Fellow, Host industry: QinetiQ, Ltd.
2002 – 2004 Lecturer in Computer Science, University of Kent at Canterbury
1997 – 2002 Lecturer in Computer Science, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil
1990 – 1997 Research Scientist Instituto Tecnológico de Pernambuco, Brazil

Research Work The focus of my career has always been research. My first publication came as an undergraduate student in 1987, when I got a prize from the Brazilian Computer Society. In Brazil, I pursued an MSc by Research (typically taken full time over two to three years); it was necessary to obtain funding for a PhD. At that level, I was already interacting with the international community, via the publication of book chapters and workshop papers.

Before pursuing a PhD degree, I took a position in a technological institute in Brazil: a bridge between university and industry. I took part in technology transfer projects. These early experiences shaped my career as a researcher on formal methods with applicability in industry.

After the PhD in Oxford, I got a permanent Lectureship in the top Brazilian research group in formal methods. In those five years, I established myself as an independent researcher. In that position, I had a significant number of research students under my supervision. I published well in top national and international venues. In the evaluation of the Brazilian Research Council, I had the best possible classification for my level of experience.

In 2002, I came to Britain with the expectation of establishing a collaboration with its thriving software and safety-critical industry. In 2003, a Royal Society Industry Fellowship provided the ideal opportunity to understand and contribute to the practice of formal methods working with QinetiQ.

At York, I seek to validate theories using real-world problems. My main scientific achievements have been on the design and justification of sound refinement-based program development and verification techniques. I have covered theoretical and practical integration with industry-strength technology: concurrency, object-orientation, and testing, for instance.

In the last two decades or so, I have championed the design of Circus, a new language that integrates well established notations to support the development of distributed programs. Significantly, it can take advantage of mathematical proof to verify concurrent systems that are too large for model checking (a technique favoured in industry, but with limitations in scalability.)  The work on Circus has generated more than 2,500 citations. In this programme, I have led the development and justification of refinement theories, techniques, and tools to cope with control systems. We provide support for graphical notations popular with engineers, and for main-stream programming languages, like Java, that have recently become of interest to the safety-critical industry. Our work is distinctive in that it has comprehensive coverage of practical languages, rather than idealised notations. It also supports high degrees of automation to enable usability and scalability. Recently, as Director of the international RoboStar centre of excellence on
Software Engineering for Robotics, she has worked to realise this vision for the benefit of roboticists working on mobile and autonomous robots.

I have more than 200 publications. I have been invited to give presentations at international conferences. I have also chaired the Programme Committee of leading conferences (including FME, ICFEM, and ICTAC). One of them was the 2nd World Congress on Formal Methods, the 16th in the FME series of symposia, organised by Formal Methods Europe, and arguably the most prestigious formal methods event. The 2nd World Congress marked 10 years since the first of these symposia was organised as a World Congress in 1999. I have also been a member of over 40 Programme Committees. I am now Chair of the Formal Methods Europe Board.  I am also part of the editorial board of some reputable journals, notably, ACM Formal Aspects of Computing and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

Currently, I am a Professor of Software Verification at the University of York, UK, and hold a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies.