"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."
Summary: Formal Analysis of Complex Systems
A Collaborative Proposal Involving CMU, CUNY, NYU, Stony Brook, UMD, Cornell, JPL
This Expedition, under the directorship of Lead PI Edmund M. Clarke, will develop new computational tools to help scientists and engineers analyze and understand the behavior of the complex models they develop for application domains ranging from systems biology to embedded control. Building on the success of model checking and abstract interpretation (MCAI), two well-established methods for automatically verifying properties of digital circuit designs and embedded software, this research project will extend the MCAI paradigm to systems with complex continuous dynamics and probabilistic behaviors. Challenge problems providing technology drivers and testbeds for the research include: understanding the precursors and course of pancreatic cancer; predicting the onset of atrial fibrillation; and obtaining deep design-time insights into the behavior of automotive and aerospace control systems. Ultimately, this Expedition is expected to provide vital tools that will enable health-care researchers to discover better treatments for disease and will allow engineers to build safer aircraft and other complex systems.
The world-class team of scientists and engineers assembled for this Expedition includes two Turing Award winners, a recipient of the National Medal of Science, and awardees of other prestigious research prizes. Outreach consists of the development of a new, highly ambitious and highly cross-discipline educational program called Complex Systems Science Engineering, an annual Minority-Focused Intersession Workshop for Undergraduates on Understanding and Analyzing Complex Embedded and Biological Systems to be hosted at member institution Lehman College, CUNY; substantial financial support for undergraduate research; student involvement in the NASA JPL Research Affiliates Program; and other research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral trainees.
More information: www.mcai2.org/
