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We are an informal subgroup of the Lab for High-Assurance Software of the Dept. of Software Science of the Tallinn University of Technology (TUT).
We used to belong to the Institute of Cybernetics (IoC), a research institute that was closed 31 Dec 2016 in connection to a major reorganization of TUT. In the new organization, we were merged with the Formal Methods Group of the Dept. of Computer Science.
We pursue "Theory B": logic, semantics and theory of programming.
In the national evaluation exercise of ICT R&D 2009-2014, we were rated "excellent", which was the highest possible mark.
The current members of the group are:
In addition, as a permanent external collaborator we have:
Our former members include:
As interns, we have hosted:
Within the department, we collaborate closely with the Formal Methods Group of Jüri Vain and the Compositional Systems and Methods "TallCats" Group of Pawel Sobocinski.
We conduct research into a number of directions:
Check our list of publications.
We run a regular (almost weekly) research seminar, the Theory Seminar (TSEM).
We participated in the European FP6 IST project MOBIUS (2005-2009), the major proof-carrying code project of the Old World, and the FP7 ICT project HATS (2009-2013) on trustworthy highly adaptive software. We were part of the COST actions FoVeOOS (2008-2012) on verification of object-oriented software, Rich Model Toolkit (2009-2013), BETTY (2012-2016) on behavioral type systems, ARVI (2014-2018) on runtime verification and EUTYPES (2016-2020) on type theory and its applications, are part of CERCIRAS (2020-2024) on resource-aware computing and EuroProofNet (2021-2025) on formal proofs.
At home, we were part of the Centre of Excellence in Computer Science (EXCS), which was one of the seven Estonian CoEs 2008-2015, and then Excellence in IT in Estonia (EXCITE), one of the nine Estonian CoEs 2016-2023. We ran the Coinduction project of the Estonian ICT research programme 2013-2015. Until the end of 2022, we benefited from the Estonian IT Academy research measure (2018-2023), the software trustworthiness theme.
Four of us are supported by an ETAG team grant (2021-2025) led by Pawel Sobocinski. Niccolò Veltri had a "bridging" ETAG starting grant for one year (2021) and won then a "proper" such (2022-2025). Stephan Spahn had an ETAG postdoc grant (2021-2023) to work with us.
We were the organizing team behind all these international events that happened in Estonia: APPSEM 2004, AFP 2004, TFP/ICFP/GPCE 2005, IFIP WG 2.8 Meeting #22 (2005), MPC/AMAST 2006, EffTT 2007, NWPT 2008, COST FoVeOOS 2009 Winter School, ETAPS 2012, NWPT 2013, AIM XX (2014), TYPES 2015, Estonian-Finnish logic meeting of 2015, COST ARVI MC&WG meeting (2015), NWPT 2019 and PPDP/LOPSTR 2021.
We will organize FSCD 2024 in Tallinn.
We are active supporters of the annual EWSCS international winter schools in TCS and the annual Estonian-Latvian CS Theory Days. The latest editions before Covid were the Theory Days in Pärnu (2019) and EWSCS 2020.
After a 2.5 years of a forced break, the 2022 Theory Days in Riga took place on 6-8 May.
We also organized the WLD 2021 and 2022 Estonia events and are currently organizing the WLD 2023 Logic in Estonia Workshop (14 Jan.).
We enjoy receiving guests. In 2018-2019, we hosted Renato Neves (U. of Minho), Pierre Guillon (Institut Poncelet), Exequiel Rivas (IRIF), Georg Struth and Simon Doherty (U. of Sheffield), José Espírito Santo and Luís Pinto (U. of Minho), Marino Miculan (U. of Udine), Margus Veanes (Microsoft Research Redmond). In 2020-2022, we were set back by Covid, but Dylan McDermott (Reykjavik University) visited twice in 2021.
We teach courses on programming languages, verification, algorithms and data structures and mathematics for computer science:
If you are interested in doing a PhD with one of us, get in touch - there may be opportunities for this.
Also, if you would like to visit and give a seminar talk, email us.