Ron van der Meyden
Professor
School of Computer Science and Engineering,
University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052,
Australia
email: last word of my name, at cse.unsw.edu.au
phone: +61 2 9385 6922
fax: +61 2 9385 5995
Office Location: K17 room 217G,
at grid reference K17 on the UNSW Kensington map.
Current Activities
Positions
(No open positions at this time.)
Potential Postgraduate Research Applicants
Please read this before contacting me with a supervision request.
Honors
Current Research Projects
- Can SAFE contracts be smart?, an extended case study in financial smart contracts.
- Lex Leinbniz, a declarative smart contract language designed for verifiability of correctness and security
- Fault Tolerant Autonomy, concerned with verification and synthesis of consensus protocols using the epistemic model checker MCK.
Publications
My Erdos number is 3, via:
- Tomasz Imielinski, Mario Szegedy, and
- Joseph Y. Halpern, Nathan Linial
Software
-
MCK a model checker for the logic of knowledge
Grants
- AFOSR/DST Australia Autonomy Initiative grant, 2020-2021: Verification and Synthesis of Fault-Tolerant Autonomous Systems (with J.Y. Halpern, Cornell)
- US Air Force, Asia Office of Aerospace Research and Development grant 2015/16:
Independence-based Optimization of Epistemic Model Checking
- ARC Discovery Grant 2012-2014, Symbolic synthesis of knowledge-based program implementations (with Kaile Su)
- ARC Discovery Grant 2010-2012, A formal foundation for security architecture (with Kai Engelhardt)
- US Air Force, Asia Office of Research and Development grant
2009/10: Security Protocol Optimization and Verification by Epistemic
Model Checking
- ARC Linkage grant 2008-2010: Model Checking Knowledge and Probability in Pursuit-Evasion Scenarios (with Defence R & D Canada)
- ARC Discovery Grant 2004-2007: Refinement of Temporal and Epistemic Specifications
in Asynchronous Systems (with Kai Engelhardt)
- ARC Discovery Grant 2001-2003: Model Checking Logics of Knowledge and Belief
- ARC Small Grant 2000: Compositional Abstraction for model
checking distributed systems designs using the logic of knowledge and
time. (with Kai Engelhardt)
- ARC Large Grant 2000-2002: Proof Theory for Extensions of
Temporal Logic (with Mark Reynolds, Murdoch).
- UTS Internal Research Grant, 1998: Logics of Belief for
Cryptographic Protocol Analysis
- ARC Large Grant 1997-1999: Knowledge-Based Programming of
Distributed Systems: From Specification to Implementation
- UTS Large Internal Research Grant 1996: Computational Analysis of
Knowledge Theory for Distributed Systems Design and Analysis
Research Centre Management Roles
As Chair (2001-2003) of the Research Committee, School of Computer Science and
Engineering, UNSW, I was a member of the teams (comprising multiple university,
government and industry partners) that constructed successful bids for and founded two major research centres:
- Smart Internet CRC, which was awarded $22M of Federal funding in 2001, matched by partner cash and kind contributions
to make up over $100M over 7 years. I was program leader of the CRC's Smart Personal Assistant
research program for the first year of operation of the centre.
- National ICT Australia, which
was awarded $129M of Federal funding for 2002-2006. I established and led the
NICTA Formal Methods program from NICTA's inception in 2002 to taking
sabbatical leave July 2006-July 2007. Significant outcomes from this program
include
- The formal verification of the seL4 microkernel, a joint project with the Embedded Real Time Operating Systems program and the Logic and Computation program.
- The Goanna static analysis tool, commercialised via a spinout Red Lizard Software, which was acquired by Synopsis.
All NICTA programs were closed in a NICTA reorganisation in 2007. NICTA merged with CSIRO's Digital Productivity business unit
to form Data61 in 2015.
I have also played a role in the Baker & McKenzie
Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre @ UNSW, a research centre in the Law School at UNSW,
as external representative on their management committee.
Invited/Keynote Addresses
- EASYHAT workshop on Evaluation of Adaptive Systems for
Human-Autonomy Teaming, IJCAI, Aug 2019, Macau.
- APAC Blockchain Conference, Sydney, July 2019 (panelist)
- Panelist, Australian Davos Committtee Blockchain Forum, Adelaide, March 2019. (panelist)
- CLIMA 2010, 11th Int. Workshop on Computational Logic in Multi-Agent Systems,
Lisbon, Aug 2010.
- DEON'02, Sixth International Workshop on
Deontic Logic in Computer Science, Imperial College, London, UK, May, 2002
- combined 10th international symposium on "Temporal Representation
and Reasoning" and 4th International Conference on Temporal Logic
(TIME-ICTL-2003), Cairns, Queensland, Australia July 8-10, 2003.
- Agentlink/Colognet Symposium on Logic-based Agent Verification, Liverpool, July 2004
- Workshop on Games and Knowledge, Liverpool, July 2004
- First Indian Conference on Logic and its relationship to other disciplines,
Mumbai, India, Jan 8-13, 2005.
Board Memberships
Program Committee Memberships & Editorial
Current:
Past PC memberships
Education
UNSW Courses taught
Summer School Courses
Research Students, Postdocs
- Godfrey Wong - Knowledge in Consensus Protocols
- Vir Nath Pathak (co-supervisor) - Post-Quantum Cryptography
Former Students, Postdocs
- Xiaowei Huang, postdoc (now at Liverpool University)
- Stephen Chong, postdoc (now at Harvard)
- Omar I. Al Bataineh, Masters by research (now at Nanyang Technological University)
- Chenyi Zhang, PhD & Postdoc (now at Jinan University, China)
- Manas K. Patra, Phd (now at Central University of Rajasthan)
- Peng Gao, Masters by Research
- Kai Engelhardt, Postdoc (now at Cog Systems)
- Kaile Su, Postdoc (now at Griffith University)
- Kai Baukus, Postdoc (now at BMW)
- Umberto Bonollo, (Ph.D. student, University of Melbourne, cosupervisor with Liz
Sonenberg)