Logic Mentoring Workshop

@CSL 2023
Friday 17 February 2023, Warsaw, Poland

Overview

The Logic Mentoring Workshop (LMW) will introduce young researchers to the technical and practical aspects of a career in logic research. It is targeted at students, from senior undergraduates to graduates, and will include talks and panel sessions from leaders in the subject.

Online Participation

The whole workshop is streamed live on Zoom; fill this form to get access.

Speakers

Panelists

Program

  • 9:00 - 9:30: Meet & Greet
  • 9:30 - 10:00: Thorsten Wißmann
    Title: An Introduction To Coalgebra
    Abstract: In the talk, I provide an introduction to the theory of F-coalgebras, a general language to reason about state-based systems based on category theory. We first discuss the basic concepts, the motivation behind it, and then take a look at its applications to various fields, for example modal logic and minimization algorithms.
    Bio: After my PhD in theoretical computer science at the University of Erlangen, Germany, I was a a postdoctoral researcher at Radboud University, in Nijmegen in the Netherlands for two years. In 2023, I returned to Erlangen to continue research on topics including fast minimization algorithms, nominal sets, and automata learning.
  • 10:00 - 10:30: Mateusz Gienieczko
    Title: Ask Not What You Can Do for Big Tech
    Abstract: Ask what Big Tech can do for you! I will share my perspective as a prodigal son who eschewed from a PhD in favour of a Microsoft Ireland job offer. First, I'll show you the interesting research in which I am involved outside of work, and then talk about combining that with a day job that pays actual money. In other words, it'll be about coping with unapologetic capitalism, and why the Curry-Howard isomporphism is powerless against a big corporation.
    Bio: I finished my master's in Computer Science at MIMUW and then left for the greener (literally) pastures of Ireland to join Microsoft Ireland's Identity Division. My interests span all the way from purely theoretical - computation theory, formal logic - to purely technical - large scale distributed systems, close-to-the-metal performance optimizations. I run https://v0ldek.com and its comprehensive C#.NET course for beginners.
  • 10:30 - 11:00: Coffee break
  • 11:00 - 11:30: Benedikt Pago
    Title: On logic in complexity theory and two different ways of doing maths
    Abstract: The first part of the talk will be about birds and frogs in mathematics. This may sound peculiar but it is indeed a nice view on how mathematical research is organized and in which different ways progress can be made. I will illustrate this with examples from my own work on the expressive power of the logic Choiceless Polynomial Time (CPT). This is a symmetric computation model which is one of the most prominent candidates for a logic that captures polynomial time. A logic captures PTIME if it can express exactly the polynomial time decidable properties of finite structures. It is a central open problem in finite model theory to find such a logic or to disprove its existence; the latter would actually separate P from NP. Thus, it is particularly interesting to better understand the limitations of logics like CPT. 
In the second part of the talk, I will share some of my own experiences as a PhD student, especially from the early stage. I hope that these (subjective) insights will be useful for those of you who are searching for a PhD position or have just started their PhD.
    Bio: I studied computer science in Aachen and Bonn (Germany). Since 2018, I have been a PhD student with Prof. Erich Grädel at RWTH Aachen University (and I completed my dissertation just a few weeks before this workshop). My research is focused on descriptive complexity theory and its connections with propositional proof complexity. In my thesis, I have pursued an open problem in finite model theory, namely that of establishing strong lower bounds for the logic Choiceless Polynomial Time.
  • 11:30 - 12:00: Nina Gierasimczuk
    Title: Coordinating quantifiers: a simulation study in monotonicity and convexity
    Abstract: Natural languages vary in their quantity expressions, but the variation seems to be constrained by general properties, so-called universals. Explanations thereof have been sought among constraints of human cognition, communication, complexity, and pragmatics. In this work, we examine whether the perceptual constraints of approximate number sense (ANS) contribute to the development of two universals in the semantic domain of quantities: monotonicity and convexity. Using a state-of-the-art multi-agent language coordination model (originally applied to colour terms) we evolve communicatively usable quantity terminologies. We compare the degrees of convexity and monotonicity of languages evolvingin populations of agents with and without ANS. The results suggest that ANS supports the development of monotonicity and, to a lesser extent, convexity. This is joint work with Dariusz Kalociński, Franek Rakowski and Jakub Uszyński.
    Bio: Nina Gierasimczuk is an Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark (DTU Compute) at the section of Algorithms, Logic and Graphs (AlgoLoG). Her main research interests lie in the logical aspects of learning in both single- and multi-agent context, and involve computational learning theory, modal logic, and computability theory. Her current projects focus on symbolic learning in artificial intelligence in the context of action models, belief revision, and multi-agent systems. Nina obtained her Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (University of Amsterdam, 2010) with Johan van Benthem and Dick de Jongh as advisors, MA in Philosophy under the supervision of Marcin Mostowski (University of Warsaw, 2005), and BFA from Gerrit Rietveld Academy (Amsterdam, 2021).
  • 12:00 - 12:30: Jan Křetínský
    Title: More and LESS random paths to, through, and from PhD
    Abstract: In this discussion, I would like to offer personal experience that at some points turned out useful for various people pursuing a PhD.
    Bio: After graduating from universities in Munich in 2013 and in Brno in 2014, Jan Kretinsky was a research fellow at IST Austria and since 2015 a professor at the Technical University of Munich. His main focus is verification, control and explainability of complex systems.
  • 12:30 - 14:00: Lunch
  • 14:00 - 14:30: Discussion!
  • 14:30 - 15:00: Julien Grange
    Title: An Introduction to logics defined by invariance
    Abstract: Finding its motivation both in Database Theory and Descriptive Complexity, the notion of invariant extension of a logic L consists of allowing L-formulas to use additional relations on the structures under scrutiny, while imposing that the validity of resulting formulas remain independent of the particular interpretation of said relations.
    This notion gives rise to a rich and interesting subdomain of Finite Model Theory, of which we will try to give an overview.
    After introducing these extensions, we will give a brief survey of the field, and end by presenting a few open questions pertaining to logics defined by invariance.
    Bio: After a PhD in finite model theory at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, Julien Grange did a postdoc at IRISA. Since 2021, he is an associate professor at Université Paris-Est Créteil.
  • 15:00 - 15:30: Dale Miller
    Title: A tale of two computer scientists
    Abstract: I will give an overview of the 40-year-long careers of two computer science researchers (my wife and me). I will focus on their most critical personal, scientific, and professional choices during those decades.
    Bio: Dale Miller received his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1983 from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Ecole Polytechnique (France) and Department Head in Computer Science and Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. He is currently a Director of Research at Inria Saclay. Miller was a two-term editor-in-chief of the ACM Transactions on Computational Logic and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Automated Reasoning. He was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant in 2011 and the LICS Test-of-Time awards in 2011 and 2014 for papers written in 1991 and 1994. He is an ACM Fellow. Miller works on various topics in computational logic, including proof theory, automated reasoning, logic programming, unification theory, operational semantics, and proof certificates. He is one of the designers of the λProlog programming language and the Abella theorem prover
  • 15:30 - 16:00: Coffee break
  • 16:00 - 17:00: Panel discussion with Mikołaj Bojańczyk, Lidia Tendera, Anna Wludarska

Organizing Committee

Past events