[Pl-seminar] 2nd May: Frank Pfenning: A rehabilitation of message-passing concurrency

[Aviral Goel]

*Date:* Thursday, May 2nd 2019
*Location:* WVH 366
*Time:* 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
*Speaker:* Frank Pfenning
*Faculty Host:* Amal Ahmed

*A rehabilitation of message-passing concurrency*
<http://prl.ccs.neu.edu/seminars.html#pfenning-message-passing-concurrency>
*Frank Pfenning*

*Abstract*

Recently, there has been a lot of research on shared-memory concurrency.
Nevertheless, programmers are discouraged from using it because of the
difficulty of writing clear, correct programs. This is embodied for example
in the Go Language slogan “Do not communicate by sharing memory; instead,
share memory by communicating.” But do we have the right abstractions for
message-passing concurrent programming? I argue that we do not (yet!)
because concurrency constructs are usually bolted on to an existing
language with an entirely different semantic foundation. I will review some
recent progress on designing better abstractions based on strong logical
and type-theoretic principles. Multiple themes from functional and
object-oriented programming will re-emerge from these foundations in a new
form, including (ha!) shared memory.

*Bio*

Frank Pfenning studied Mathematics and Computer Science at the Technical
University Darmstadt and then left for Carnegie Mellon University on a
Fulbright scholarship where he obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1987
under the supervision of Professor Peter Andrews. He subsequently joined
the Department of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University as
research faculty where he became Professor in 2002 and served as Director
of Graduate Programs from 2004 to 2008 and Associate Dean for Graduate
Education from 2009 to 2010. He was the Joseph F. Traub Professor of
Computer Science and Head of the Computer Science Department from 2013 to
2018. He has spent time as visiting scientist at the Max-Planck-Institute
for Computer Science in Saarbrücken, as Alexander-von-Humboldt fellow at
the Technical University Darmstadt, and as visiting professor at École
Polytechnique and INRIA-Futurs. He has advised 24 completed Ph.D. theses
and won the Herbert A. Simon Award for Teaching Excellence in the School of
Computer Science in 2002. He served as trustee, vice president, and
president of CADE, Inc., the governing body of the International Conference
on Automated Deduction, and on advisory boards for INRIA, the
Max-Planck-Institute for Computer Science, and Seoul National University.
He has chaired several conferences and program committees, including CADE
and LICS, and has been a member of the editorial boards for Theoretical
Computer Science, Journal of Automated Reasoning, and the Journal of
Symbolic Computation. He was named Fellow of the ACM in 2015. His research
interests include programming languages, logic and type theory, logical
frameworks, automated deduction, and computer security. In his spare time
he enjoys playing squash, running, hiking, cooking, and reading.

Best,
Aviral
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