Title: From Logic to Games (and beyond): A Journey Through Formal Methods
Speaker: Daniele Dell’Erba (Middlesex University, London)
October 14, 2026. Wednesday. 3PM. TG23.
Abstract: Given a description of the desired behaviour of a system how do we turn it into a machine that actually behaves so? This synthesis question provides the thread for a journey on topics in which my research focuses and that constitute mathematical tools and foundations of formal methods such as logics, automata, and games.
Rather than presenting a single contribution in depth, in the talk I will use reactive synthesis as a running example to revisit several central ideas in formal methods. Starting from a formal specification, I will move through automata modelling of the system and then to games, where synthesis becomes a question of finding a strategy for the controller against environments behaviours.
The story does not end with classical applications. Although there is still much to do on foundations of formal methods, the attention of the field is turning towards systems that challenge the assumptions of traditional approaches. In the final part of the talk, I will discuss how formal methods are being adapted to emerging application domains such as cybersecurity, autonomous agents, and machine-learned systems.
Rather than presenting a single contribution in depth, in the talk I will use reactive synthesis as a running example to revisit several central ideas in formal methods. Starting from a formal specification, I will move through automata modelling of the system and then to games, where synthesis becomes a question of finding a strategy for the controller against environments behaviours.
The story does not end with classical applications. Although there is still much to do on foundations of formal methods, the attention of the field is turning towards systems that challenge the assumptions of traditional approaches. In the final part of the talk, I will discuss how formal methods are being adapted to emerging application domains such as cybersecurity, autonomous agents, and machine-learned systems.
Bio: Daniele Dell’Erba is a Lecturer in Computer Science at Middlesex University, London. Previously he’s been a Marie Curie Fellow and then a Postdoc at the University of Liverpool where he holds an Honorary Fellow position. His research focuses on theoretical computer science, precisely on formal methods. The majority of the effort aims at solving infinite-duration games on graphs, which can be used for formal verification (model checking and synthesis of multi-agent systems) and have applications in automata theory, machine learning, and control theory.