Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Pearls of Computation: A new seminar series

This coming Friday I will kick off a new seminar series organized by ICE-TCS at Reykjavik University. The seminar series is called Pearls of Computation and aims at presenting the work of some of the recipients of the ACM Turing Award (or of some other major award related to computer science) in an accessible way. The target audience consists of students in computer science and anyone with a potential interest in the subject. (The inspiration for this seminar series comes from the Pearls of Theory talks that were held at BRICS in Aarhus in a past that looks so far away now.)

We will try to tell the stories behind the scientific contributions of some of the key figures in computer science in a non-technical way, highlighting the context in which they were made, the state of the art at the time, why they are important and what impact they have had. In the process, I believe that both the attendees and the speakers will all learn something new and develop an increased appreciation (and, why not, pride) for the contributions of some of the people who have shaped our field.

My inaugural talk in this series will be devoted to the life and work of Robin Milner (1934-2010), whose work has had a deep and lasting influence on my modest contribution to concurrency theory. The schedule for the talks that will take place this semester is available here.

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