Professor Peter O'Hearn is honoured as an ACM Fellow for exceptional contributions to computing

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, named fifty-five new ACM Fellows this month. What is more exceptional, is that Professor O’Hearn is one of only two UK- based researchers to be honoured. 

Recognised for their innovative breakthroughs, the 2024 Fellows, all of whom are distinguished ACM Members, have been chosen by their peers for exceptional transformative contributions to computing science and technology. 

The ACM Fellows programme recognises the dedication and ingenuity of its members whose achievements foster innovation and contribute to significant advancements in computing.

"Computing technology has had a tremendous impact in shaping how we live and work today,” said ACM President Yannis Ioannidis. “The ACM Fellows programme honours the creativity and hard work of ACM members whose specific accomplishments drive innovation and make broader advances possible.”

Professor O'Hearn, who is also a researcher at Meta, was awarded the respected title ‘for contributions to the science and engineering of reasoning about programs’.

On receiving the news, Professor O'Hearn said, “I'm honoured to receive this recognition from the ACM for my work on reasoning about programs, and I'm grateful for my collaborations with numerous colleagues, particularly at UCL, and especially David Pym.

This sort of recognition typically celebrates past achievements, but we're at an exciting crossroads where the future of reasoning has never looked brighter. Reasoning has been getting more and more attention in industrial AI labs, leading to a much greater volume of attention for reasoning than ever before, and rightly so: the potential impact of AI's that can act rationally and explain themselves is massive.

UCL is well placed to help drive this future, with extremely strong groups in the UCL Centre for AI, in Software Engineering, and in Programming Principles, Logic and Verification.”

Professor O'Hearn has made groundbreaking contributions to the realms of programming languages, logic, and software verification. He is the visionary behind Separation Logic and Incorrectness Logic- innovative theories that have revolutionised reasoning tools in the industry.

His work has been instrumental in the development of Infer, a cutting-edge program analyser that has uncovered hundreds of thousands of bugs at Facebook and other leading tech companies. Professor O'Hearn’s pioneering research not only enhances software reliability but also sets new standards for code quality in the tech world, making a profound impact on the way we develop and maintain software today.

Prior to joining Meta, Professor O'Hearn co-founded Monoidics, a verification startup that developed Infer and was acquired by Facebook in 2013. He has received recognition for his contributions, including the Godel Prize and election as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Professor David Pym, Head of the Programming Principles, Logic, and Verification Research Group at UCL Computer Science, said “Peter's work has had significant industrial impact, but an interesting point is that when he and I and others were exploring the original ideas around bunched logic, separation logic and related systems, we were thinking about the foundations of reasoning, intellectually far upstream of what would become eventual applications (which we could not have foreseen at the time).

To me, the work really speaks to the value of fundamental research done for fundamental reasons.”