Logical Journeys Webinar (World Logic Day Event)

Prof Samson Abramsky FRS

Christopher Strachey Professor of Computing at University of Oxford

Samson Abramsky is Christopher Strachey Professor of Computing and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford University. Previously he held chairs at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, and at the University of Edinburgh.

Samson has played a leading role in the development of game semantics, and its applications to the semantics of programming languages. Other notable contributions include his work on domain theory in logical form, the lazy lambda calculus, strictness analysis, concurrency theory, interaction categories, and geometry of interaction. More recently, he has been working on high-level methods for quantum computation and information. He introduced categorical quantum mechanics with Bob Coecke. He introduced the sheaf-theoretic approach to contextuality and non-locality with Adam Brandenburger, and has contributed extensively to developing a structural theory of contextuality and its applications.

Prof Robin Hirsch

Professor of Mathematical Foundations of Computing, UCL Computer Science at UCL

My research has focused on the theory of binary relations.  The principal algebraic formalism for binary relations is relation algebra, I have written the key textbook on this topic.  Binary relations are much harder to deal with than unary relations, my approach (jointly with Ian Hodkinson) is based on a simple two player game to test consistency of assertions about binary relations.  Using these games I have established various complexity results, including the undecidability of the representation problem for finite relation algebras.  I have extensive research in other algebras of relations, e.g. cylindric, polyadic, domain, kleene algebras, etc. 

I have published research in a wide range of fields including graph theory, relativity theory, argumentation, constraint satisfaction and planning.

I am director of the London Logic Forum which brings together eminent logicians from various academic institutions in London.

Dr Nathan Klinedinst

Lecturer, UCL Psychology and Language Sciences at UCL

My primary research interest is in developing formal theories of meaning and communication, informed by theoretical and experimental linguistics, and the cognitive sciences more broadly.

Dr Pasquale Minervini

Senior Research Fellow, UCL Computer Science at UCL

Pasquale is a Senior Research Fellow at University College London (UCL). He received a PhD in Computer Science from University of Bari, Italy, with a thesis on relational learning. After his PhD, he worked as a postdoc researcher at the University of Bari, and at the INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics (INSIGHT), where he worked in a group composed by researchers and engineers from INSIGHT and Fujitsu Ireland Research and Innovation. Pasquale published peer-reviewed papers in top-tier AI conferences, receiving two best paper awards, participated to the organisation of tutorials on Explainable AI and relational learning (three for AAAI, one for ECML, and others), and was a guest lecturer at UCL and at the Summer School on Statistical Relational Artificial Intelligence. He is the main inventor of a patent application assigned to Fujitsu Ltd, and recently he was awarded a seven-figures H2020 research grant involving applications of relational learning to cancer research. His website is neuralnoise.com.

Visit Dr Minervini's UCL IRIS profile. 

Dr Lavinia Picollo

Lecturer, UCL Department of Philosophy at UCL

I am a lecturer in Philosophy at UCL. As per January 2021 I will be an Assistant Professor at NUS (National University of Singapore) Department of Philosophy. I received my PhD from the University of Buenos Aires in 2015. After that I spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies and two years as an Assistant Professor at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, both at LMU Munich.

I'm a member of the Buenos Aires Logic Group, the Argentinian Society of Philosophical Analysis, and the Logicians' Liberation League.

Visit Dr Picollo's UCL profile. 

Professor Alessandra Russo

Professor in Applied Computational Logic at Imperial College London

I am a Professor in Applied Computational Logic at the Department of Computing, Imperial College London, and academic member of the Distributed Software Engineering Section.

I lead the Structured and Probabilistic Knowledge Engineering (SPIKE) research group and my research interests are in the the areas of in  Computational Logic, Logic-based Symbolic Learning, Probabilistic and Distributed Inference, and their applications to Intelligent Adaptive Systems, Security, Network Management, Distributed Control Systems for Sensor Networks, and System Biology.