Tom van Dijk has been appointed at the Formal Methods and Tools group from the 1st of February, to help fill the gap caused by the departure of Jaco van de Pol as head of this group. In this function, he will be contributing to our study programme, besides also continuing to pursue his research.
Here's what Tom has to say about himself: “My name is Tom van Dijk; I am a former PhD student of the University Twente who now returns as an assistant professor after several years of research with Armin Biere in the beautiful Austrian city of Linz. My field is formal methods in computer science, meaning the art and science of mathematically proving properties of software systems. I have done quite a bit of work on binary decision diagrams and in the past several years have studied so-called parity games, which play a central role when working with omega-regular languages (such as proving that every time you press the reset button, the system will go back to its original state).
I find teaching a rewarding part of the job for basically two reasons.
The first reason is that I like it when I can transfer ideas to students in a way that feels natural and that gives them also a sense of the big picture and how these new ideas fit in the world. Furthermore, whenever I explain a topic, I find that I also discover new ideas or refine my own narratives. These two reasons make teaching a rewarding experience for me.”
