Flávio Cruz honored with a Best Paper Award at the ICLP'2014

Flávio Cruz together with their co-authors Ricardo Rocha from University of Porto (FCUP), Seth Copen Goldstein and Frank Pfenning from Carnegie Mellon University, were honored with the best paper award at the 30th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2014),  the leading international conference for presenting research in logic programming, which took place between 19 and 22 julho, em Vienna, Austria.

In their paper, "A Linear Logic Programming Language for Concurrent Programming over Graph Structures", the authors describe a new logic programming language called LM (Linear Meld) that aims to solve problems that can be specified as graphs. According to Flávio Cruz, “graphs can represent arbitrary relations between things and for that reason they are a suitable representation for many interesting problems. Due to the popularity of social networks and also the increased availability of biological and scientific data, graphs become more important since such information can be described as a graph.”

The new language shows how to concisely solve problems that operate on graphs and how to solve them concurrently. Flávio Cruz explains that with this language it is possible to “take advantage of multiple computers in order to reduce the time it takes to solve the problems,” and because it is based on logic “it is easier to prove that our programs will always work correctly.”

Because Linear Meld integrates both classical and linear logic, it tends to be more expressive than other logic programming languages, which is a differentiating factor. In this work, the authors present the syntax and operational semantics of the language and illustrate its use providing a number of examples. For Flávio Cruz, this award “means a lot because it is the culmination of a few years of work.”

Flávio Cruz is enrolled in CMU Portugal’s dual degree Ph.D. program in Computer Science since the academic year 2011/2012, with MAPi (through Faculdade de Ciências of the Universidade do Porto (FCUP)) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). When asked to comment on his views on the CMU Portugal Program, Flávio Cruz stated that “it is a good experience, and I would recommend it to people who love their research field.”

(adapted from the news of www.cmuportugal.org)