David Gries

David Gries
William L. Lewis Prof. of Engineering
Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow
Dr. rer. nat. Munich Inst. Tech., 1966

My research is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the programming process, with respect to both sequential and concurrent (or parallel) programs. The work requires investigation of theories of program correctness and their application, as well as investigation of other concepts in the semantics of programming languages. A procedural programming language, Polya, is being defined and implemented. We are attempting to make the language in which algorithms are usually presented the programming language, but without loss of efficiency. This has entailed work in the theory of polymorphic types and type inference as well as the development of new constructs for defining types and for describing the implementation of variables. The hope is that this work will advance the state of the art of reusability of program parts and will raise the level at which programs are written.

Education, in particular the material taught in the first few courses in computer science, is of particular interest. A text for a discrete mathematics course, coauthored with F.B. Schneider, has been published. It emphasizes the pervasive use of an equational logic and formal calculation in discrete mathematics. Further work on equational logic and its uses is underway.

University Activities

Computer Science Department Minority Affirmative Action Coordinator

Professional Activities

Managing Editor, Information Processing Letters
Main Editor, Acta Informatica
Co-Editor, Springer-Verlag Texts and Monographs in Computer Science
Editorial Board: Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Software-Concepts and Tools, Formal Aspects of Computer Science
Program committee, Third International Conference on the Mathematics of Program Construction
Director, Marktoberdorf Summer School, Germany, 1994, 1996
IFIP Working Group 2.3 (Programming Methodology)
Reviewer, Computer Science and Math Department, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Referee/Reviewer: Communications of the ACM, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, IEEE Computer, Science of Computer Programming, Acta Informatica, Information Processing Letters, NSF

Awards

IEEE Taylor L. Booth Education Award in Computer Science
Advisor of T.V. Raman, whose PhD thesis won the ACM Dissertation Award
Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow (Cornell University)

Lectures

Equational logic as a useful complement to "the way mathematicians do proofs". Cognitive Studies Proseminar, Cornell University, September 1994.
A new tool: equational logic. ORA Corporation, Ithaca, New York, 21 October 1994.
Moderator and panel organizer, Panel on Teaching Logic as a Tool. ACM-SIGCSE Conference, Nashville, Tennessee, 3 March 1995.
Changing how logic is taught and used. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, 1 May 1995.
____. Computer Science Department, Toronto University, Toronto, Canada, 2 May 1995.
Compiler construction (six week course). Sathya Sai Baba Institute of Higher Learning, Puttaparthy, India, June-July 1994.
Data refinement; equational logic. Six lectures. 15th International Summer School, Marktoberdorf, Germany, July 1994.

Publications

Equational propositional logic. IPL 53, 3 (February 1995), 145-152 (with Fred B. Schneider).
A new approach to teaching discrete mathematics. Primus V, 2 (June 1995), 113-138 (with F.B. Schneider).
Teaching logic as a tool. Proceedings 26th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (Nashville, Tennessee, March 1995), SIGCSE Bulletin Vol. 27, No. 1, 384-385 (with F. Schneider).
On teaching proof. Cornell University Arts & Sciences Newsletter 16, 2 (Spring 1995), 3 (with F. Schneider).

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