Events and news relevant to the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science

[Ohad Kammar <ohad.kammar@ed.ac.uk>]

Apologies for the quick follow-up:

If you want to meet Shriram today, it would be more effective to sign yourself up here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TdaoVieqnZ9YBgSWLJcpBQYTzhPe942RnTJwBRTncO4/edit?gid=0#gid=0

There are only a few slots left.

(I'm including lfcs-interest as there are Edinburgh-based subscribers who may be interested in meeting Shriram. Further apologies to our subscribers from further afield.)

Yours,

Ohad.

---

From: inf-seminars-request@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk <inf-seminars-request@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk> on behalf of Ohad Kammar <ohad.kammar@ed.ac.uk>
Sent: 10 February 2026 08:00
To: inf-seminars@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk <inf-seminars@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk>; LFCS Interest <lfcs-interest@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk>
Cc: Shriram Krishnamurthi <shriram.forward@gmail.com>
Subject: [LFCS seminar] Today, 10 Feb: Shriram Krishnamurthi, Brown: The Cognitive and Human Factors of Formal Methods

 

Hi,

Reminding we'll have an LFCS seminar today:

  Tuesday, 10 Feb, 4.10pm

  Shriram Krishnamurthi, Brown

  We'll make this seminar hybrid.

  

  Venue: IF G.03

  

  To attend remotely:

  URL: https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/85018484695

  Password: 9FATrwVS

We're synchronising the seminar time with the teaching timetable, and

plan to start the talk at the advertised time, so please arrive a minute or two

earlier.

Shriram is based in office IF-3.49. Contact him or Sam Lindley if you'd like to meet him, 

and contact Sam Lindley if you'd like to join us for dinner.

In detail:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Shriram Krishnamurthi, Brown

https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/

  Tue, 10 Feb, 4.10pm

  Venue: IF G.03

  Remote participation:

  URL: https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/85018484695

  Password: 9FATrwVS

Title: The Cognitive and Human Factors of Formal Methods

Abstract

As formal methods improve in expressiveness and power, they create new

opportunities for non-expert adoption. In principle, formal tools

are now powerful enough to enable developers to scalably validate

realistic systems artifacts without extensive formal training.

However, realizing this potential for adoption requires attention to

not only the technical but also the human side—which has received

extraordinarily little attention from formal-methods research.

This talk presents some of our efforts to address this paucity. We apply

ideas from cognitive science, human-factors research, and education

theory to improve the usability of formal methods. Along the way, we

find misconceptions suffered by users, how technically appealing

designs that experts may value may fail to help, and how our tools may

even mislead users.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Upcoming seminars:

------------------

02 Apr: Xi Chen, Columbia University

If you would like to propose a speaker, or speak yourself, please contact me.

The seminar webpages:

http://web.inf.ed.ac.uk/lfcs/events/lfcs-seminars

Yours,

Ohad.

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336.