Bernhard Steffen (computer scientist)

{{short description|German computer scientist}}

{{more refs|date=February 2025}}

Bernhard Steffen (born 31 May 1958 in Kiel, West Germany) is a German computer scientist and professor at the TU Dortmund University, Germany. His research focuses on various facets of formal methods ranging from program analysis and verification, to workflow synthesis, to test-based modeling, and machine learning.{{cite web

| last=Steffen

| first=Bernhard

| title=CV

| url=http://ls5-www.cs.tu-dortmund.de/cms/Medienpool/CVs/BernhardSteffen-CV2022.pdf

| accessdate=21 February 2022

}}

After his PhD at the University of Kiel supervised by Hans Langmaack, Steffen spent two years as a research fellow at the LFCS (University of Edinburgh, Scotland) where he co-developed the Edinburgh Concurrency Workbench{{cite journal

| last1=Cleaveland

| first1=Rance

| last2=Parrow

| first2=Joachim

| last3=Steffen

| first3=Bernhard

| title=The Concurrency Workbench: A Semantics-Based Tool for the Verification of Concurrent Systems

| journal=ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems

| volume=15

| pages=36–72

| year=1993

| doi=10.1145/151646.151648

| citeseerx=10.1.1.35.8585

| s2cid=14200624

}} and authored one of the earliest papers on how to adequately model probabilistic processes,{{cite journal

| last1=van Glabbeek

| first1=Rob J.

| last2=Smolka

| first2=Scott A.

| last3=Steffen

| first3=Bernhard

| title=Reactive, generative, and stratified models of probabilistic processes

| journal=Information and Computation

| volume=121

| pages=59–80

| year=1995

| doi=10.1006/inco.1995.1123

| s2cid=180902

| url=https://ir.cwi.nl/pub/2019

| doi-access=free

}} before joining the University of Aarhus in 1989 in a postdoc position. From 1990 to 1992, he was an associate professor at the RWTH Aachen, before he became full professor at the University of Passau. Since 1997, he has held the chair of programming systems at TU Dortmund University where he was Dean of Computer Science between 2002 and 2006 as well as a member of the Senate in 2006 and 2007. In Dortmund, he developed the concept of active automata learning towards a practical means for model-based testing that does not require any a priori models. Recently{{when|date=February 2025}} his interest shifted towards the application of formal methods for explaining machine learning.{{fact|date=February 2025}}

His conceptual background comprises abstract interpretation, computer-aided verification and explanation, automata learning, and the development of domain-specific languages that guarantee properties by design. This is witnessed by receiving the Most Influential PLDI Paper Award for Lazy Code Motion, which is given 10 years in retrospective, and the CAV Artifact Award for the Open-Source LearnLib.{{fact|date=February 2025}} Finally, in 2019, he was awarded the title of Honorary Professor of the Amity{{which|date=February 2025}} School of Engineering and Technology.{{fact|date=February 2025}}

Furthermore, Steffen is founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT),{{cite web

| publisher=Springer Nature

| title=International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer

| url=https://www.springer.com/computer/swe/journal/10009

| access-date=24 February 2025

}} co-founder of TACAS,{{cite web

| title=TACAS

| url=https://tacas.info/

| website=tacas.info

}} ETAPS,{{cite web

| title=ETAPS

| url=https://etaps.org/

| website=etaps.org

}} ISoLA,{{cite web

| title=ISoLA Conference

| url=http://isola-conference.org/

| website=isola-conference.org

}} RERS{{cite web

| title=RERS Challenge

| url=https://rers-challenge.org/

| website=rers-challenge.org

}} and member of the editorial board of the Springer LNCS series.{{cite web

| publisher=Springer Nature

| title=Lecture Notes in Computer Science

| url=https://link.springer.com/bookseries/558

}}