Joseph Yehuda Halpern (born May 29, 1953) is an Israeli-American professor of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

. Most of his research is on reasoning about knowledge and uncertainty.

Biography

Halpern graduated in 1975 from

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

with a B.S. in mathematics. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1981 under the supervision of Albert R. Meyer and

Gerald Sacks Gerald Enoch Sacks (1933 – October 4, 2019) was an American logician whose most important contributions were in recursion theory. Named after him is Sacks forcing, a forcing notion based on perfect sets and the Sacks Density Theorem, which asse ...

. He has written three books, ''Actual Causality'', ''Reasoning about Uncertainty,'' and ''Reasoning About Knowledge'' and is a winner of the 1997

Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Inter ...

in theoretical computer science and the 2009

Dijkstra Prize The ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC) is an academic conference in the field of distributed computing organised annually by the Association for Computing Machinery (special interest groups SIGACT and SIGOPS). Scope and ...

in distributed computing. From 1997 to 2003, he was editor-in-chief of the

Journal of the ACM The ''Journal of the ACM'' (''JACM'') is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering computer science in general, especially theoretical aspects. It is an official journal of the Association for Computing Machinery. Its current editor-in-chief is ...

. In 2002, he was inducted as a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

and in 2012 he was selected as an

IEEE Fellow , the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and ot ...

. In 2011, he was awarded a Senior Fellowship of the Zukunftskolleg at the

University of Konstanz The University of Konstanz () is a university in the city of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Its main campus was opened on the Gießberg in 1972 after being founded in 1966. The university is Germany's southernmost university and is ...

. In 2019, Halpern was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

for methods of reasoning about knowledge, belief, and uncertainty and their applications to distributed computing and multiagent systems. Halpern is also the administrator for the Computing Research Repository, the computer science branch of

arXiv.org arXiv (pronounced as "archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not peer reviewed. It con ...

, and the moderator for the "general literature" and "other" subsections of the repository. His students include Nir Friedman,

Daphne Koller Daphne Koller (; born August 27, 1968) is an Israeli-American computer scientist. She was a professor in the department of computer science at Stanford University and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship recipient. She is one of the founders of Cour ...

, and

Yoram Moses Yoram Moses () is a Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Yoram Moses received a B.Sc. in mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1981, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science ...

References

External links

Joe Halpern's homepageGoogle scholar profile
Cornell University faculty Gödel Prize laureates 20th-century American Jews Dijkstra Prize laureates Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2002 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the IEEE American computer scientists Researchers in distributed computing University of Toronto alumni Harvard University alumni Artificial intelligence researchers Living people 1953 births IBM Research computer scientists IBM employees 21st-century American Jews {{Compu-bio-stub