Thomas Henzinger (born 1962) is an Austrian

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

, researcher, and former president of the Institute of Science and Technology,

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

Early life and education

Henzinger was born in Austria. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science from

Johannes Kepler University Linz The Johannes Kepler University Linz (German: ''Johannes Kepler Universität Linz'', short: ''JKU'') is a public university in Austria. It is located in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria. It offers bachelor's, master's, diploma and doctoral degre ...

, and his PhD from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1991, advised by Zohar Manna. He is married to Monika Henzinger and has three children.

Career

Henzinger was successively Assistant Professor of Computer Science at

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 ...

(1992–95) and Assistant Professor (1996–97), Associate Professor (1997–98), Professor (1998–2004) and Adjunct Professor (till 2011) of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. He was also director of the

Max Planck Institute The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the M ...

of Computer Science in

Saarbrücken Saarbrücken (; Rhenish Franconian: ''Sabrigge'' ; ; ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of cities and towns in Germany, city of the state of Saarland, Germany. Saarbrücken has 181,959 inhabitants and is Saarland's administrative, commerci ...

, Germany in 1999 and Professor of Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne), Switzerland from 2004 to 2009. Until 2022, he was president of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). His research is concerned with modern systems theory, particularly on the models, algorithms, and tools for the design and verification of reliable software, hardware, and embedded systems. His HyTech tool was the first

model checker In computer science, model checking or property checking is a method for checking whether a finite-state model of a system meets a given specification (also known as correctness). This is typically associated with hardware or software system ...

for mixed discrete-continuous systems. For more on his influential work and academic contributions, his Google Scholar profile provides a comprehensive list of his publications, and his academic lineage can be explored on the Mathematics Genealogy Project page.

Other activities

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

(ERC), Member of the Scientific Council (since 2023)Commission appoints distinguished scientists and scholars as members of the European Research Council’s governing body

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

Directorate-General for Research and Innovation The Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) is a Directorate-General of the European Commission, located in Brussels, and responsible for the European Union's research and innovation policy and coordination of research and innovati ...

, press release of 7 December 2022.

Recognition

Prof. Henzinger is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

, the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), and the

Austrian Academy of Sciences The Austrian Academy of Sciences (; ÖAW) is a legal entity under the special protection of the Republic of Austria. According to the statutes of the Academy its mission is to promote the sciences and humanities in every respect and in every fi ...

. He received a

Doctor honoris causa An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

from Fourier University in Grenoble and from

Masaryk University Masaryk University (MU) (; ) is the second largest university in the Czech Republic, a member of the Compostela Group and the Utrecht Network. Founded in 1919 in Brno, it now consists of ten faculties and 35,115 students. It is named after To ...

in Brno. He is also a Fellow of the AAAS, the ACM, and the

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

. He has received the 2015 Robin Milner Award of the Royal Society, the

EATCS Award The European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) is an international organization with a European focus, founded in 1972. Its aim is to facilitate the exchange of ideas and results among theoretical computer scientists as well as ...

of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science, and the Wittgenstein Award of the Austrian Science Fund. He was recognized as an

ISI Highly Cited Researcher The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysis ...

in 2001 and is ranked as the most-cited researcher in Austria according to ''h''-index data.

References

External links

Archive of the page at EPFL

Page at ISTA

Page at the Austrian Academy of Sciences
* 1962 births Living people Stanford University alumni Austrian computer scientists Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences {{Austria-scientist-stub