
Professor Kerstin Eder
MSc, Ph.D.(Bristol)
Current positions
Professor of Computer Science
School of Computer Science
Contact
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Research interests
My research activities are focused on specification, verification and analysis techniques which allow engineers to design a system and to verify/explore its behaviour in terms of functional correctness, safety, performance, power consumption and energy efficiency. My work includes both formal methods and traditional simulation-based approaches. I have a strong background in computational logic, especially formal verification, declarative programming languages and their implementation, abstract machines, compilation techniques and meta programming.
Now that I am fully back after parental leave, I have re-started my research with three new funded research projects.
I am engaged in new research that explores Energy Transparency from hardware to software over the entire system stack. The ENTRA (Whole Systems Energy Transparency) project is funded by the EC under the recent FP7 FET call on Minimizing Energy Consumption of Computing to the Limit (MINECC).
I am also active at the Bristol Robotics Lab advancing the state of the art in verification of autonomous assistive robots, including robotis directly involved in interactions with humans. The EPSRC is funding two new projects in this area.
An area of ongoing research interest of mine is the application of machine learning techniques in order to automate the parts within the verification process that consume large amounts of engineering time, such as test generation and debug.
Teaching
I teach leading edge Design Verification techniques and methods using industrial strength tools including both state-of-the-art coverage-driven simulation/test-based verification and formal verification. You may want to watch an interview I gave at DAC 2012 in San Francisco on the content of the Design Verification unit.
Since 2007 Bristol has been selected as lead university to head the Cadence Academic Network in the area of Advanced Verification Methodology. (local CAN info)
In collaboration with a consortium of local microelectronic design companies I have initiated the introduction of the MSc in Advanced Microelectronic Systems Engineering in 2006. I have been the Director of this MSc programme until 2010. The programme is now one of our established Advanced MSc programmes; it attracts excellent students and provides qualified graduates for the local and international microelectronics design industry.
Expertise
I have established Design Automation and Verification as a research and teaching area of international recognition here at Bristol. I set up and now chair the Energy-Aware COmputing workshop series and research initiative. I also lead the "Verification and Validation for Safety in Robots" research theme at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. My research activities are focused on the development of system modelling, verification and analysis techniques which allow designers to define a system and to verify or explore its behaviour, e.g. in terms of functional correctness, performance, power dissipation and energy efficiency. My work includes both formal methods and state-of-the-art test-based approaches.
- verification; validation and test
- design automation and verification
- formal verification and specification
- energy aware computing
- energy efficient computing
- robotics
- autonomous systems safety and trust
Keywords
- verification
- simulation
- test
- formal methods
- modelling
- certification
- robot safety
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
AI for Productive Research & Innovation in eLectronics
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Computer ScienceDates
01/02/2024 to 31/01/2029
UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node In Functionality
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of Aerospace EngineeringDates
01/11/2020 to 30/04/2024
Advanced Verification for Safe and Trustworthy Robotic Assistants
Principal Investigator
Description
To be genuinely useful, robotic assistants may need to be clever and powerful; this may also make them dangerous. Demonstrable safety is a prerequisite for robots to be trusted. How…Managing organisational unit
Dates
01/12/2016 to 15/07/2017
Newton Advanced Fellowship - Samuel Xavier de Souse
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of Computer ScienceDates
01/12/2016 to 01/12/2019
8030 EPSRC INTERNATIONAL STRATEGIC F
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of Computer ScienceDates
01/08/2016
Thesis supervisions
Integrated hardware garbage collection for real-time embedded systems
Supervisors
Inductive Logic Programming for Compiler Tuning
Supervisors
Intelligent Testing for Simulation-Based Verification of Complex Industrial Hardware
Supervisors
Behaviour analysis in binary SoC data
Supervisors
Verification and Validation of Planning Domain Models
Supervisors
Operational Adaptation of Deep Neural Networks
Supervisors
Publications
Recent publications
17/01/2025An Energy-Aware RIoT System
An Energy-Aware RIoT System
Detecting Stimuli with Novel Temporal Patterns to Accelerate Functional Coverage Closure
2024 IEEE International Test Conference in Asia (ITC-Asia)
Soft Gripping
2024 IEEE 7th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft)
DIRA: Dynamic Incremental Regularised Adaptation
On the Design of Human-Robot Collaboration Gestures
Thesis
Meta-Programming for Knowledge Base Systems
Supervisors
Award date
01/01/1994