|
Welcome to the website of the
Formal Methods Research Group of the Faculty of Information
Technology at University of Central Punjab.
systems. These techniques are based on discrete mathematics,
such as logic, set theory, graph theory, etc. There are more
than 90 tools and specification languages http://vl.fmnet.info/
used for developing, modeling and simulating the systems.
Why Formal Methods?
Formal Methods have rigorous tool support for the specification,
design and verification of software and hardware systems. Tools
in Formal methods examine the entire state space of a system,
described in any specification language, by analyzing its
properties and result either true or false for all the possible
inputs. Formal Methods remove the ambiguities at any level of
systems development. Formal Methods increase the confidence,
dependability and usability of constructions in developing the
systems.
Why Formal Methods Group at UCP?
Formal methods are getting importance at academics as well as
at industrial level. For example, according to a survey
conducted by a group in European Higher Education http://www.fmeurope.org/fme/oliveira2004.htm,
there are 117 courses spreading over 58 higher education
institutions across 13 European countries. More important is
that the use of Formal Methods is recommended at least in large
and complex e.g. safety critical systems http://www.jpbowen.com/pub/aquis2002.pdf.
After realizing the importance of Formal Methods, HEC of
Pakistan has included some courses at undergraduate as well as
at graduate level in their curriculum to promote the use of
Formal Methods in Pakistan
http://www.hec.gov.pk/new/AcademicAffairs/Curriculum_Revision.htm.
Currently, in Pakistan, there are not many trained people in
Formal Methods who can meet the future national needs in this
technology when people all around the world will be using Formal
Methods. The objective of our research group is to train our
students by offering courses on Formal Methods and guiding them
conducting research projects in this area. We believe that our
students, after graduating, will introduce this technology at
industrial level in Pakistan.
Research Areas:
- Formal Specifications, Integration of Formal and
Informal
- Approaches for requirements specification, validation
and verification
- Algorithms Designing and Formalizing, Proving
Techniques, Model Checking
- Integration of Formal Methods and Fuzzy Logic/Theory and
its Applications
- Integration of Formal Approaches with Graph Theory and
its Applications
- Analyzing Safety Critical Systems using formal
approaches
- Linking Formal Techniques with Computation Theory.
|
