I am currently looking for a student assistant to help developing a Java-based tool for analyzing the termination behavior of programs with recursion and randomness. Feel free to contact me if you are interested!
- tobias.winkler at cs.rwth-aachen.de
- Address
- Room 4231
Ahornstraße 55
D-52074 Aachen
I am a PhD student in the Software Modeling and Verification Group headed by Professor Joost-Pieter Katoen. Moreover, I am an associated doctoral researcher in the research training group UnRAVel.
Research
My research focuses on automatic formal analysis of discrete probabilistic systems, both from a theoretical and practical point of view. More specifically, my research interests include:
- Probabilistic Model Checking, in particular termination analysis and temporal properties of probabilistic pushdown systems, stochastic games with multiple objectives, general state-space reduction techniques, and parametric Markov models.
- Probabilistic Programs, in particular calculi for verifying potentially unbounded while-loops in probabilistic integer programs. More recently, my co-authors and me have studied more general Weighted Programs.
- Tool support for the topics listed above.
In the past, I have supervised our student assistants Johannes Lehmann and Christina Gehnen, and Adrian Gallus.
Thesis projects
If you are interested in writing a Bachelor/Master’s thesis in any of the areas mentioned above, don’t hesitate to contact me. You can also check our list of open topics. I am currently supervising or have supervised the following thesis projects:
Ongoing thesis projects
- Pushdown and Expectation Transformer Semantics of Probabilistic Recursive Programs with Nested Conditioning – Master’s thesis.
- Automatic Verification of Loop Invariants in Weighted Programs (with Kevin Batz) – Bachelor’s thesis.
- POMDP-based Execution Models for Probabilistic Programs with Partial Observability (working title; with Alex Bork) – Master’s thesis.
- Synthetizing Schedulers from Probabilistic Loop Invariants (working title; with Kevin Batz) – Master’s thesis.
Past thesis projects
- Inference in Discrete Probabilistic Programs using Probability Generating Functions – Christian Blumenthal, Master’s thesis. 2022.
- Implementation of an LTL Model Checker for Probabilistic Pushdown Automata – Laura Bamberger, Bachelor’s thesis. 2022.
- Proving Termination of Probabilistic Recursive Programs via SMT-Solving – Leo Mommers, Bachelor’s thesis. 2022.
- Compositional Control-Flow Reduction for Probabilistic Model Checking – Leon Barth, Bachelor’s thesis. 2021.
- Automata-based Model Checking of Recursive Systems – Christina Gehnen, Bachelor’s thesis. 2020.
Christina has received an award from the Fachgruppe Informatik for her thesis.
Teaching
Current semester
Past semesters
- Formal Verification Meets Machine Learning (Seminar) WS21/22
- Modelling and Verification of Probabilistic Systems SS21
- Probabilistic Programming WS20/21
- Probabilistic Programming (Seminar) WS20/21
- Datenstrukturen und Algorithmen SS20
- Introduction to Program Analysis (Proseminar) SS20
Awards
- Our paper Generating Functions for Probabilistic Programs (joint work with Kevin Batz, Lutz Klinkenberg, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen and Joshua Moerman) has received the best paper award at LOPSTR 2020.
- I was awarded the Springorum Medal in 2020 for receiving a master’s degree with distinction.
Peer Review
Journals
- Formal Methods in System Design (FMSD) 2021 (external reviewer)
- Logical Methods in Computer Science (LMCS) 2022 (reviewer)
Conferences
- FoSSaCS 2021 (external reviewer)
- CAV 2021 (PC member Artifact Evaluation / external reviewer)
- CONCUR 2021 (external reviewer)
- POPL 2022 (external reviewer)
- CAV 2022 (PC member Artifact Evaluation / external reviewer)
- LICS 2022 (external reviewer)
- ICALP 2022 (external reviewer)
- CONCUR 2022 (external reviewer)
- ICTAC 2022 (external reviewer)
- POPL 2023 (external reviewer)
Publications
You can also find me on dblp and Google Scholar.