Sifakis has been the President of the Greek National Council for Research and Technology (2014–2016).
Work
Sifakis worked on system verification and the application of formal methods to system design. In his state doctorate[3] he studied the principles of the algorithmic verification method known later as model checking. In 1982, this technique was applied in Jean-Pierre Queille's PhD to develop the CESAR verification tool.[9]
Sifakis was the director of VERIMAG for fourteen years. Established initially as a mixed industrial laboratory between CNRS and Verilog SA., VERIMAG has collaborated with Airbus and Schneider Electric to develop methods and tools for the development of safety critical systems, in particular the SCADE synchronous programming environment based on the Lustre Language. Sifakis has worked on the verification of timed and hybrid systems with Thomas Henzinger[10][11] and the synthesis of timed systems with Amir Pnueli and Oded Maler[12]. He has participated to the development of verification tools including the IF toolset, Kronos, CADP, and TGV and has developed theory for coping with state explosion using abstraction techniques.
Over the past twenty years, his work has focused on rigorous component-based design using the BIP component framework[13] and more recently the design of trustworthy autonomous systems, self-driving cars in particular.
^ abAt the time when Joseph Sifakis was a graduate student, there existed in France two levels of PhDs, the higher one, the doctorat d'état ("state doctorate") being necessary to access professorships. It has since been replaced by the habilitation.
^:ab There were two science universities in Grenoble: the Université scientifique et médicale de Grenoble (USMG, Grenoble-1), which was later renamed to Joseph Fourier University, and the Grenoble Institute of Technology(INPG), later renamed to Grenoble-INP. VERIMAG is a joint laboratory of CNRS, Joseph Fourier University and Grenoble-INP.
