ECE MASc student, Aarti Kashyap has been has been recently invited to participate in the 2020 Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) in Germany. Established in 2013, HLF brings forth 200 young researchers worldwide in the mathematical and computer science field. Participants are carefully selected by a distinguished panel of experts to network with top people of the discipline such as Nobel Laureates and Fields Medal winners.
As many of the attendees are either senior PhD students or junior faculty and post-docs, Aarti’s invitation is quite significant. “It is very exciting. Given the fact that I am a Masters student, I did not expect to be selected for HLF,” Aarti says.
Aarti works under the supervision of Professor Karthik Pattabiraman, specializing in building formal models for safety-critical systems such as artificial pancreas system and air traffic control management. This is important as safety-critical systems have human life depending on them and hence require hard guarantees before they can be deployed. These hard guarantees can be provided through the means of mathematics.
Building formal models help in designing safer and more robust systems. Cybercrimes are rising very quickly due to the extreme dependence on computers. To protect them we need strong reasoning mechanisms such as math, making this topic extremely useful in society.
As HLF is an event that tries to bridge the gap between mathematics and computer science, this overlaps well with Aarti’s current and future research goals. This symposium provides a space for ideas and innovation, meant to motivate and inspire the next generation of scientists. Aarti says she is most looking forward to interacting with researchers who have built the mathematical foundations for Computer Science as well as meeting peers that will also be attending the event.