Nils Jansen

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I'm a PhD student in the MOVES group at RWTH Aachen University. I'm supervised by Prof. Dr. Erika Ábrahám and Prof. Dr. Ir. Joost-Pieter Katoen. I'm also part of the research training group AlgoSyn.

E-Mail: nils.jansen at cs.rwth-aachen.de

Phone: +49-241/80-21208

Address: Room 4230, Ahornstraße 55, 52074 Aachen, Germany

My research interests include verification and synthesis of probabilistic systems, parametric systems and other verification issues like abstraction or regular model checking. I am particularly interested in the generation of counterexamples and their application, symbolic techniques and the utilization of solving techniques like SAT, SMT or linear programming.

I participate(d) in the research projects CEBug, ROCKS, MEALS and HySmart. I also work on parametric probabilistic systems, see the project page.

In addition to these projects I'm very interested in the improvement of teaching and e-learning in the field of theoretical computer science.

For a list of my publications, technical reports and selected talks please look here. My publications as seen by DBLP are here. Find my Google Scholar profile here.

2010 - today

Member of the Commission for Teaching in Computer Science

2009 - today

PhD student and research assistant at RWTH Aachen University

2010 - 2011

Member of the AlgoSyn Steering Committee

2002 - 2009

Studies of computer science with minor business administration at RWTH Aachen University

2001 - 2002

Civilian services at a small hospital in my hometown

1988 - 2001

School education

1982

Born in Simmerath, Germany

During spring and summer of 2013, I stayed at Universidad Nacional de Cordoba with Pedro R. d'Argenio. Within 2010 - 2013 I've stayed many times at the University of Freiburg with Ralf Wimmer and Bernd Becker.

I was an external reviewer for, amongst others, CAV, TACAS, VMCAI, FSTTCS, QEST, ATVA, FORMATS, HSCC, TASE, FMOODS-FORTE, and FACS.

Besides computer science, I'm the conductor of a small orchestra, I enjoy music and reading, and I am very much into food and sometimes sports.

Within the CEBug project we have developed the COMICS tool which computes small critical subsystems as counterexamples for Discrete-time Markov Chains. The current version is available on the COMICS-website. I will release an improved version soon.

I have supervised some Bachelor's or Master's Theses. Find below the finished ones.

Marian Van de veire, "Minimal Critical Subsystems for Probabilistic Models with Nondeterminism"
Andreas Vorpahl, "Compositional Counterexamples for MDPs"
Matthias Volk, "Verification and Synthesis for Parametric Markov Chains"
Maik Scheffler, "Hierarchical Counterexamples for DTMCs - Case Studies"
Amith Belur Nagabushana, "Minimal Critical Subsystems for PCTL Properties of Markov Models"

Member of the AlgoSyn steering committee Mar 2010 - Oct 2011
Member of the commission for teaching in computer science

Program book, web administration and local organization for the Aachen Concurrency and Dependability Week 2011 (CONCUR 2011, QEST 2011, TGC 2011)

Organization of Ringvorlesung: Was ist Informatik 2013
Organization of Ringvorlesung: Was ist Informatik 2012
Organization of Ringvorlesung: Was ist Informatik 2011
Organization of Ringvorlesung: Was ist Informatik 2010

Co-organization of Schüleruniversität 2012
Co-organization of Schüleruniversität 2011
Co-organization of Schüleruniversität 2010
Co-organization of Schüleruniversität 2009

Winter 2012/2013

Lecture Satisfiability Checking
Proseminar Algorithms and Tools for Verification

Summer 2012

Lecture Satisfiability Checking

Winter 2011/2012

Lecture Satisfiability Checking
Seminar Satisfiability Checking

Summer 2011

Proseminar: Real-Time Systems

Winter 2010/2011

Lecture Satisfiability Checking
Seminar Satisfiability Checking

Summer 2010

Proseminar Real Time Systems

Winter 2009/2010

Lecture Erfüllbarkeitsüberprüfung
Seminar Satisfiability Checking

Summer 2009

Lecture Modeling and Analysis of Hybrid Systems
Seminar Probabilistische Systeme

BSc/MSc/Diploma Topics
Teaching WS 2012/13
Hybrid Systems Group

We are looking for a HiWi for the Compiler Construction course. If you are interested, please contact Thomas Noll.

Joost-Pieter Katoen has been appointed as a member of the renowned Academia Europaea (Academy of Europe), a European, non-governmental association acting as an Academy whose members are scientists and scholars who collectively aim to promote learning, education and research.

Vacancies for postdoctoral researchers in "Automated Analysis of Probabilistic Programs". Application deadline: August 15, 2013.

Joost-Pieter Katoen has been awarded a Distinguished Professorship from the RWTH Aachen University.

The Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HSCC'13) conference in Philadelphia has been very successful: Hongfei Fu received the best student paper award for his paper "Approximating acceptance probabilities of CTMC-paths on multi-clock deterministic timed automata". Besides, the paper by Ilya Tkachev, Alexandru Mereacre, Alessandro Abate and Joost-Pieter Katoen was ranked second in the overall best paper award selection.

Joost-Pieter Katoen has been elected as Steering Committee Chair of ETAPS (www.etaps.org), the largest conference on theory and practice of software in Europe. He is the first non-UK ETAPS SC chair since the conference was initiated in 1998. More information here.

The Alumni-Magazine of RWTH Aachen University contains an interview with our former PhD student and postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Tingting Han.

HiWi's wanted to work in a new European Space Agency project for enhancing state-of-the-art design and analysis tools (COMPASS) for the next generation European rockets. Need programming and model checking affinity. See here for details and contact.

We offer openings for several PhD candidates in the area of
"Model-Based Design and Analysis for Dependable Software Systems". Deadline for application: September 14, 2012. For further information click here.

The Theory of Hybrid Systems Group offers two jobs as student assistants within the CEBug project. For more information, look here.

Dino Distefano received the prestigious Roger Needham Award for his work on software verification. This award is for a distinguished research contribution in computer science by a UK based researcher who has completed up to 10 years of post-doctoral research. Dr. Distefano was the first PhD student supervised by Joost-Pieter Katoen.

Marijn Jongerden received the German MMB (Messung, Modellierung und Bewertung von Rechensystemen) Award 2012 of the GI/ITG-Committee for Measurement, Modelling and Evaluation of Computing Systems for his PhD-thesis on "Model-based energy analysis of battery powered systems". His work was supervised by Boudewijn Haverkort (Twente) and Joost-Pieter Katoen.

Our paper "Formal Correctness, Safety, Dependability and Performance Analysis of a Satellite" has been accepted to ICSE 2012 in the track SE in Practice (18% acceptance rate). The paper treats a new satellite from the European Space Agency that was modeled and analyzed with modern tools during the actual satellite design.

Joost-Pieter Katoen will act as DJ in the "Nacht der Professoren" in the Apollo bar and cinema.