Benjamin Kaminski

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E-Mail:

benjamin.kaminski (at) informatik.rwth-aachen.de

Phone:

+49-241/80-21208

Fax:

+49-241/80-22217

Postal Address:

Benjamin Kaminski

Lehrstuhl für Informatik II

RWTH Aachen

D-52056 Aachen

Germany

Visiting Address:

Room 4230

Ahornstraße 55

D-52074 Aachen

I am a Ph.D. student at the Software Modeling and Verification Group (MOVES) headed by Professor Joost-Pieter Katoen involved in the Automated Propabilistic Program Analysis (APPA) project. My fields of interest include

automata theory,
recursion theory, in particular from the perspective of probabilistic programs, and
logic.

Currently, I offer the following open topics for theses:

Schnelle Evaluierung probabilistisch primitiv rekursiver Funktionen (Bachelor)

If you, however, have an idea of your own for a thesis (bachelor or master) in the field of probabilistic programs, or generally computable functions in connection with probabilities, I would be more than glad to hear about your idea!

2019
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Christoph Matheja. On the Hardness of Analyzing Probabilistic Programs. Acta Informatica 56(3), pages 255-285, 2019.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Advanced Weakest Precondition Calculi for Probabilistic Programs, Talk at PhD Defense, Aachen, 2019.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Advanced Weakest Precondition Calculi for Probabilistic Programs. Phd Thesis at RWTH Aachen University, 2019.
	Kevin Batz, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Christoph Matheja, Thomas Noll. Quantitative Separation Logic. Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages 3(POPL), pages 34:1-34:29, 2019.
2018
	Maurice van Keulen, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Christoph Matheja, Joost-Pieter Katoen. Rule-based Conditioning of Probabilistic Data Integration (Best Paper Award). Proc. of the 12th International Conference on Scalable Uncertainty Management (SUM 2018), Volume 11142 of LNAI, pages 290-305, Springer, 2018.
	Kevin Batz, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Christoph Matheja, Joost-Pieter Katoen. A Program Analysis Perspective on Expected Sampling Times. Collected Abstracts of the 1st International Conference on Probabilistic Programming (PROBPROG 2018), 2018.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Christoph Matheja, Federico Olmedo. Weakest Precondition Reasoning for Expected Runtimes of Randomized Algorithms. Journal of the ACM 65(5), pages 30:1-30:68, 2018.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Quantitative Separation Logic, Talk at UnRAVeL Seminar, RWTH Aachen, 2018.
	Kevin Batz, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Christoph Matheja. How long, O Bayesian network, will I sample thee? A program analysis perspective on expected sampling times.. Proc. of the 27th European Symposium on Programming (ESOP 2018), Volume 10801 of LNCS, pages 186-213, Springer, 2018.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. How long, O Bayesian network, will I sample thee?, Talk at 27th European Symposium on Programming (ESOP 2018), Thessaloniki, Greece, 2018.
	Kevin Batz, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Christoph Matheja, Thomas Noll. Quantitative Separation Logic. Technical report at arxiv number 1802.10467, 2018.
	Federico Olmedo, Friedrich Gretz, Nils Jansen, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Annabelle McIver. Conditioning in Probabilistic Programming. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) 40(1), pages 4:1-4:50, 2018.
	Annabelle McIver, Carroll Morgan, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen. A New Proof Rule for Almost-Sure Termination. Proc. of the 45th Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL 2018), pages 33:1-33:28, 2018.
2017
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Proving Almost-Sure Termination with Non-Ranking Supermartingales, Talk at ROCKS Meeting, Münster, Germany, 2017.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen. A Weakest Pre-Expectation Semantics for Mixed-Sign Expectations. Proc. of the 32nd Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2017), pages 1-12, IEEE, 2017.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. A Weakest Pre-Expectation Semantics for Mixed-Sign Expectations, Talk at 2nd Workshop on Probabilistic Programming Semantics (PPS 2017), Paris, France, 2017.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. A Weakest Pre-Expectation Semantics for Mixed-Sign Expectations, Talk at 32nd Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2017), Reykjavik, Iceland, 2017.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Reasoning about Expected Run-Times of Probabilistic Programs, Talk at Oxford Verification Seminar, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, 2017.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen. A Weakest Pre-Expectation Semantics for Mixed-Sign Expectations. Collected Abstracts of the 2nd Workshop on Probabilistic Programming Semantics (PPS 2017), 2017.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Reasoning about Expected Run-Times of Probabilistic Programs, Talk at 5th Southern-Region English Programming Language Seminar (S-REPLS 5), Oxford, United Kingdom, 2017.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Tutorial on Weakest Precondition Reasoning for Probabilistic Programs and Presentation of a Weakest Pre-Expectation Semantics for Mixed-Sign Expectations, Talk at Programming Principles, Logic and Verification Seminar, University College London, United Kingdom, 2017.
2016
	Nils Jansen, Christian Dehnert, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Lukas Westhofen. Bounded Model Checking for Probabilistic Programs. Proc. of the 14th International Symposium on Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis (ATVA 2016), Volume 9938 of LNCS, Springer, 2016.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. A Weakest Pre-Expectation Semantics for Mixed-Sign Expectations, Talk at Working Seminar on Formal Models, Discrete Structures, and Algorithms, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, 2016.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Expected Run-Times of Probabilistic Programs, Talk at Research Program on Automata, Logic and Games organized by the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at National University of Singapore, 2016.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Christoph Matheja. Inferring Covariances for Probabilistic Programs. Proc. of the 13th International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of SysTems (QEST 2016), Volume 9826 of LNCS, pages 191-206, Springer, 2016.
	Federico Olmedo, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Christoph Matheja. Reasoning about Recursive Probabilistic Programs. Proc. of the 31st Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2016), pages 672-681, ACM, 2016.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Christoph Matheja, Federico Olmedo. Weakest Precondition Reasoning for Expected Run-Times of Probabilistic Programs (EATCS Best Paper Award). Proc. of the 25th European Symposium on Programming (ESOP 2016), Volume 9632 of LNCS, pages 364 - 389, Springer, 2016.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Weakest Precondition Reasoning for Expected Run-Times of Probabilistic Programs, Talk at 25th European Symposium on Programming (ESOP 2016), Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2016.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Weakest Precondition Reasoning for Expected Run-Times of Probabilistic Programs, Talk at RWTH Aachen University, 2016.
	Friedrich Gretz, Nils Jansen, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Federico Olmedo. On the Semantic Intricacies of Conditioning. Collected Abstracts of the 1st Workshop on Probabilistic Programming Semantics (PPS 2016), 2016.
2015
	Nils Jansen, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Christoph Matheja, Federico Olmedo. Probabilistic Programs - A Natural Model for Approximate Computations. Workshop on Approximate Computing (AC15), 2015.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Probabilistic Programs - A Natural Model for Approximate Computations, Talk at Workshop on Approximate Computing (AC15), Paderborn, Germany, 2015.
	Joost-Pieter Katoen, Friedrich Gretz, Nils Jansen, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Federico Olmedo. Understanding Probabilistic Programs. Correct System Design - Symposium in Honor of Ernst-Rüdiger Olderog on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, Volume 9360 of LNCS, pages 15-32, Springer, 2015.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen. On the Hardness of Almost-Sure Termination. Proc. of the 40th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2015), Part I, Volume 9234 of LNCS, pages 307-318, Springer, 2015.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. On the Hardness of Almost-Sure Termination, Talk at 40th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2015), Milan, Italy, 2015.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Conditioning in Probabilistic Programming, Talk at 31st Conference on the Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics (MFPS 2015), Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 2015.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. On the Hardness of Almost-Sure Termination, Talk at Dagstuhl Seminar "Challenges and Trends in Probabilistic Programming", Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany, 2015.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Analyzing Expected Outcomes and (Positive) Almost-Sure Termination of Probabilistic Programs is Hard. Proc. of the Young Researchers' Conference "Frontiers of Formal Methods" (FFM 2015), pages 179-184, Aachener Informatik Berichte, 2015.
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Analyzing Expected Outcomes and (Positive) Almost-Sure Termination of Probabilistic Programs is Hard, Talk at Young Researchers' Conference "Frontiers of Formal Methods" (FFM), Aachen, Germany, 2015.
	Nils Jansen, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Federico Olmedo, Friedrich Gretz, Annabelle McIver. Conditioning in Probabilistic Programming. Proc. of the 31st Conference on the Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics (MFPS 2015), ENTCS 319, pages 199-216, 2015.
2014
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Analyzing Expected Outcomes and Almost-Sure Termination of Probabilistic Programs is Hard, Talk at AlgoSyn, RWTH Aachen, Germany, 2014.
2013
	Benjamin Lucien Kaminski. Analyzing the Communication Behavior of LOOP+Omega Programs. Master Thesis at RWTH Aachen University, 2013.
2011
	Raimondas Sasnauskas, Oscar Soria Dustmann, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Klaus Wehrle, Carsten Weise, Stefan Kowalewski. Scalable Symbolic Execution of Distributed Systems. Proc. of the 31st International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS 2011), pages 333-342, IEEE Computer Society, 2011.

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.