Daniel Jackson (computer scientist) explained

Daniel Jackson
Occupation:Computer scientist
Work Institution:Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral Advisor:John Guttag
Known For:Lightweight formal methods, and the Alloy specification language

Daniel Jackson (born 1963) is a professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the principal designer of the Alloy modelling language, and author of the books Software Abstractions: Logic, Language, and Analysis[1] and The Essence of Software.[2] He leads the Software Design Group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Biography

Jackson was born in London, England, in 1963.[3] He studied physics at the University of Oxford, receiving an MA in 1984. After completing his MA, Jackson worked for two years as a software engineer at Logica UK Ltd. He then returned to academia to study computer science at MIT, where he received an SM in 1988, and a PhD in 1992. Following the completion of his doctorate Jackson took up a position as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, which he held until 1997.[4] He has been on the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT since 1997.In 2017 he became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.[5] In the same year, he was awarded the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award.[6]

Jackson is also a photographer, and has an interest in the straight photography style. The MIT Museum commissioned a series of photographs of MIT laboratories from him, displayed from May to December 2012, to accompany an exhibit of images by Berenice Abbott.Jackson is the son of software engineering researcher Michael A. Jackson,[7] developer of Jackson Structured Programming (JSP), Jackson System Development (JSD), and the Problem Frames Approach.

Research

Jackson's research is broadly concerned with improving the dependability of software. He is a proponent of lightweight formal methods.[8] Jackson and his students developed the Alloy language and its associated Alloy Analyzer analysis tool to provide support for lightweight specification and modelling efforts.[9]

Between 2004 and 2007, Jackson chaired a multi-year United States National Research Council study on dependable systems.[10]

Selected publications

External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: Jackson . Daniel . Software Abstractions: Logic, Language, and Analysis . MIT Press . Cambridge, MA . April 2006 . 978-0-262-10114-1 . 10 January 2009.
  2. Book: Jackson . Daniel . The Essence of Software . Princeton University Press . November 2021 . 978-0-691-225-388 . 22 March 2024.
  3. Web site: DANIEL JACKSON. Jackson. Daniel. Straight Photography by Daniel Jackson. 9 January 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20071113203657/http://straightphotography.org/articles/bio.html. 13 November 2007. dead.
  4. Web site: Prof. Daniel Jackson. CSAIL Software Design Group. 9 January 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20120809040239/http://sdg.csail.mit.edu/people/dnj.html. 9 August 2012. dead.
  5. .
  6. Web site: Outstanding Research Award . . 7 April 2024.
  7. Web site: Daniel Jackson. Jackson. Daniel. CSAIL Faculty Pages. 9 January 2009.
  8. Jackson . Daniel. Wing . Jeannette . Jeannette Wing. An Invitation to Formal Methods : Lightweight Formal Methods. Saiedian . Hossein. IEEE Computer. 29. 4. 16. April 1996. 10.1109/MC.1996.488298. 15230509.
  9. Jackson . Daniel. Alloy: A Lightweight Object Modelling Notation. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. 11. 2. April 2002. 256–290. 10.1145/505145.505149. 10.1.1.12.4127. 5683166.
  10. Web site: Sufficient Evidence? Building Certifiably Dependable Systems. Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. The National Academies. 9 January 2009. 27 April 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190427080548/http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cstb/CompletedProjects/CSTB_042247. dead.