Computing academic's paper wins the LICS 2017 Test-of-Time Award

Professor Abbas Edalat

Congratulations to Professor Abbas Edalat, whose co-authored paper 'Bisimulation for Labelled Markov Processes', was selected for the award.

The LICS Test-of-Time Award recognizes a small number of papers from the LICS proceedings from 20 years prior (i.e., the paper in question was from LICS 1997 and was considered this year) that have best met the "test of time".

Professor Abbas Edalat - head of both the Algorithmic Human Development and Continuous Data-Types and Exact Computing research groups at Imperial – co-authored the paper with Richard Blute (University of Ottawa) Josée Desharnais (Université Laval), and Prakash Panangaden (McGill University).

The paper introduced a new class of labelled transition systems - Labelled Markov Processes - and defined bisimulation for them. Labelled Markov processes are probabilistic labelled transition systems where the state space is not necessarily discrete, it could be the reals, for example. The mathematical theory of such systems was completely new from the point of view of the extant literature on probabilistic process algebra; of course, it uses classical ideas from measure theory and Markov process theory. 

The papers are selected by an awards committee that is appointed by the LICS General Chair and consists of between three to five members. The committee is renewed every year; at the discretion of the General Chair, members may be reappointed to the awards committee.

In selecting these papers, the Awards Committee consider the influence that the papers have had since publication; because of the foundational nature of LICS work, impact is often not fully felt immediately, hence the 20-year perspective.

All papers from the given year are eligible for this award, except those that are authored or co-authored by members of the Awards Committee. There is no formal nomination process for this award, but input from the LICS community is welcomed.

The award will be presented during the award session of LICS 2017 in Reykjavik.