Dr Alex Summers has been awarded the Junior Dahl Nygaard prize for his work on the verification of object-oriented programs and type systems.

In 2004, AITO established an annual prize in the name of the Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard to honour their pioneering work on object-orientation. It is awarded annually to two individuals that have made significant technical contributions to the field of Object-Orientation. The work should be in the spirit of the pioneering conceptual and/or implementation work of Dahl and Nygaard, which shaped our present view of programming and modelling, now known as Object-Orientation.  A  Senior Prize is given to a senior professional and a Junior Prize given to a junior professional.   

The Junior Prize being awarded to a young researcher who has demonstrated great potential for following in the footsteps of these two pioneers. It was decided that Alex Summers previously a young postdoctoral researcher here in the Department of Computing was the most outstanding candidate in this category for his work on the verification of object-oriented programs and type systems.

Alex completed both his Joint Maths and Computing degree (2004) and  his PhD (2009) here in the Department of Computing at Imperial. Since then he has been a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London and at ETH Zurich. Alex's research contributions span the fundamentals of Computer Science (the Curry-Howard isomorphism for classical logic), the design of programming languages (committed types for object initialization), models underpinning program reasoning (invariants for program verification, permission logics, the connection between implicit dynamic frames and separation logics), new approaches to reasoning (considerate reasoning, abstract read permissions), and tool development for reasoning. His work exploits the separation of concerns and the encapsulation offered by the object-oriented paradigm. His breadth of interests is reflected in the wide array of his collaborations. Alex's exceptional achievements, his uncompromising focus on quality, and his keen interest in practically useful results make him a role model for young researchers. He is also an enthusiastic and inspiring teacher.

Well done Alex.