Formal bytes: The Axiomise Podcast Channel

In the 50th episode of our podcast, Dr Darbari talks to Dr Amin Shokrollahi. We trace Amin's journey from his early childhood, his interests in Mathematics to his current position as a CEO of Kandou - a company that specialises in low-power, high-speed, off-chip communication solutions. Amin describes himself as more of a mathematician than an electronics engineer. He outlines how he uses principles of abstraction in Mathematics/CS in real-life projects. Amin explains the retimer technology that Kando uses in their cutting-edge Matterhorn USB Type-C solution.

How can we make teaching formal methods more effective? What is the relationship between SQL and first-order logic? We used logic to design computers, now we use computers to perform logic reasoning, so is there a relation between machine learning and logic? How does a human brain perform reasoning? Is machine learning and logic the answer to all the major questions facing society? How do incomplete information and statistical bias fit into this? What does risk assessment mean? Tune in to our latest podcast to hear what Prof. Vardi has to say about these topics.

This week Dr Darbari talks to Prof. Moshe Vardi - one of the best-known names in computing and formal methods. In the first of the two episodes, we trace Moshe's journey from his early years and talk about logic, applications of logic to law, NP-complete problems, ENIAC, John von Neumann, John Backus, compilers, semantics, abstractions, descriptions. Moshe shares fascinating accounts of chat with Ed Clarke and the history of LTL, CTL, SVA and PSL. Find out why model checking works. Thank you very much, Moshe, for taking time out to talk to us.

Pleased to bring up the second part of the chat with Prof. Supratik Chakaraborty from IIT Bombay. We talk on boolean function synthesis, AI/ML, BDDs and SAT. Find out the next big thing in synthesis that has the potential to break the RSA!

Prof. Supratik Chakraborty is our guest this week. Tune in to find out how he came full circle from the corridors of IIT in his under-grad to being one of the top leaders in formal methods at IIT Bombay. In the first of the two-part podcast, Supratik talks to Dr Darbari about his passion for asynchronous circuits & formal methods, and word-level abstractions, and symbolic trajectory evaluation. Supratik shares his insights in teaching and research in formal methods and makes a strong case about why formal methods would be necessary for the design of machine learning hardware.