Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

European Initiatives

FP7 & H2020 Projects

ERC Matryoshka

• Program: ERC.

• Project acronym: Matryoshka.

• Duration: April 2017 – March 2022.

• Coordinator: Jasmin Blanchette (VU Amsterdam).

• Participants: Antoine Defourné, Daniel El Oraoui, Mathias Fleury, Pascal Fontaine, Stephan Merz, Hans-Jörg Schurr, Sophie Tourret, Uwe Waldmann.

• Abstract: Proof assistants are increasingly used to verify hardware and software and to formalize mathematics. However, despite some success stories, they remain very laborious to use. The situation has improved with the integration of first-order automatic theorem provers – superposition provers and SMT (satisfiability modulo theories) solvers – but only so much can be done when viewing automatic provers as black boxes. The purpose of Matryoshka is to deliver much higher levels of automation to users of proof assistants by fusing and extending two lines of research: automatic and interactive theorem proving. Our approach is to enrich superposition and SMT with higher-order (HO) reasoning in a careful manner, in order to preserve their desirable properties. With higher-order superposition and higher-order SMT in place, we will develop highly automatic provers building on modern superposition provers and SMT solvers, following a novel stratified architecture, and integrate them in proof assistants. Users stand to experience substantial productivity gains: From 2010 to 2016, the success rate of automatic provers on interactive proof obligations from a representative benchmark suite called Judgment Day has risen from 47% to 77%; with this project, we aim at 90%–95% proof automation.

• More information: http://matryoshka.gforge.inria.fr/.

Collaborations in European Programs, Except FP7 & H2020

• Program: Erasmus+.

• Project acronym: PIAF.

• Project title: Pensée Informatique et Algorithmique au Fondamental / Computational and Algorithmic Thinking in Primary Education.

• Coordinator: Université de Liège.

• Other partners: Université du Luxembourg, Saarland University, ESPE Nancy.

• Participant: Marie Duflot-Kremer.

• Abstract: The goal of the PIAF project is threefold: creating a repository of skills related to computational and algorithmic thinking, designing activities aiming at the acquisition of these skills, and evaluating the impact of these activities on primary school children and their computational thinking capacities.

• Program: ERASMUS+.

• Project acronym: ARC.

• Project title: Automated reasoning in the class.

• Coordinator: West University of Timisoara (Romania).

• Other partners: Johaness Kepler University Linz (Austria), RWTH Aachen University (Germany), Eszterhazy Karoly University (Hungary), Université de Lorraine.

• Participant: Sorin Stratulat.

• Abstract: The main objective of the project is to improve the education of computer science students in fields related to computational logic, by creating innovative and advanced learning material that uses automated reasoning and by training a large number of academic staff in using this in a modern way. Thus indirectly the project objectives include the effects of increased software reliability: virus elimination, online safety, better detection of negative online phenomena (fake news, cyberbullying, etc.), and other.