Brief Bio and CV

Dr. Vijay Ganesh is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo's Electrical and Computer Engineering department, with a cross-appointment at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. Prior to joining Waterloo in 2012, he was a research scientist at MIT (2007-2012) and completed his PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 2007.

Vijay's primary area of research is the theory and practice of automated reasoning aimed at software engineering, formal methods, security, and mathematics. In this context he has led the development of many SAT/SMT solvers, most notably, STP, the Z3 string solver, MapleSAT, and MathCheck. He has also proved several decidability and complexity results in the context of first-order theories. He has won over 25 research awards, best paper awards, distinctions, and medals for his research to-date. He recently won an ISSTA Impact Paper Award 2019 (equivalent to 10-year Best Paper Award @ ISSTA), an ACM Test of Time Award at CCS 2016, the Early Researcher Award (ERA) given by the Ontario Government in 2016, Outstanding Paper Award at ACSAC 2016, an IBM Research Faculty Award in 2015, two Google Research Faculty Awards in 2013 and 2011, a Ten-Year Most Influential paper citation at DATE 2008, and 10 best paper awards/honors of different kinds at conferences like CAV, IJCAI, CADE, ISSTA, SAT, SPLC, and CCS. His solvers STP and MapleSAT have won numerous awards at the highly competitive international SMT and SAT solver competitions. In 2013 he was invited to the first Heidelberg Laureate Forum, a gathering where a select group of young researchers from around the world met with Turing, Fields and Abel Laureates.

You can explore Vijay's mathematical genealogy here, in a concise format here, or in a more complete graphical format here. You can find Vijay Ganesh's Brief Bio in text format here.

You can learn more about the history of SAT and SMT solving here, and that of symbolic execution here.

Briefer Bio for Invited Talks

Dr. Vijay Ganesh is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo. Prior to joining Waterloo in 2012, he was a research scientist at MIT (2007-2012) and completed his PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 2007. Vijay's primary area of research is the theory and practice of automated mathematical reasoning algorithms aimed at software engineering, formal methods, security, and mathematics. In this context he has led the development of many SAT/SMT solvers, most notably, STP, Z3 string, MapleSAT, and MathCheck. He has also proved several decidability and complexity results in the context of first-order theories. He has won over 25 awards, honors, and medals to-date for his research, including an ACM Test of Time Award at CCS 2016, an Ontario Early Researcher Award 2016, two Google Faculty Research Awards in 2011 and 2013, and a Ten-Year Most Influential Paper citation at DATE 2008.