Sylvain LombardyView profile
Professor
Sylvain Lombardy is a Professor at the University of Bordeaux, affiliated with the Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique (LaBRI) and the Enseirb-Matmeca engineering school within the Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux. His research focuses on automata theory, formal languages, and theoretical computer science, particularly in weighted automata, formal methods, and algebraic properties of automata. He leads the Formal Methods research team at LaBRI and contributes to projects like the Awali and Vaucanson software platforms for automata manipulation. Education: PhD in Computer Science (2001, ENST Paris), Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (2005, University of Paris Diderot). His work bridges theoretical foundations with practical tools, emphasizing algorithmic and algebraic aspects of automata. Notable contributions include studies on automata minimization, determinization, and the interplay between rational expressions and automata constructions. Research Interests: Automata Theory, Formal Power Series, Weighted Automata, Tropical Semirings, Algebraic Automata Theory, and Computational Models for Discrete Systems. His recent work explores two-way automata, Hadamard series, and applications in formal verification. Publications highlight contributions to the structure and properties of automata, with a focus on formal methods and algorithmic decidability. Key works address unambiguity, determinism, and the minimization of weighted automata across various semirings. Collaborations include projects on automata-based kernels for machine learning and XML formats for automata descriptions. He has developed influential software tools such as Awali (finite-state machine platform) and Vaucanson (automata manipulation framework), demonstrating practical applications of theoretical research. His work is supported by grants exploring automata in computational linguistics and discrete mathematics.














