Bernd Fischer

Bernd Fischer is a Professor and current Head of Division in the Division of Computer Science at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He has previously worked at TU Braunschweig, NASA Ames Research Center, and University of Southampton. His academic journey includes a PhD from Universität Passau (defended June 1, 2001).

Professor Fischer's research focuses on automated software engineering with particular emphasis on logic-based techniques. His work spans specification-based component reuse, program synthesis, program verification (including annotation inference, software model checking, and human-oriented presentation of verification results), and innovative visualization approaches like tag clouds over concept lattices. His research has led to significant contributions in concurrent program verification, fault localization, and software repository analysis.

Analysis of his recent publications reveals strong trends in software verification, particularly in concurrent systems and model checking. His work has consistently focused on developing practical verification tools (CSeq, ESBMC) that have achieved top rankings in international verification competitions. He has also pioneered visualization techniques for software repositories and academic data exploration using concept lattices and tag clouds.

His scientific achievements have been recognized with multiple awards including Best Paper Award at ASE 1998, ASE 2012 Most Influential Paper Award, ACM Distinguished Paper Award (2011), Best Presentation Award at SAFECOMP 2010, and multiple Gold and Silver medals in the International Competition on Software Verification (SV-COMP) in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Professor Fischer has successfully supervised numerous PhD and Master's students, both at Stellenbosch University and previously at University of Southampton. His service to the academic community includes committee memberships in IFIP TC-2 Working Group on Program Generation (since 2004), ASE steering committee (since 2007), and GPCE steering committee (since 2011). He has served as General Chair for SPIN 2015 and GPCE'16, and as Program Committee Chair for GPCE 2009 and ASE 2007.

His research group has developed several notable tools including AutoBayes (for automatic generation of data analysis programs), ConceptCloud (for browsing software archives), CSeq (a concurrency pre-processor for sequential C verification), and ESBMC (a model checker for C and C++ programs).