Georg Weissenbacher

Georg Weissenbacher is a Full Professor of Computer Science at Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), working in the Institute of Logic and Computation within the Faculty of Informatics. He leads the Formal Methods in Systems Engineering research group and has established himself as a leading researcher in formal verification and automated reasoning.

His educational background includes a DPhil from Oxford University (2008-2010), research at ETH Zürich (2005-2010), and a Master's degree from TU Graz (completed by 2003). He completed his Habilitation at TU Wien in 2016 with a thesis on Logical Methods in Automated Hardware and Software Verification.

Weissenbacher's research focuses on developing automated tools for software and hardware verification, with particular emphasis on detecting and explaining bugs in complex systems. He is renowned for his work on heisenbugs - bugs that disappear when analyzed, which are particularly challenging in concurrent and multi-core systems. His research bridges theoretical foundations in logic with practical applications in software engineering, with significant contributions to interpolation-based verification techniques and SAT/SMT solving applications.

His recent publications show a clear progression from traditional software verification toward emerging challenges in AI security, neural network verification, and sophisticated concurrency models. The research trajectory demonstrates increasing sophistication in handling complex systems properties, with a growing emphasis on probabilistic guarantees and formal methods applied to modern computing challenges.

• OOPSLA'18 Distinguished Paper Award for 'Randomized Testing of Distributed Systems with Probabilistic Guarantees'

Weissenbacher has advised numerous PhD students and postdocs, including current researchers Mai AL-Zu'bi, Katalin Fazekas, and Sarah Sallinger. His research has been supported by significant grants including the Vienna Research Groups for Young Investigators (2011), the National Research Network 'Rigorous Systems Engineering' funded by FWF, and a Microsoft Research PhD Scholarship (2016). He actively contributes to the academic community through his service as co-chair for major conferences including CAV 2018 and FMCAD 2017.

As leader of the FORSYTE research group at TU Wien, Weissenbacher oversees a vibrant research team working at the intersection of logic, verification, and practical software engineering challenges. The group is currently involved in the Doctoral College on Automated Reasoning, funded by FWF, which aims to train the next generation of researchers in this critical field.