Orna Kupferman

Orna Kupferman is a Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she has been a faculty member since 1998 and a full professor since 2008. She currently serves as the Vice Rector of the Hebrew University (since 2012) and has previously held leadership positions including Chair of the School of Engineering (2008-2011) and Head of the Computer Science Department (2005-2007).

Her educational background includes a Ph.D. from The Technion, Israel (1995). She has held visiting positions at prestigious institutions including Rice University, UC Berkeley, and Microsoft Research.

Professor Kupferman's research focuses on the theoretical foundations of formal verification and synthesis of computer systems. She is renowned for her work on the automata-theoretic approach to branching-time model checking and synthesis, as well as her influential work on safraless decision procedures for automata on infinite words. Her research spans several key areas:

• Formal verification and synthesis of reactive systems
• Automata theory and temporal logic
• Model-checking and game-based verification approaches
• Sanity checks in formal methods (vacuity, coverage, query checking)
• Formal measures of quality for reactive systems

Professor Kupferman has published extensively with over 40 journal papers and 140 conference papers. She chaired the IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS) in 2013 and has been a keynote speaker at major conferences including LICS, CONCUR, ICALP, and TACAS. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Computational Logic and is on the Editorial Board of Formal Methods in System Design and Logical Methods in Computer Science.

Her notable awards include:

• ERC starting grant (2012-2017) for "From Correct to High-Quality Reactive systems"
• Michael Milken Prize for long-standing Excellence in Teaching

Professor Kupferman has advised 5 PhD students and has secured numerous competitive grants, including those promoting international research cooperation between Israel and the United States, and Israel and Germany. Beyond her academic work, she volunteers by giving encouraging talks at high schools and drug-addiction centers.