Philippa Gardner

Philippa Gardner is a Professor in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, where she has been on faculty since 2001 and became a professor in 2009. She holds a UKRI Established Fellowship (2018–2023) and directs the EPSRC-funded Research Institute on Verified Trustworthy Software Systems (VeTSS) from 2017 to 2022. Previously, she held an EPSRC Advanced Fellowship at the University of Cambridge (hosted by Robin Milner) and a Microsoft Research Cambridge/Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Fellowship (2005–2010).

She completed her PhD in 1992 at the University of Edinburgh under Professor Gordon Plotkin, followed by five years of postdoctoral fellowships at Edinburgh.

Her research focuses on program verification, with specialized interests in web programming (JavaScript/DOM), concurrent systems, and formal methods. She developed the Gillian platform for multi-language symbolic execution and has made significant contributions to separation logic, WebAssembly verification, and compositional reasoning techniques.

Her recent publications demonstrate a strong emphasis on unified formal methods, scalable verification techniques, and practical tools for real-world languages like JavaScript and WebAssembly. Key themes include symbolic execution, correctness/incorrectness reasoning, and mechanized semantics.

Awards and Fellowships:

• UKRI Established Fellowship (2018–2023)
• Microsoft Research Cambridge/Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Fellowship (2005–2010)

Leadership and Service: Directs the VeTSS research institute focusing on trustworthy systems. Chaired the BCS awards committee (2013–2018), overseeing the Lovelace Medal and Roger Needham Award.