Rayna Dimitrova

Rayna Dimitrova is a Tenure-track faculty member at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Saarbrücken, Germany. Previously, she held positions as Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the University of Sheffield and University of Leicester, and postdoctoral roles at the University of Texas at Austin and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. She earned her PhD from Saarland University.

Her research focuses on formal methods, including verification and synthesis of reactive systems, applications to control and robotics, quantitative analysis of probabilistic systems, and information-flow security. Key interests include strategic synthesis under partial observability, probabilistic uncertainty, and continuous dynamics, with applications to autonomous systems.

She has served in numerous prestigious roles, including PC co-chair for VMCAI 2024, HYPER 2023, and SMT 2018. Her awards include the RS3 Best Paper Award (VMCAI 2012) and nominations for ETAPS (TACAS 2015) and EMSOFT (2014) Best Paper Awards.

Her research group includes PhD students Rafael Dewes, Philippe Heim, and Saleh Soudijani. She has taught courses on reactive synthesis, program analysis, and decision procedures at multiple institutions, including the University of Sheffield and TU Kaiserslautern.