Daniel Jackson (computer scientist)

Daniel Jackson
Alma mater
OccupationComputer scientist
Known forLightweight formal methods, and the Alloy specification language
Scientific career
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisorJohn Guttag

Daniel Jackson (born 1963) is a professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the principal designer of the Alloy modelling language, and author of the books Software Abstractions: Logic, Language, and Analysis[1] and The Essence of Software.[2] He leads the Software Design Group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Biography

Jackson was born in London, England, in 1963.[3] He studied physics at the University of Oxford, receiving an MA in 1984. After completing his MA, Jackson worked for two years as a software engineer at Logica UK Ltd. He then returned to academia to study computer science at MIT, where he received an SM in 1988, and a PhD in 1992. Following the completion of his doctorate Jackson took up a position as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, which he held until 1997.[4] He has been on the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT since 1997. In 2017 he became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.[5] In the same year, he was awarded the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award.[6]

Jackson is also a photographer, and has an interest in the straight photography style. The MIT Museum commissioned a series of photographs of MIT laboratories from him, displayed from May to December 2012, to accompany an exhibit of images by Berenice Abbott. Jackson is the son of software engineering researcher Michael A. Jackson,[7] developer of Jackson Structured Programming (JSP), Jackson System Development (JSD), and the Problem Frames Approach.

Research

Jackson's research is broadly concerned with improving the dependability of software. He is a proponent of lightweight formal methods.[8] Jackson and his students developed the Alloy language and its associated Alloy Analyzer analysis tool to provide support for lightweight specification and modelling efforts.[9]

Between 2004 and 2007, Jackson chaired a multi-year United States National Research Council study on dependable systems.[10]

Selected publications

  • Jackson, Daniel; Thomas, Martyn; Millett, Lynette I., eds. (May 2007). Software for Dependable Systems: Sufficient Evidence?. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/11923. ISBN 978-0-309-10394-7.
  • Jackson, Daniel (April 2006). Software Abstractions: Logic, Language, and Analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-10114-1. Retrieved 10 January 2009.
  • Jackson, Daniel (June 2006). "Dependable Software by Design". Scientific American. 294 (6): 68–75. Bibcode:2006SciAm.294f..68J. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0606-68. PMID 16711362.
  • Jackson, Daniel (April 2002). "Alloy: A Lightweight Object Modelling Notation" (PDF). ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. 11 (2): 256–290. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.12.4127. doi:10.1145/505145.505149. S2CID 5683166.

References

  1. ^ Jackson, Daniel (April 2006). Software Abstractions: Logic, Language, and Analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-10114-1. Retrieved 10 January 2009.
  2. ^ Jackson, Daniel (November 2021). The Essence of Software. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-225-388. Retrieved 22 March 2024.
  3. ^ Jackson, Daniel. "DANIEL JACKSON". Straight Photography by Daniel Jackson. Archived from the original on 13 November 2007. Retrieved 9 January 2009.
  4. ^ "Prof. Daniel Jackson". CSAIL Software Design Group. Archived from the original on 9 August 2012. Retrieved 9 January 2009.
  5. ^ Cacm Staff (March 2017), "ACM Recognizes New Fellows", Communications of the ACM, 60 (3): 23, doi:10.1145/3039921, S2CID 31701275.
  6. ^ "Outstanding Research Award". Association for Computing Machinery. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
  7. ^ Jackson, Daniel. "Daniel Jackson". CSAIL Faculty Pages. Retrieved 9 January 2009.
  8. ^ Jackson, Daniel; Wing, Jeannette (April 1996). Saiedian, Hossein (ed.). "An Invitation to Formal Methods : Lightweight Formal Methods". IEEE Computer. 29 (4): 16. doi:10.1109/MC.1996.488298. S2CID 15230509.
  9. ^ Jackson, Daniel (April 2002). "Alloy: A Lightweight Object Modelling Notation" (PDF). ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. 11 (2): 256–290. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.12.4127. doi:10.1145/505145.505149. S2CID 5683166.
  10. ^ "Sufficient Evidence? Building Certifiably Dependable Systems". Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. The National Academies. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019. Retrieved 9 January 2009.