Sifakis worked on system verification and the application of formal methods to system design. In his state doctorate[3] he studied the principles of the algorithmic verification method known later asmodel checking. In 1982, this technique was applied in Jean-Pierre Queille's PhD to develop the CESAR verification tool.[9]
Sifakis was the director ofVERIMAG for fourteen years. Established initially as a mixed industrial laboratory betweenCNRS and Verilog SA.,VERIMAG has collaborated with Airbus and Schneider Electric to develop methods and tools for the development of safety critical systems, in particular theSCADE synchronous programming environment based on theLustre Language. Sifakis has worked on the verification of timed and hybrid systems withThomas Henzinger[10][11] and the synthesis of timed systems withAmir Pnueli andOded Maler[12]. He has participated to the development of verification tools including the IF toolset,Kronos,CADP, andTGV and has developed theory for coping withstate explosion using abstraction techniques.
Over the past twenty years, his work has focused on rigorous component-based design using the BIP component framework[13] and more recently the design of trustworthy autonomous systems, self-driving cars in particular.
^abAt the time when Joseph Sifakis was a graduate student, there existed in France two levels of PhDs, the higher one, thedoctorat d'état ("state doctorate") being necessary to accessprofessorships. It has since been replaced by thehabilitation.
^:ab There were two science universities in Grenoble: the Université scientifique et médicale de Grenoble (USMG, Grenoble-1), which was later renamed toJoseph Fourier University, and theGrenoble Institute of Technology(INPG), later renamed to Grenoble-INP. VERIMAG is a joint laboratory of CNRS, Joseph Fourier University and Grenoble-INP.
