Encoding problems into logical theories and using decision procedures for these theories is a common way to show computability results in programming languages and verification. I will describe some problems from the area of cyber-physical systems that can be encoded into a logical theory for which we currently do not have decision procedures. I will describe a great quest, going over the span of human history, that has gotten us closer to finding this decision procedure.

Rupak Majumdar is a Scientific Director at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. His research interests are in the verification and control of reactive, real-time, hybrid, and probabilistic systems, software verification and programming languages, logic, and automata theory. Dr. Majumdar received the President’s Gold Medal from IIT Kanpur, the Leon O. Chua award from UC Berkeley, an NSF CAREER award, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, an ERC Synergy award, a Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Kanpur, “Most Influential Paper” awards from PLDI and POPL, and several best paper awards. He received the B.Tech. degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley