Randal Bryant

Randal Bryant
Randal Bryant
Born	(1952-10-27) October 27, 1952
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	University of Michigan
Awards	Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award Phil Kaufman Award
Scientific career
Fields	Hardware, Networking, System Software
Institutions	School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University

Randal E. Bryant (born October 27, 1952) is an American computer scientist and academic noted for his research on formally verifying digital hardware, and more recently some forms of software. He has been a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University since 1984. He served as the Dean of the School of Computer Science from 2004 to 2014.

Bryant's 1986 paper on symbolic Boolean manipulation using Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs) has the highest citation count of any publication in the Citeseer database of computer science literature. In addition, he has developed several techniques to verify circuits by symbolic simulation, with levels of abstraction ranging from transistors to very high-level representations. In 2009 Bryant was awarded the Phil Kaufman Award by the EDA Consortium, "for his seminal technological breakthroughs in the area of formal verification."

Early life and education

Bryant was born on October 27, 1952 and is the son of John H. Bryant and Barbara E. Bryant, and the grandson of William Littell Everitt, former dean of the electrical engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (1949–68). He was raised in raised in Birmingham, Michigan. Starting in 1970, he attended the University of Michigan, where he received his B.S. in Applied Mathematics from in 1973. He received his his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981.

Career

• From 1981 to 1984, Bryant was Assistant Professor of Computer Science at California Institute of Technology. His research areas included VLSI circuit models, logic simulation, and circuit testing. He also taught courses in computer architecture, digital systems theory, and computer algorithms.
• In 1984, Bryant joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science. He continued his research on VLSI simulation, VLSI circuit verification, symbolic manipulation, and parallel computation.
• He was a Visiting Research Fellow, Fujitsu Laboratories, Ltd., Kawasaki, Japan from 1990-1991.
• In 1992, He became the University Professor at Carnegie Mellon. Professor Bryant taught Computer Architecture from 1992 to 1997.
• In 2014-2015, he was the Assistant Director for Information Technology Research and Development at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he did work on robotics, machine learning, high-performance computing, semiconductor technology, and cloud computing.
• He served as Dean of the School of Computer Science from 2004 to 2014.
• Dr. Bryant is currently a Professor at the School of Computer Science. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Carnegie Mellon University. His most recent research fields include formal hardware and software verification, system testing, and computer science education.

Awards and honors

• He is a fellow of the IEEE and the ACM.
• He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Science.
• In 1998 he received the ACM Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award (shared with Edmund M. Clarke, Ken McMillan, and Allen Emerson) for the development of symbolic model checking.
• In 1989, he was awarded the IEEE W.R.G. Baker Prize for the best paper appearing in any IEEE publication in the preceding year (1987).
• In 2007, he received the IEEE Emmanuel R. Piore Award for his research on tools to verify semiconductor's designs prior to their manufacture.
• In 2009, he was awarded the EDAC/IEEE Phil Kaufman for his "seminal technological breakthroughs in the area of formal verification".
• In 2010, he received the ACM/IEEE A. Rihard Newton Technical Award in Electronic Design Automation.