Clare Dixon
Member, Institute for Risk & Uncertainty
Biography
Clare Dixon is a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool. She graduated with a first class B.Sc. (Hons) Degree in Mathematics and Management Sciences in 1986 from the University of Hull, an MSc in Systems Design from the University of Manchester in 1992 and a PhD in Computer Science in 1995. She has also worked as a mathematics teacher and a software engineer. From 1995-2000 Dr Dixon worked as a research fellow and then as a research lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. She was appointed lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool in 2001 and was promoted to senior lecturer in 2004. She is a member of the Logic and Computation Research Group.
Dr Dixon is interested in the specification and verification of systems. Specification involves describing a system using a language with clear and unambiguous semantics. Verification involves showing that properties of that system do, in fact, hold. For specification we use a variety of logical languages, often temporal or modal logics. Temporal logics are useful to describe systems that change over time. Modal logics incorporate possible worlds that can be used to describe knowledge or belief. Probabilities can be incorporated to deal with uncertainty. Verification is used to show that certain properties do hold for some system. In the group we use two main methods for verification--model checking and deduction. The former takes the model of a system and checks that a property specified in some logic holds on that system. Deduction involves the use of mathematical proof. Dr Dixon has been involved with the design, development and application of proof methods for such logics and has applied verification techniques to a range of application areas including robot swarms.
Qualifications
- Doctoral degree (PhD), 1995, University of Manchester, UK
- Masters degree (MSc), 1992, University of Manchester, UK
- Bachelors degree (BSc), 1986, University of Hull, UK
Professional Activities
Professional Societies
- Member of the Association for Automated Reasoning
Editorial Work
- Artale, A., Dixon,C., Fisher, M. and Franconi, E., (editors), Special Issue on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME), Journal of Logic and Computation, volume 14, number 1, 2004. Oxford University Press. ISSN 0955-792X.
- Dixon,C., Finger, M., Fisher, M. and Reynolds, M., (editors), Special Issue on Temporal Representation and Reasoning, Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, volume 30, numbers 1-4, 2001. Kluwer. ISSN 1012-2443.
- Dixon, C. and Fisher, M., (editors), Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME-99), Orlando, Florida, May 1999. IEEE Press, ISBN 0-7695-0173-7.
Organization of Conferences / Workshops
- Member of the organising committee for the Automated Reasoning Workshop: Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice
- Member of the steering committee for the Time International Symposium Series.
- General chair for TIME International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning, Alicante, June 2007
Scientific Committees and Boards of Conferences (recent)
- Member of the programme committee for 25th anniversary of the Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Sydney, Australia, December 2012
- Member of the programme committee for Seventh Workshop on Logical and Semantic Frameworks, with Applications(LSFA'12), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 29-30, 2012
- Member of the programme committee for 15th Brazilian Symposium on Formal Methods (SBMF 2012), Natal-RN, Brazil from 23-28 September 2012
- Member of the programme committee for 19th International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning, (TIME 2012), Leicester, UK, September 12-14, 2012
- Member of the programme committee for the 6th "Starting Artificial Intelligence Research" Symposium Part of ECAI 2012 Montpellier, France, August, 27-28, 2012
Scientific Services
- reviewer for funding bodies
- Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)
- external examiner
- University of Glasgow
- University of Manchester
- University of Westminster
Teaching Areas
- Introduction to Programming in Java
- Reasoning about Action and Change
- Artificial Intelligence
- Algorithm Design and Implementation
- Computing Mathematics
Research Interests
- Formal Specification and verification
- Deductive proof methods and model checking
- Modal and temporal logics
- Automated Reasoning
Selected Publications
- Dixon, C., Konev, B., Fisher, M., and Nietiadi, S.; Deductive Temporal Reasoning with Constraints, Journal of Applied Logic, Elsevier, 2012
- Dixon, C., Winfield , A.F.T., Fisher, M., and Zeng, C.; Towards Temporal Verification of Swarm Robotic Systems, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Elsevier, 2012
- Konur S., Dixon C., and Fisher M. Analysing Robot Swarm Behaviour via Probabilistic Model Checking, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 60(2):199-213 Elsevier, 2012
- Zhang L., Hustadt U. and Dixon C.; CTL-RP: A Computation Tree Logic Resolution Prover. AI Communications, 23(2-3):111-136, IOS Press, 2010
- Stocker, R., Dennis, L., Fisher M. and Dixon C.; Verification of Brahams Robot-Human Teamwork Models, in the Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Logics in Artificial Intelligence 26th-28th September 2012, Toulouse, France. LNAI, Springer.
- McCabe-Dansted, J. and Dixon, C., CTL-Like Fragments of a Temporal Logic of Robustness, in the Proceedings of TIME 2010, 6th-8th September 2010, Paris, France. IEEE Press.
- Zhang, L., Hustadt, U., and Dixon, C., A Refined Resolution Calculus for CTL
In Proceedings of 22nd International Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE-22) McGill University, Montreal, Canada August 2 - 7, 2009. Springer LNCS/LNAI - Dixon, C., Fisher, M., Konev, B., and Lisitsa, A., Practical First-Order Temporal Reasoning, in the Proceedings of TIME 2008, 16th-18th June 2008, Montreal, Canada. IEEE Press.