Rice’s Moshe Vardi honored as Distinguished Service Professor
Renowned computer scientist earns one of Rice University’s highest faculty honors

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

Rice University computer scientist Moshe Vardi has been named a Distinguished Service Professor, one of the university’s most prestigious faculty appointments.

“This is a great honor from a great university,” Vardi said. “I am excited to have this opportunity to continue to pursue personal and institutional excellence.”

	MOSHE VARDI

Vardi joined Rice’s faculty in 1993 and is the Karen Ostrum George Professor in Computational Engineering and director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology. He was named to the National Academy of Engineering in 2002 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010, and also serves as editor-in-chief of the Association of Computing Machinery’s flagship publication, Communications of the ACM.

“Moshe is a remarkable colleague who has been most helpful in helping me understand our aspirations and opportunities at Rice,” said Rice Provost George McLendon. “I feel very lucky to work with him.”

Vardi chaired Rice’s Department of Computer Science from 1994-2002. He is a member of the Rice Faculty Senate and past chair of the Rice Graduate Council. He has served on dozens of faculty committees, including promotion and tenure, research, library and intellectual property. He is a past member of the University Council and past president of the Rice chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

A renowned logician, Vardi earned his doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1981 and is the author and co-author of approximately 400 articles and two books, “Reasoning about Knowledge” and “Finite Model Theory and Its Applications.”

Logic, which is sometimes called “the calculus of computer science,” is fundamental to research areas such as artificial intelligence, computational complexity, distributed computing, database systems, design verification, programming languages and software engineering. Using logic as a framework, Vardi has cultivated research in intelligent databases, multi-agent systems and automated reasoning.

He was honored with the 2010 Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award for his leadership, including the organization of an influential 2006 report on overseas job outsourcing in the software industry. His other honors include the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society’s 2011 Harry H. Goode Award, the 2010 Distinguished Service Award from the Computing Research Association, the 2000 Goedel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science and the 2008 ACM Presidential Award.

Vardi is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europea. He also is a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow of IEEE, ACM, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.