KozenFest 2025

KozenFest 2025 celebrates the many contributions of Dexter Kozen to theoretical computer science, particularly in logic, automata theory, and the semantics of programming languages.

Event Details

Date: Friday, 29 August 2025

Location:
Boyce Thompson Institute
Cornell University
533 Tower Road, Ithaca, NY

Schedule

Morning

9:00–9:30 Welcome
9:30–12:00 Morning talks
Alexandra Silva (Cornell)Moessner and the theorem that started it all
Mark Wegman (IBM Research)An anecdote about Dexter
Moshe Vardi (Rice)Alternation as an Algorithmic Construct
Break
Anil Nerode (Cornell)An appreciation of Dexter's role in the rise of CS at Cornell
Kostas Mamouras (Rice)Regular Expressions and Stream Processing
David McAllester (TTIC)Dependent type theory, AI, and Kleene algebra
Susan Landau (Tufts)Design and Architecture with Dexter

Afternoon

12:00–1:30 Lunch
1:30–5:00 Afternoon talks
Lorenzo Alvisi (Cornell)Ave atque Vale Dexter
Jean-Baptiste Jeannin (U. Michigan) From CoCaml to synchronous stream programming
Nate Foster (Cornell) Proofs in the Fast Lane: Kleene Algebras Meet Packet Switching
Jens Palsberg (UCLA)Can Equational Reasoning prove Quantum Correct?
Break
Val Tannen (U. Penn)Incremental Evaluation of Algebraic Expressions
Ron Minsky (Jane Street) Making OCaml Safe for Performance Engineering
Arjun Guha (Northeastern) & Carolyn Anderson (Wellesley)What Do Language Models Mean for Computer Science Education?
David Gries (Cornell)Things about Dexter that you probably didn’t know

Evening

6:15 PM Dinner at Ithaca Beer, 122 Ithaca Beer Dr, Ithaca, NY 14850

RSVP

Please RSVP here: https://forms.gle/vipJDPTQhHyDoUtV8

Tributes

Please add any message you have to Dexter's retirement tributes.

Organizers

Please get in touch with any questions!

Alexandra Silva [click here]
Andrew Myers [click here]