Daniel Kroening was born on November 6, 1975. He is a German computer scientist and a Professor of computer science at the University of Oxford. He also serves as the Chief Science Officer at Diffblue Ltd, a company he helped start. He is a member of Magdalen College.
Early life
Kroening was born in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. He studied at Marie-Therese-Gymnasium in Erlangen, Bavaria, from 1986 to 1990 and at Rotenbühl Gymnasium in Saarbrücken, Saarland, from 1990 to 1995. During his high school years, Kroening developed data transfer protocols and created a bulletin board system (BBS) software package with Internet access management for small Internet service providers (ISPs). He shared this software freely for others to use. In 1992, Kroening joined Handshake e.V., a local non-profit ISP. From 1993, he managed and operated Handshake's main BBS system. By the end of 1994, this system used his software. From 1996 onward, he also helped lead Handshake's executive management. After finishing high school, Kroening completed his required community service.
Career
In the winter term of 1996, Kroening began studying computer science and economics at Saarland University. He earned his diploma in 1999 and his doctoral degree in 2001. He completed his doctorate in just four and a half years after starting as a first-year student, making him one of the fastest students in the university's history.
After finishing his doctorate, Kroening worked at Carnegie Mellon University as a postdoctoral researcher before becoming an assistant professor at ETH Zürich. Eventually, he moved to Oxford University.
Kroening’s research focuses on analyzing programs and hardware. He has written textbooks about decision procedures and hardware design.
His professional work includes serving on the committee for the main program analysis conference, CAV. In his field of expertise, he has advised companies such as Intel, IBM, and Fujitsu. In 2016, he co-founded Diffblue Ltd, a company that creates developer tools using artificial intelligence to write code. He is currently the Chief Science Officer of Diffblue.
Selected publications
- Hasanbeig, M., Jeppu, N.Y., Abate, A., Melham, T., and Kroening, D. "Deepsynth: Creating Automated Systems for Task Separation in Deep Reinforcement Learning." AAAI 2020, Vol. 35, No. 9, pages 7647 to 7656.
- Vijay D’Silva, Leopold Haller, and Daniel Kroening. "A Method That Uses Conflicts to Improve Learning." POPL 2013: pages 143 to 154.
- "A Review of Automated Methods for Checking Software Correctness Using Strict Rules." D’Silva, Vijay, Kroening, Daniel, and Weissenbacher, Georg. IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD), Vol. 27, No. 7, pages 1165 to 1178. July 2008.
- "Decision Procedures: Focusing on Step-by-Step Problem-Solving Methods." Kroening, Daniel, and Strichman, Ofer. Springer. 2008.
- "Checking Programs That Use True/False Values and Create an Unlimited Number of Threads." Cook, Byron, Kroening, Daniel, and Sharygina, Natasha. Theoretical Computer Science (TCS), Vol. 388, pages 227 to 242. 2007.