Moshe Ya'akov Vardi (Hebrew: משה יעקב ורדי) MAE ForMemRS is an Israeli scientist who studies how computers work. He holds the Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor position in Computational Engineering at Rice University, United States, and serves as a faculty advisor for the Ken Kennedy Institute. His research focuses on using logic in computer science, including topics like database theory, finite model theory, knowledge in multi-agent systems, computer-aided verification and reasoning, and teaching logic in school subjects. He is an expert in model checking, constraint satisfaction, database theory, common knowledge (logic), and theoretical computer science.
Vardi has written or co-written more than 700 technical papers and edited several collections. He authored the book Reasoning About Knowledge with Ronald Fagin, Joseph Halpern, and Yoram Moses, and Finite Model Theory and Its Applications with Erich Grädel, Phokion G. Kolaitis, Leonid Libkin, Maarten Marx, Joel Spencer, Yde Venema, and Scott Weinstein. He is a senior editor for Communications of the ACM, after serving as its editor-in-chief for ten years.
Education
Vardi earned his bachelor's degree from Bar-Ilan University and his Master's degree from the Weizmann Institute of Science. He completed his PhD under the guidance of Catriel Beeri and received it from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1981.
Career and research
Vardi's research focuses on logic and computation. He was the head of the computer science department at Rice University from January 1994 to June 2002. Before joining Rice in 1993, he worked at IBM Research and was a researcher at Stanford University after earning his doctorate. Vardi currently edits several international journals and previously served as a director of the International Federation of Computational Logic Ltd. He also co-led the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) task force on job migration.
Vardi has received three IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards, shared the 2000 Gödel Prize (for work on temporal logic with finite automata), won the Knuth Prize in 2021, shared the Paris Kanellakis Award in 2005, and shared the LICS 2006 Test-of-Time Award. He has also received the 2008 and 2017 ACM Presidential Award, the 2008 Blaise Pascal Medal in computational science from the European Academy of Sciences, the 2010 Distinguished Service Award from the Computing Research Association, the IEEE Computer Society's 2011 Harry H. Goode Memorial Award, the 2018 ACM Special Interest Group for Logic and Computation (SIGLOG) award, the Distinguished Services Award from the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS), the European Association for Computer Science Logic (EACSL), and the Kurt Gödel Society (KGS) jointly sponsored Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation (with Tomas Feder). In 2025, Vardi received the IEEE TCCH Outstanding Leadership Award from the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Technical Committee on Cyber-Humanities, presented at IEEE CyberHumanities 2025 in Florence, recognizing his leadership at the intersection of computer science and the humanities. Vardi has also received honorary doctorates from eight universities:
- Saarland University, Germany
- University of Orléans
- Grenoble Alpes University (UGA) in France
- Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil
- University of Liège in Belgium
- TU Wien in Austria
- University of Edinburgh in Scotland
- University of Gothenburg in Sweden
Vardi is a Guggenheim Fellow, ACM Fellow, AAAI Fellow, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS). He was recognized as a highly cited researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information and was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, and the Academia Europaea (MAE). He was also elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and was included in the 2019 class of fellows of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to the development and use of mathematical logic in computer science."
Vardi was named the 2026 Academy Award Laureate by the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence (NAAI) for pioneering research in logic-based AI and formal reasoning.
Personal life
Vardi lives with his wife, Pamela Geyer, in the Houston area. In March 2013, he was living in Bellaire, Texas, which is a suburb of Houston. His stepson, Aaron Hertzmann, is also a computer scientist at Adobe Research.