Nissim Francez

Nissim Francez (Hebrew: נסים פרנסיז; born: 19 January 1944) is an Israeli professor emeritus in the Computer Science Faculty at the Technion and former head of Computational Linguistics Laboratory in the faculty

Nissim Francez
Born (1944-01-19) 19 January 1944
Bulgaria
NationalityIsraeli
Alma materHebrew University
Weizmann Institute
Scientific career
FieldsComputer Science
InstitutionsTechnion
ThesisThe specification and verification of cyclic (sequential and concurrent) programs (1976)
Doctoral advisorAmir Pnueli

Early life and education

Nissim Francez was born in Bulgaria. His family emigrated to Israel in 1949. He received his B.Sc. in Mathematics and Philosophy from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem in 1965. After his military service in the IDF, he studied at the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, and received his M.sc. in 1971.

He continued his studies there and received his Ph.D. degree in 1976. Francez authored the thesis The specification and verification of cyclic (sequential and concurrent) programs, under the supervision of Prof. Amir Pnueli.[1]

Career

Francez was a Research Associate at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1976. A year later he joined the Computer Science Department of the University of Southern California (USC), as an Assistant professor.

In 1978 He returned to Israel as a Lecturer in the Computer Science Department in the Technion, Haifa. A year later he was promoted to senior lecturer, and in 1984 to Associate Professor. In 1991 he became a full Professor at the Computer Science Faculty in the Technion, and in 1996-2006 he was the head of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at the faculty. Francez held the Bank Leumi chair in Computer Science in the faculty from 2000 until 2010, when he retired from the Technion as professor emeritus.[1]

During his academic career, Prof. Francez has mentored 40 students for M.Sc. and Ph.D studies.

In his sabbaticals and summer leaves, Francez has been a Research Associate at Aiken Computation Lab. at Harvard University in the summers of 1981 and 1982. He was also a Visiting Scientist at Abo Academy, Turku, Finland (1988) and at the Department of Computer Science, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands (1992). Francez was an Honorary Visiting Professor at the Department of CS, Manchester University (1996-1997), and a Senior Academic Visitor at HCRC, Department of Informatics, Edinburgh University (2002)[2] and at the School of Computer Science, St Andrews University (2007).[1]

Professional work

Francez was working in IBM Scientific Center, Haifa in 1981-1982 , and a year later at IBM-T.J.Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y., United States as a Visiting Scientist. In 1983-85 he was working on design and implementation of a Prolog programming environment at IBM Scientific Center, Haifa. He was a Visiting Scientist at Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), Austin, TX, USA in the summers of 1986 and 1987 and 1989-1990 In 1997 he was a Visiting Scientist at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam.[1]

Research

Francez's current research focuses on proof-theoretic semantics for logic and natural language.

He is also interested in formal semantics of natural language, type-logical grammar, computational linguistics, unification-based grammar formalisms (LFG, HPSG).

In the past he was interested in semantics of programming languages, program verification, concurrent and distributed programming and logic programming.[3]

Membership in professional societies

Francez was a member of the following associations: Association for Computing Machinery (SIGPLAN), IEEE Computer Society, Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), Association for Logic Programming, International association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI), European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS), Israeli association for theoretical linguistics (IATL).[1]

He was also a Guest Editor (with Ian Pratt-Hartmann) of a special issue of Studia Logica Logic and Natural Language, 2012.[4]

Books
  • FORTRAN - theory and practice (with Gideon Amir), Ben-Gurion University, 1972 (in Hebrew)
  • FAIRNESS - in the Texts and monographs in computer science series (D. Gries, series editor), Springer-Verlag, New York, August 1986.[5]
  • Automata and formal languages (with Shmuel Zaks), an Open University text book, 1987 (in Hebrew)
  • PROGRAM VERIFICATION - Addison Wesley, October 1992.
  • Interacting Processes: A multiparty approach to coordinated distributed programming, Addison-Wesley, January, 1996 (with Ira R. Forman).
  • Unification Grammars, Cambridge University Press, 2011 (with Shuly Wintner).[6]
  • Proof-theoretic Semantics, College Publications, October 2015.[7]

Selected articles
  • N. Francez, A. Pnueli: “A proof method for cyclic programs”, Acta Informatica 9, 1978, pp. 133–157.
  • N. Francez: “Distributed termination”, ACM-TOPLAS 2, 1, 1980, pp. 42–55.
  • K.R. Apt, N. Francez, W.P. deRoever: “A proof system for Communicating Sequential Processes”, ACM-TOPLAS 2, 3, 1980, pp. 359–385.
  • O. Grumberg, N. Francez, J.A. Makovsky, W.P. deRoever: “A proof rule for fair termination of guarded commands”, Information and Control 66, 1/2, July/August 1985, pp. 83–102.
  • Michael Kaminski, Nissim Francez: “Finite memory automata”, TCS 134, 2, pp. 329 – 364, November 1994.
  • Rani Nelken, Nissim Francez, Bilattices and the Semantics of Natural Language Questions, Linguistics and Philosophy 25 (1): 37-64, February 2002.
  • Anna Zamansky, Nissim Francez, Yoad Winter, A ‘Natural Logic’ inference system using the Lambek Calculus, J. of Logic, Language and Information (JOLLI), 15, 2006, pp. 273–295.
  • Nissim Francez, Roy Dyckhoff, A Proof-Theoretic Semantics for a fragment of natural language, Linguistics and Philosophy, 33(6),pp. 447–477, 2011.
  • Nissim Francez, Roy Dyckhoff, A Note on Harmony, Journal of Philosophical Logic 41 (3), pp. 613–628, 2012.
  • Nissim Francez, Bilateralism in proof-theoretic semantics, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 43 (2-3), pp. 239–259, 2014
  • Nissim Francez, Bilateral Relevant Logic, Review of Symbolic Logic 7 (2), pp. 250–272, 2014
  • Nissim Francez, On the notion of canonical derivations from open assumptions and its role in proof-theoretic semantics, Review of Symbolic Logic (RSL), 8 (2), pp. 296–305, 2015
  • Nissim Francez, Proof-Theoretic Semantics for intensional transitive verbs, Journal of Semantics, 33 (4), pp. 803–826, November 2016
  • Nissim Francez, Natural-deduction for two connexive logics, IFCoLog Journal of Logic and its Applications, 3 (3), 2016, pp. 479–504. Special issue on Connexive Logic.
  • Nissim Francez, A proof-theoretic semantics for adjectival modification, Journal of Logic, Language and Information 26 (1), pp. 21–42, 2017
  • Nissim Francez, Relevant connexive logic, Logic and Logical Philosophy, special issue on connexive logics, 2019
  • Nissim Francez, A poly-connexive logic, Logic and Logical Philosophy, 2019
  • Nissim Francez, Another plan for negation, Australasian journal of logic, 16(5), pp. 159–176, 2019.

Personal life

Francez is married to Tikva, has two daughters and a son, and lives in Nahariya.

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References
  1. RESUME: Prof. Emeritus NISSIM FRANCEZ (PDF), Technion, 2019
  2. Nissim Francez, Edinburgh University
  3. Prof. Nissim Francez, Technion
  4. Editors’ Preface (PDF), Springer Publishing
  5. Fairness, Springer publishing
  6. Unification Grammars, Cambridge University Press
  7. Proof-theoretic Semantics, College Publications
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