Veronica Dahl

Verónica Dahl is an Argentine/Canadian computer scientist, who is recognized as one of the 15 founders of the field of logic programming.[1]

Verónica Dahl
Born
Argentina
CitizenshipArgentine/Canadian
Alma materUniversidad de Buenos Aires
University of Aix-Marseille II
Known forLogic programming
AwardsFounder of Logic Programming (ALP 1997)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
Bioinformatics
Cognitive science
InstitutionsSimon Fraser University
ThesisUn systeme deductif d’interrogation de banques de donnees en espagnol (1977)
Doctoral advisorAlain Colmerauer

Early life

Dahl attended college at Buenos Aires University, and graduated from there with a degree in computer science in 1974.[2][3] As the political conflict in Argentina increased, Dahl attended graduate school in France. In 1977, she was one of the first female graduates at the Université d'Aix-Marseille to receive a doctorate in Artificial Intelligence.[3]

Career

While involved in the research for her doctorate, Dahl became a pioneer in the field of logic programming, and created the first program to utilize logic programming to determine queries and commands that were issued in a human language.[3] Dahl's research and methodologies became multi-disciplinary including Computational Linguistics, Computational Molecular Biology, and Artificial Intelligence.[4] She became an associate professor at Simon Fraser University in 1982, and became a full professor there in 1991.[2] Dahl is a woman pioneer in a male-dominated field. She fought gender inequality while she was a professor at Simon Frasier University, including getting childcare expenses reimbursed while traveling for out-of-town lectures, and starting a university-wide investigation into women's lower salaries. After Simon Frasier University refused to reimburse her $17 for childcare expenses while she was guest-speaking at a lecture, she went first to her department and then Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) with her protest, which ended with the NSERC changing their policy to make childcare a covered expense for researchers they funded.[3] She has worked with IBM, Vancouver Software Labs, and International Artificial Intelligence as a consultant. In her work with IBM, she negotiated a record-breaking research contract. She served as president of the Association of Logic Programming from 2001–2005. She retired from teaching at Simon Fraser University in 2013.[2][3]

Research

Dahl's research was focused on "bridging the gap between the formal and the humanistic sciences, and to achieve more human-like communication with computers." Dahl has research that has had theoretical and practical use in logic, linguistics, intelligence, and molecular biology.[2]

Most Significant Scholarly Publications
  1. Language-proficient Knowledge Bases and the World Wide Web[2]
  2. Intelligent methodologies for Life Sciences, in particular Molecular Biology[2]
  3. Properties as constraints—from parsing to cognitive modeling[2]
  4. Integrating high level methodologies into a new language: HYPROLOG[2]

Honors and awards

Dahl has received many honors and awards in her career. In 1994, Dahl received the Calouste Gulbenkian Award for Science and Technology. In 1997, she was named as one of the founding members in logic programming by the Association for Logic Programming. In 2009, she received the Best Promising Paper Award at the Third International Work-Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation (2009).[5] In 2008–2011, she received the Marie Curie Chair of Excellence Award from the European Commission.[2]

Books
  • (1989) Abramson, H. & Dahl, V. Logic Grammars. Springer.

Literary works

Prose
  • (1999) Love to Hide, Love to Invent. First Prize in the Prose Category, Cecilia Lamont Literary Contest.[6]
  • (2000) Detour. First Prize, Crime55 literary contest.[6]
  • (2000) A Case of Possession. First Prize in the Prose Category, Cecilia Lamont Literary Contest.[6]

Poetry
  • (2000) Wholeness. Finalist of the 11th Annual Poetry contest, Hope Writers Guild.[6]
  • (2000) Life Tides. Finalist of the Millenium 2000 Poetry contest.[6]
gollark: You can check whether the results of it are good by some other metric, but that just pushes the problem up a level.
gollark: Regarding objective morality: I don't understand how it's meant to work. Generally we consider things "true" if they're well-established by experiment and observation. I do not see how you can empirically test whether something is what you "should" do.
gollark: A kilobee is 1000 bees.
gollark: Not really. I meant that the arguments roger was making skip a lot of steps through equivocation things.
gollark: It is about 3 kilobees that people argue for "god", the complex agenty human-like being from their religion, by arguing for "god", the could-be-basically-anything-ever necessary first cause and such.

See also

References
  1. "Association for Logic Programming".
  2. "CV – Veronica Dahl". Simon Fraser University.
  3. Millar, Erin. "Gender equality eludes groundbreaking scientist". The Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail.
  4. Dahl, Veronica. "Constraint Solving and Language processing for Bioinformatics – a three-way interdisciplinary project". Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC). Marie Curie Chair of Excellence, European Commission
  5. Methods and Models in Artificial and Natural Computation. A Homage to Professor Mira’s Scientific Legacy
  6. "Double Life of Veronica Dahl". Simon Fraser University.
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