On Friday 25 May 2018 CWI organizes a farewell symposium on the occasion of the retirement of Farhad Arbab, ‘It's All About Coordination’. Arbab has been a researcher at CWI for 28 years and a professor at Leiden University since 2004. He is most known for his work on coordination languages in software engineering, particularly Reo, and in concurrency and software composition.
Frank de Boer, head of the Formal Methods research group of which Farhad Arbab is a member, says: “Fahrad Arbab has shaped the field of coordination models and languages. His insight into coordination gave rise to the striking elegance and beauty of Reo. When explaining it to peers, I say that Reo is an exogenous coordination model based on a formal calculus of channel composition. Reo has been extremely successful and is having a great impact in many areas.”
De Boer adds: “Having the Iranian, American and Dutch nationalities, Farhad Arbab is a citizen of the world, a fact that is reflected, not only by his personality and views of life, but also by his scientific career.” Arbab was born in 1952 in Iran and moved to California in 1977. He got a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and his master’s and PhD degrees in computer science. In January 1990 Farhad came to CWI, originally only for a sabbatical - but he stayed. In 2004 he also became a professor, chair of software composition, at Leiden University. He is married to Prof. Hamideh Afsarmanesh (UvA), and they have two daughters, both PhD’s in biomedical sciences and successful academic researchers.
In 2018 Farhad Arbab said in an interview with the personnel magazine We@CWI: “It has been a privilege working at CWI, it has been a very good institute and environment. I have been working with very intelligent people and working with them has almost always been very pleasant. All of my colleagues, postdocs and students have been my teachers as well. Learning from them is what makes the whole experience worthwhile and interesting.” Frank de Boer adds: “Although Farhad has officially retired, we are very happy that in fact he is here to stay and will continue his work at CWI.”
The symposium 'It's All About Coordination' takes place at CWI on Friday afternoon 25 May 2018, from 13.00-18.30h. Speakers are Carolyn Talcott, Marjan Sirjani, Krzysztof Apt, Kasper Dokter, Sun Meng and Sungshik Jongmans. Music will be performed by Rouzbeh Motia.
Participation is free after registration to the 65th anniversary conference for Farhad Arbab.
More information
- Registration for the conference: https://www.cwi.nl/research/groups/formal-methods/events/farhads-retirement/farhad-arbab-is-retiring
- Contact data and biography of Prof. Farhad Arbab
- The CWI Formal Methods group
- CWI's Formal Methods movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YQCJqNLvyg (Farhad Arbab can be seen around 42 sec.)
