Pierre Wolper obtained an electrical engineering degree from the University of Liege in 1978 and, in 1982, a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University (California, USA). From 1982 to 1986, he was a member of the Computer Technology Research Laboratory of AT&T Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA). In 1986 he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Liege and promoted to full professor in 1989. He served as Chair of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department from 2001 to 2009, as Vice-Rector for research from 2009 to 2014, as Dean of the School of Engineering from 2015 to 2018 and as Rector of the University from October 2018 to September 2022.
Pierre Wolper’s research area is verification techniques and their theoretical foundations, in particular, the use of finite automata for the representation and algorithmic manipulation of temporal as well as arithmetic constraints. This research has led to tools that can automatically analyse complex programs. In 2000, he was awarded the “Gödel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science”, in 2005 he received the/ACM Kanellakis Theory and Practice award”, in both 2006 and 2011, the “Test-of-Time Award of the Symposium on Logic in Computer Science”, and in 2014 the CAV Award for fundamental contributions to the field of Computer-Aided Verification. In 2009, Pierre Wolper was elected to the “Technology and Society” class of the Royal Academy of Belgium and, in 2012, to the informatics section of Academia Europaea.