Neil Immerman

Neil Immerman
	Professor Neil Immerman is one of the key developers of an active research program called descriptive complexity, an approach he is currently applying to research in model checking, database theory, and computational complexity theory. Professor Immerman is an editor of the SIAM Journal on Computing and of Logical Methods in Computer Science. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1980. His book Descriptive Complexity appeared in 1999. Immerman is the winner, jointly with Róbert Szelepcsényi, of the 1995 Gödel Prize in theoretical computer science. Immerman is an ACM Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Professor Neil Immerman is one of the key developers of an active research program called descriptive complexity, an approach he is currently applying to research in model checking, database theory, and computational complexity theory. Professor Immerman is an editor of the SIAM Journal on Computing and of Logical Methods in Computer Science. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1980. His book Descriptive Complexity appeared in 1999. Immerman is the winner, jointly with Róbert Szelepcsényi, of the 1995 Gödel Prize in theoretical computer science. Immerman is an ACM Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Recent Publications and Recent Talks

Summer 2013:	I will be around for much of the summer, please email me if you would like to meet.

Fall 2013:	I will teaching: CS513 and 690LG: Logic in Computer Science

I am a member of the Theory Group	Department of Computer Science	Phone: (413) 545-1862
	140 Governors Drive, Room 374	FAX: (413) 545-1249
Here is a campus map	University of Massachusetts Amherst	Email: immerman at cs.umass.edu
	Amherst, MA 01003-9264

Other Stuff:

As former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords writes, Senate in the Gun Lobby's Grip, it is frustrating and shameful that Congress refuses to pass sensible legislation to keep guns out of the hands of crimminals and the insane, or to keep military-style weapons out of the hands of everyone but the military and police. Still as Maureen Dowd writes, No Bully in the Pulpit, in spite of how diffcult and obstructionist the Republican party is acting, it certainly feels that President Obama could do more. I highly recommend Robert Caro's The Passage of Power, an amazing portrait of Lyndon Johnson, who had what it took to move legislation through Congress.
Tests come unexpectedly. Our first and most appropriate reaction is to reach out to all the residents of Newtown, CT, to try to help them recover from this trauma. Concerning what else we should do, I think that Senator Elizabeth Warren has it right in her blog We Must Try as did President Obama in his Remarks at Sandy Hook Elementary.
Here's an extremely thoughtful and significant editorial from the New Yorker: The Choice. It's the last thing I'll post about the coming election. If you are a citizen of the USA, please take the time to vote on Nov. 6, 2012.
A good article in the New Yorker explains the Citizens United case which is having devasting consequences for the United States' experiment in democracy.
Here is a great cartoon about women in science.

Good news indeed that Bin Laden has finally been killed, bringing some closure to the nihilist attacks on innocent civilians in New York, Washington, and in four hijacked airplanes on 9/11/01.

Here is President Obama's announcement of Bin Laden's death.

If you haven't heard and seen President Obama's speech in Arizona I urge you to watch and listen to it now.
Susan Landau's book, Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies appeared (Feb., 2011). It already has some great endorsements. See the Amazon and MIT Press websites. You can hear Susan Landau on All Things Considered, Feb. 22, 2011. Her book also recently won the 2012 Surveillance Studies Book Prize. (Disclosure: I am married to the author.)
Peter Orszag wrote a good article in the New York Times two days after the November 2010 election: To Save Money, Save the Health Care Act. Orszag concludes:
"All this may not fit on a bumper sticker, but it is more promising than anything that would. If the new Congress wants to improve health care quality and lower costs, it should do what it can to support all the cost-containing measures in the already-enacted law."
This well-written and accurate article in Science News explains a bubble of interest in the P versus NP problem in August 2010.
I take my hat off to Steve Strogatz for his excellent series of mathematical columns in the New York Times including this one on differential calculus: Change We Can Believe In.

President Obama inherited a huge mess from the Bush administration. As this New York Times editorial points out convincingly, the health reform plan was sorely needed. Similarly, as Frank Rich's column argues, failure on this issue was not an option. See also Paul Krugman's column which dispells some myths about the new plan. Nicholas D. Kristof's Access, Access, Access column describes the great value to society that medicare has provided and Obama's health plan will provide. Kristof's Is Any Illness Covered column sketches the unreasonable system that President Obama has fought hard to change over the opposition of every single Republican member of Congress. I think that Paul Krugman puts it very well when he writes of the Republican strategy Fear Strikes Out. Also, here's a nice metaphor from Maureen Dowd, "How had the lofty president and the wily speaker suddenly steered [Congress] off Jimmy Carter Highway and onto F.D.R. Drive?"

I agree with Paul Krugman about the Disfunctionality of the Senate,

"The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session."
Similarly, I agree with Tom Friedman about the need for an active centrist movement in the U.S., Tea Party without Nuts.
Lance Fortnow makes an excellent argument, in Time for Computer Science to Grow Up that the increasing number of very specialized conferences and the increased "value to one's resumé" of publishing in such conferences is harming the field.

Supporting a National Treasure is an article from the AMS Notices about the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM), a terrific program for mathematically talented high school students directed by Professor David Kelly at Hampshire College.

Here is a diagram of the world of computability and complexity: