CAV Award 2026 for Prof. Andreas Podelski

Prof. Andreas Podelski has been awarded the CAV Award 2026, together with Byron Cook and Andrey Rybalchenko. The CAV Award is presented annually for fundamental contributions in the field of Computer-Aided Verification (CAV).

Podelski, Cook, and Rybalchenko have made important contributions to the automated verification of programs, particularly to the analysis of program termination. Their joint work includes the development of Terminator, a verification tool for automatically analyzing program termination.

Their work on Terminator was presented, among other publications, in their joint paper Termination Proofs for Systems Code (Cook, Podelski, Rybalchenko, PLDI 2006). The tool exemplifies an approach in which properties of programs can be formally verified using automated methods.

The award was presented on July 28, 2026, as part of a dedicated CAV Award session at the CAV conference, held during the Federated Logic Conference (FLoC) 2026 in Lisbon. The award recipients were publicly announced at the event. The decision had not been made public beforehand. They subsequently gave an invited talk.

The CAV Award is considered the highest distinction in the field of Computer-Aided Verification. It was established in 2008 by the CAV Steering Committee and has since been awarded annually for a fundamental individual achievement or a series of outstanding contributions that have already proven their value in research practice. Eligible work must date back at least five years but no more than 25 years and must not already have been recognized by a major award such as the Turing Award.

Contact:

Kerstin Steiger-Merx
Representative PR/Marketing
Faculty of Engineering
University of Freiburg
Tel.: 0761/203-8056
E-Mail: steiger-merx@tf.uni-freiburg.de

Prof. Dr. Andreas Podelski
Software Engineering
Department of Computer Science - IIF
University of Freiburg
E-Mail: podelski@informatik.uni-freiburg.de