The John von Neumann Minerva Center for 
  the Development  of Reactive Systems
The John von Neumann Minerva Center
for the Development of Reactive Systems



A research group, headed by Prof. David Harel .


The John von Neumann Center was established in December 1997, thanks to a generous endowment from the ministry for Science and Technology (BMFT) of the Federal Republic of Germany, through Minerva, the joint committee for German-Israeli cooperation. Prof. Amir Pnueli was director until March 31, 2005, and Prof. Harel has taken over as of April 1, 2005. The title of the center has also changed somewhat.

The mission of the center is to advance and promote the state of the art of developing complex reactive systems, mainly through the processes of specification (modeling) and verification.

Our research will concentrate on visual formalisms and supporting tools for modeling, and on model checking techniques for verification. We shall emphasize both intra-object and inter-object approaches, using state-based and scenario-based languages and methodologies, and will also work on related topics, such as layout of graphs and GUI-based programming.

Throughout, the relationship between our work and accepted standards, such as the UML, will be carefully maintained and extended. We will also cultivate joint work with industry and case studies, so that our work will not result in academic advances only. We plan to pursue some conventional and less conventional application areas, including service-oriented computing, biological modeling and health care processes.


Dept. of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
The Weizmann Institute of Science
Rehovot 76100, Israel
Phone: +972-8-934-4050 (Secretary: +972-8-934-4278)
Fax: +972-8-934-6023
Weizmann Institute