Computing sciences

Françoise Monfort - 8/03/2011

2011 Chair of Information Technology and Digital Sciences at the Collège de France: for a more secure digital world

Martin Abadi

The new holder of the Information Technology and Digital Sciences Chair at the Collège de France, Martin Abadi, will give his inaugural lecture on March 10th. His talk will be devoted to his specialty, computer security. Researcher at the Microsoft research centre in Silicon Valley, he teaches at the University of California. At the Collège de France, he will be succeeding Gérard Berry, Inria researcher since 2006, who will “pass the baton” to a new pioneer of the recently created chair. They share the same passion, the same joy in transmitting knowledge and the same will to establish the rightful place of this discipline among other traditionally recognised fields of science.

What will be the subject of your inaugural lecture and the programme of your course?

Martin Abadi : My inaugural lecture will start with an example from everyday life: the problem of spam. This will lead to broader themes, such as correcting programs, encryption techniques and the economic and social dimensions of security. Then I will get to the heart of the matter: the objectives of computer security, some of its tools, but also some of the difficulties encountered. The course will present both basic ideas on computer security and, at least briefly, a few more advanced and recent subjects. I will touch on general security models, corresponding protection mechanisms and techniques as well as their guarantees, limitations and flaws. I will describe, in particular, access control systems, cryptographic methods and protocols for communicating within networks like the Internet.

What are the stakes linked to computer security?

Martin Abadi : While the world is becoming digital, as Gérard Berry explained in his 2007-2008 course, it is clear that security is also becoming digital. Currently the issue of computer security is being raised in every field, not only in military intelligence, but also in industry, finance, trade, management of medical records, social life… Computer security is all the more difficult to ensure because we use relatively open, malleable and heterogeneous systems such as the Web. The motivations of attacks and the processes behind them can be varied and sometimes surprising. Despite this diversity, however, the same principles and methods apply in many contexts.

In the field of security, you sometimes must accept the fact that you cannot know and understand everything. However, I think the subject is worth studying and explaining.

How are digital sciences related to other sciences?

Martin Abadi : Digital sciences serve as a formidable tool for other sciences. But, conversely, computer science owes a lot to other sciences, even social sciences. For example, for a long time now the design and study of programming languages has been based, in part, on ideas from the field of linguistics. More recently, computer specialists have adopted ideas from economics, to develop electronic auctions, for example, but also to understand the motivations and challenges of computer security systems.

What is your assessment of this year at the Collège de France and the course entitled “Thinking about, modeling, and mastering computation”?

Gérard Berry : While it was much more technical than the previous course, it had a strong impact, with a slightly more specialised audience. I got a lot of invitations to give conferences and radio broadcasts. In September 2010, I gave some of the courses again in English, at the University and Royal Society of Edinburgh. These have been published by Inria, notably via Fuscia, a website dedicated to pedagogical resources.

What have been some of the results of this initiative in terms of teaching computer science in France?

Gérard Berry : The success of my two chairs has been a decisive factor since I have been contacted by French education authorities to discuss the issue of how this science is taught. The creation of a scientific specialisation in the final year of secondary school has been decided and will be set up in September 2012. Gilles Dowek, Deputy Scientific Director at Inria, a philosopher of science and major promoter of scientific mediation, as well as the Association Enseignement Public et Informatique (EPI, association for public education and computing) have been working for some time now on the subject. But it was at that time that the final push started.

Why do you think it has taken so long for the teaching of computer science to take hold in France?

Gérard Berry : For many people computer science is just a technology and a set of uses. However, it is also a major field of science that is now pervasive in our society and in other scientific fields (biology, physics, chemistry, medicine, etc). For example, thanks to computer science, airplanes are designed by computers using virtual models and an American pilot was able to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River because he had trained to do so in a flight simulator. R&D in computer science in general represents 29% of all R&D worldwide, but only 18% in Europe. It is becoming a central component in many areas and teaching computer science has become essential in order to create tomorrow’s world.

The world of computer science is a world of creators and on this point there remains a lot to be done. My purpose and the vocation of Inria is to support future creators and explain their work.

Keywords: Martin Abadi Information Technology Chair Digital Sciences Gérard Berry Computer Science Collège de France

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