Kenneth P. Birman, Cornell University professor of computer science, has been named a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world's oldest and largest organization of computer professionals. He will be formally inducted, along with 33 other new members, at the ACM awards banquet to be held at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan on May 15.

The award recognizes Birman's work in creating fault-tolerant systems for distributed computing as well as his service for six years as editor of ACM Transactions on Computing Systems. He is also the author of many publications, including two books.

Over an 18-year period, Birman and his research group have created tools for programmers to use when building mission-critical computer networks and used them to help create software now used by the New York Stock Exchange and the French air traffic control system. The team has an unusual approach: Rather than trying to make software foolproof, they assume that parts of the system will fail and provide ways to deal with that.

"You want the stock market or an air traffic control system to keep working even if one or more of the computers in the system crashes," Birman explained. "The assumption is not that the system will operate flawlessly, but that when failures occur, the overall system will adapt itself and continue to work."

Birman is now developing the latest generation of these tools, a package called Ensemble, in collaboration with a research group headed by Robert Constable, chairman of the Cornell Department of Computer Science, and a group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Part of this research involves the development of a method for validating the Ensemble system -- that is, determining that the program is free from errors -- by treating the entire program as a mathematical theorem that can be proved. Such validation has been done before with very short computer programs, Birman said, but the Ensemble validation involves thousands of lines of program code, including sophisticated computer network software.

"Although the target is ambitious, we believe that the core pieces of Ensemble may be proved correct within the next year to 18 months," Birman said.

"If we are going to rely upon software in mission-critical settings, we need to go to great lengths to convince ourselves of its integrity," Birman added. "A proof that these core parts of Ensemble work correctly would give us greater confidence in the application systems built with it. Many of the world's most critical computer network applications are being built using technologies known to be unreliable and insecure. This is a really worrisome trend, and we are working to create some new and better alternatives."

Birman received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1981 and joined the Cornell faculty in 1982. Cornell's Department of Computer Science is consistently ranked among the top research departments in the area worldwide and is particularly renowned for its research group in networks, distributed computing, fault-tolerance and computer security.

The ACM, established in 1947 as an international scientific and educational organization dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences and applications of information technology, has more than 80,000 computing professional members in more than 100 countries in all areas of industry, academia and government. Its fellows program was established 1993 to recognize and honor outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and information technology and for their significant contributions to the mission of the ACM. The new members join 320 others named since the program began.