Christine Paulin-Mohring

Christine Paulin-Mohring is a French logician and computer scientist known for foundational work on proof assistants, type theory, and the Coq proof assistant. Her work connects research communities in formal methods, functional programming, and automated reasoning, influencing projects at laboratories, universities, and industry. She has held leadership roles that bridge theoretical logic and practical software verification.

Early life and education

Paulin-Mohring was educated in France, completing degrees at Université Paris-Sud, where she studied under advisors involved with Alain Colmerauer-era logic programming and interactions with researchers from INRIA and École Polytechnique. During her doctoral studies she worked on topics related to Per Martin-Löf's intuitionistic type theory, collaborating with groups associated with Jean-Yves Girard, Thierry Coquand, and the Automath tradition. Her thesis connected formal systems developed in Edinburgh and the University of Cambridge proof theory circles, drawing on influences from Robin Milner and Dana Scott.

Research and contributions

Paulin-Mohring contributed core ideas to the development of the Coq proof assistant, integrating inductive definitions, which impacted projects at INRIA and collaborations with teams around Gilles Kahn and Xavier Leroy. Her research on inductive families and pattern matching influenced implementations in Agda, Isabelle/HOL, and tools derived from ML-family languages such as OCaml and Haskell. She published foundational results connecting Calculus of Inductive Constructions with normalization proofs related to work by Geoffrey Smith and Jean Bénabou, and her approaches informed verification efforts in CompCert, SeL4, and formalization campaigns like the Four Color Theorem and Feit–Thompson theorem formal proofs. Paulin-Mohring's methods have been used in formal verification of compilers, hardware, and security protocols by groups linked to Microsoft Research, Google Research, and Amazon Web Services research teams.

Academic career and positions

Paulin-Mohring has held research and teaching positions at institutions including Université Paris-Sud, INRIA Saclay, and collaborative roles with CNRS laboratories. She directed teams working on proof assistants and constructive logic, coordinating with European networks such as ERC projects, and engaging in joint efforts with researchers at University of Cambridge, Princeton University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her leadership included program committee roles for conferences like POPL, ICFP, and CADE, and she served on editorial boards for journals such as Journal of Functional Programming, Logical Methods in Computer Science, and Theoretical Computer Science.

Awards and honors

Her recognition includes prizes awarded by French institutions such as INRIA and honors from mathematical societies affiliated with Société Mathématique de France and international bodies connected to ACM and IEEE. She has been invited to give plenary talks at conferences like LICS and FSCD, and has received fellowships and visiting appointments at universities including University of Cambridge and Princeton University.

Selected publications

- "Inductive Definitions in the Calculus of Constructions" — a paper connecting ideas from Thierry Coquand and Gérard Huet to practical implementations used in Coq and referenced by work on Type Theory. - Papers on the formalization of inductive families and pattern matching influencing Agda and Isabelle implementations and projects like CompCert. - Contributions to proceedings of POPL, ICFP, and CADE describing algorithms and proofs used in interactive theorem proving and automated reasoning.

Category:French computer scientists Category:Logicians Category:Women in mathematics