Done with my Master's thesis.
I’ve submitted my Master’s thesis, “Automated analysis of termination arguments for Java programs.” Overall a pretty rough road, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
Its main contribution is how we designed a Java termination checking algorithm that maintains a way to reason about the original program even after transformation into an auxillary language (integer transition systems). We then use a novel approach to analyze the proof certificate to extract information about which variables are relevant to termination. This can then be used by future analyses that only have to consider a subset of variables.
If you’re interested in giving it a read, it is available at https://kane.cx/downloads/dkr_master_thesis_fixed.pdf.
I’m considering a PhD, but let’s see how that goes. “Dr. Kraeutmann” does ring nice, however.