Anya Tafliovich

Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences
University of Toronto Scarborough
1265 Military Trail
Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 1A4
Canada

office: IC 495
tel: 1-416-287-7410

email

I am a Lecturer in the Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

In 2002 I received an Honours Bachelor of Science with High Distinction from the University of Toronto, where I completed a Specialist Program in Computer Science and a Major in Mathematics. After a summer as a Research Assistant, I joined our Formal Methods of Software Engineering group as a Masters student, working under the supervision of Eric C.R. Hehner. I graduated with a MSc in 2004 and continued as a PhD student. I interrupted my PhD studies in 2008-2009 to take care of my son David and graduated with a PhD in June of 2010.

My major academic awards include two Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postgraduate Scholarships (2003-2004 and 2004-2007) and three Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS) (2002-2003, 2004-2005, and 2005-2006), all during my graduate studies.

My probably outdated CV. My probably outdated LinkedIn profile.

Research

The focus of my research is developing a formal framework for non-traditional computing (specifically, quantum computing) which allows verification and formal reasoning about programs.

Anya Tafliovich, Eric C.R. Hehner: Programming with Quantum Communication, In Proceedings of the 7th ETAPS workshop on Quantitative Aspects of Programming Languages (QAPL), York, UK, 2009 March 28-29. An extended version appeared in volume 252(3) of Elsevier's Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS) 2009.
Anya Tafliovich, K. Ku: AI Planning by Multi-Valued Model-Checking, 2010.
Anya Tafliovich, Eric C.R. Hehner: Programming Telepathy: Implementing Quantum Non-Locality Games, In Proceedings of the 10th Brazilian Symposium on Formal Methods (SBMF), Ouro Preto, Brazil, 29-31 August 2007. A much better version is to appear in a special issue of Elsevier's Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS) 2010.
Anya Tafliovich: It's Not Magic: I Can Prove It, In GHC 2007 New Investigators.
Anya Tafliovich, Eric C.R. Hehner: Quantum Predicative Programming, In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Mathematics of Program Construction (MPC), Kuressaare Estonia, 3-5 July 2006 and in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) 4014 p.433-454.
Anya Tafliovich: Quantum Programming, Master's thesis, University of Toronto, 2004.
Before I became interested in Quantum Information, I took part in the XChek project:
XChek: A Model-Checker for Multi-Valued Reasoning, In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Portland, USA, 3-10 May 2003.
A while ago my friend Alexander Kress and I worked on a Preference Elicitation project under the supervision of Craig Boutilier. Some results and some code are here.

Anya Tafliovich, Alexander Kress: Using Grid Solution Methods for a POMDP Formulation of Preference Elicitation Problem, Technical report, University of Toronto, 2002.
Even before that my friend Andrew Misyura and I thought it would be fun to see what happens when well-known matching algorithms from the field of Graph Theory are put in the context of floating point arithmetic. As part of the project, conducted under the supervision of Tom Fairgrieve, we implemented a nice software library, which I will put up here some time.

Anya Tafliovich, Andrew Misyura: Algorithms for solving matching problems involving floating point arithmetic, Technical report, University of Toronto, 2001.

I am also working on translating a Practical Theory of Programming by E.C.R. Hehner into Russian, which to me is an increasingly fascinating and increasingly difficult task.

Teaching

CSC A20 Summer 2011

CSC C24 Winter 2011
CSC A48 Winter 2011

Course Instructor, Principles of Programming Languages (a third year Computer Science course), Summer 2010.
Course Instructor, Principles of Programming Languages (a third year Computer Science course), Spring 2010.
Course Instructor, Introduction to Computer Science (a first year Computer Science course), Spring 2010.
Course Instructor, Accelerated Introduction to Computer Science (a first year Computer Science course), Fall 2009.
Course Instructor, Introduction to Computer Programming (a first year Engineering Science course), Fall 2009.
Course Instructor, Principles of Programming Languages (a third year Computer Science course), Summer 2008.
Course Instructor, Principles of Programming Languages (a third year Computer Science course), Spring 2008.
Teaching Assistant, Principles of Programming Languages, Fall 2007.
Teaching Assistant, Principles of Programming Languages, Spring 2007.
Teaching Assistant, Mathematical Expression and Reasoning for Computer Science, Spring 2007.
Teaching Assistant, Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Fall 2006.
Teaching Assistant, Mathematical Expression and Reasoning for Computer Science, Spring 2006.
Teaching Assistant, Principles of Programming Languages, Fall 2002 - Fall 2005.

Interests

My best thesis avoidance techniques are backpacking, canoeing, reading, cinematography, practicing yoga, cooking, and playing with my son.