Katherine Cordwell

About me

I am a third year Ph.D. student in Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Science Department. I am advised by André Platzer and am part of the Logical Systems Lab. My interests include formal verification and ways in which math (especially algebra) and computer science intersect. Currently, I am interested in three different areas within the formal verification of cyber-physical systems (CPS): real arithmetic (especially quantifier elimination), efficient invariant generation, and modeling (specifically, how to write models of CPS that build in an awareness of physics into logic).

Before CMU, I was a math and cs major at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Conference Papers

A. Sogokon, S. Mitsch, Y. K. Tan, K. Cordwell, and A. Platzer. Pegasus: A Framework for Sound Continuous Invariant Generation. In Annabelle McIver and Maurice ter Beek, editors, FM 2019: Formal Methods - 23rd International Symposium, Porto, October 7-11, 2019, Proceedings, LNCS. Springer, 2019. © Springer

K. Cordwell and A. Platzer. Towards Physical Hybrid Systems. In Pascal Fontaine, editor, International Conference on Automated Deduction, CADE'19, Natal, Brazil, Proceedings, LNCS. Springer, 2019. © Springer-Verlag

Journal Papers

K. Cordwell, A. Epstein, A. Hemmady, S. J. Miller, E. Palsson, A. Sharma, S. Steinerberger, and Yen Nhi Truong Vu, On algorithms to calculate integer complexity, Integers, 19 (2019). (Link to arXiv version)
K. Cordwell, M. Hlavacek, C. Huynh, S. J. Miller, C. Peterson, and Y. N. T. Vu, Summand minimality and asymptotic convergence of generalized Zeckendorf decompositions, Research in Number Theory, 4 (2018), no. 43. (Link)
K. Cordwell and G. Wang, Multilinear polynomials of small degree evaluated on matrices over a unital algebra, Linear Algebra and its Applications, 496 (2016), 262-287. (Link)
K. Cordwell, T. Fei, and K. Zhou, On lower central series quotients of finitely generated algebras over Z, Journal of Algebra, 423 (2015), 559-572. (Link)

Book Chapters

CAZAC sequences and Haagerup's characterization of cyclic N-roots (with John Benedetto and Mark Magsino), invited chapter in New Trends in Applied Harmonic Analysis, Volume II: Harmonic Analysis, Geometric Measure Theory, and Applications, C. Cabrelli, U. Molter, et al., editors, Springer-Birkhäuser, New York, to appear 2019.

Preprints

On Within-Perfectness and Near-Perfectness, joint with Peter Cohen, Alyssa Epstein, Kevin Kwan, Adam Lott, and Steven J. Miller. (Link)

Teaching

I was a TA for UMD's CMSC250 (Discrete Structures) in Fall 2016 and Spring 2017.

Awards

NSF GRFP Fellowship, 2017
UMD Department of Mathematics Outstanding Senior Award, joint with Charles Parker, 2017
Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, 2016

Outreach

Promoting the significance of the STEM sciences to younger students, especially from underrepresented groups, is important to me. In college, I first participated in and then helped to coordinate the Middle and High School Math Tutoring (MHSMT) program, a student-run organization that sent tutors to local high schools to assist students with their coursework in mathematics.

Currently, in graduate school, I volunteer for Tech Nights, which is a CMU program to teach middle school girls math and science concepts that they don't necessarily encounter in school. Most weeks, I assist with activities, but I have also co-led sessions on logic games, graph theory, cryptography, and dynamic programming.

I was very involved with science fair and similar competitions in high school. (See me talk about some of my work here!) I was fortunate to have the opportunity to volunteer at Intel ISEF 2018, held in Pittsburgh. Among other things, I served on a panel of science fair alumni. In 2017, I got to interact with Broadcom Masters finalists and answer their questions as part of a panel.

Contact

Email: kcordwel at cs.cmu.edu

Office: GHC 7503