CV: Fortunat Rajaona — Researcher in Formal System Verification

Fortunat Rajaona

Life

Academic history

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Computer Science, University of Surrey, United Kingdom, February 2020 – present
Contractual Lecturer (Enseignant vacataire), École Normale Supérieure, Université d'Antananarivo, Madagascar 2018 – 2019
Visiting researcher, MOVES Group, hosted by Prof. Dr. Joost-Pieter Katoen, RWTH Aachen University, Germany 2016
Teaching Assistant, University of Cape Town, South Africa 2013 – 2015
PhD, University of Stellenbosch 2013 – 2016. Advisor: Prof. Jeff Sanders | Thesis: An Algebraic Framework for Reasoning about Privacy (link)

Publications

An SMT-based Approach to the Verification of Knowledge-Based Programs.
Formal Aspects of Computing, in press.
F. Belardinelli, I. Boureanu, V. Malvone, and S. F. Rajaona.
Epistemic model checking for privacy.
IEEE 37th Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF). IEEE Computer Society, 2024.
F. Rajaona, I. Boureanu, R. Ramanujam, and S. Wesemeyer.
Program semantics and verification technique for AI-centred programs
The 25th International Symposium on Formal Methods, FM 2023 (best paper award).
S. F. Rajaona, I. Boureanu, V. Malvone, and F. Belardinelli
Automatically verifying expressive epistemic properties of programs
The 37th AAAI Conference on Intelligent Systems, AAAI 2023.
F. Belardinelli, I. Boureanu, V. Malvone, and S. F. Rajaona.
Fine-Grained Trackability in Protocol Executions.
The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2023, NDSS 2023.
K. Budykho, I. Boureanu, S. Wesemeyer, F. Rajaona, D. Romero, M. Lewis, Y. Rahulan, and S. Schneider.
An algebraic framework for reasoning about privacy.
Doctoral dissertation, University of Stellenbosch, 2016.
Fortunat Rajaona

Education

"Ny hazo no vanon-ko lakana, ny tany naniriany no tsara." Malagasy Proverb

"If a tree could be made into a ship, it must have grown on a good land"

MSc of Computer Science, University of Stellenbosch 2011-2013
Postgraduate Diploma, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences– South Africa 2010-2011
Maitrîse de Mathématiques Pures (mention bien), Université d'Antananarivo 2006-2009
Maitrîse de Mathématiques Appliquées (mention assez-bien), Université d'Antananarivo 2006-2009
BEPC and Baccalauréat série C (mention assez-bien), Lycée Saint François-Xavier Antanimena, 2002 and 2005
CEPE, Kolejy Maria Manjaka, Talatamaty Fianarantsoa, 1998

Programming

Haskell: I developped an epistemic model checker for verifying privacy in Security Protocols (to be published), and a translator which solves a dynamic epistemic problem with an SMT solver (see also my paper on this)
Python: I taught introductory programming courses with Python and Sagemath at the Ecole Normale Superieure. I also did freelance jobs on data processing and visualisation with climate/fisheries/energy data (e.g., netcdf files), using xarray and pandas.
I like designing and building static websites, with Tiddlywiki or a dedicated static web generator

Other work experience

"Mandehandeha mahita raha". Malagasy Proverb

"One learns by wandering"

Assistant for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Madagascar project (Direction Générale de la Recherche Scientifique, Antananarivo, Madagascar 2018-2019). I assisted the National Coordinator of SKA Madagascar (Prof. Charles Ratsifaritana) in welcoming international scientists and engineers of the SKA project, in organising meetings, and communicating with stakeholders. I represented SKA Madagascar at an international reunion in South Africa.
Primary School Teacher (Projet Hay, Imerimanjaka, Antananarivo, Madagascar 2019). I taught mathematics and sciences for a startup primary school.

Others