顏嗣鈞 Hsu-chun Yen

Distinguished Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University

Major Research Areas:

Automata Theory and Formal Languages, Graph Drawing and Information Visualization, Formal Verification

Research Summary:

---  [Graph Drawing and Information Visualization]

As graphs are known to be one of the most important abstract models in various scientific and engineering areas, graph drawing (or information visualization in a broader sense) has naturally emerged as a fast growing research topic in computer science. Our research focuses on algorithmic aspects of graph drawing, including (1) designing algorithms for drawing a wide class of graphs meeting certain aesthetic criteria, (2) analyzing complexities of various graph drawing problems, (3) applying graph drawing techniques to real-world applications including VLSI floor-planning,  boundary labeling,  visualization of hierarchical structures, text annotations, ... and more.

-- [Petri Net Theory]

Petri nets, introduced by C. A Petri in 1962, provide an elegant and useful mathematical formalism for modelling concurrent systems and their behaviors. In many applications, however, modelling by itself is of limited practical use if one cannot analyze the modelled system. As a means of gaining a better understanding of the Petri net model, the decidability and computational complexity of typical automata theoretic problems concerning Petri nets have been extensively investigated in the literature in the past four decades. Our research on Petri nets focuses on decidability/complexity analysis of various problems associated with Petri nets (equivalently,  vector addition systems, vector replacement systems, and vector addition systems with states).