Kurt Jensen, University of Aarhus

Kurt Jensen is professor and head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

Kurt Jensen is the "father" of Coloured Petri Nets. He made the initial definition of the CPN language, including the hierarchy constructs that allow a Petri net model to consist of a set of cooperating sub-models. He played a key role in the development of analysis methods and tool support for high-level Petri Nets, in particular place invariants and state spaces. He was the first to exploit symmetry to reduce state spaces and he also got the basic idea behind the more recent sweep-line method. He is the author of a 3-volume monograph on Coloured Petri Nets.

Kurt Jensen is the leader of the CPN group at University of Aarhus, Denmark. The group consists of 15 persons and it is considered to be the world-leader with respect to the practical application of high-level Petri Nets. The group made the Design/CPN tool, which was licensed to 1000 organisation in 60 countries. Over the last years the group has developed CPN Tools, which is the "successor" of Design/CPN. It has now more than 4000 licenses in 123 different countries.

Presentation: "Coloured Petri Nets"

Track: Back to the Future

Time: Wednesday 13:00 - 14:00

Location: Conference Hall

Abstract:

This talk provides an informal introduction to Coloured Petri Nets (CPN) which provides a framework for the design, specification, validation, and verification of systems. The modelling language is a combination of Petri nets and high-level programming languages, where the Petri net parts are used to model control flow, concurrency, conflicts, resource sharing and communication, while the programming language parts are used to model data types and data manipulations. The syntax and semantics have a mathematical definition and hence CPN models can be subject to formal verification of behavioural properties, such as absence of deadlock, liveness, and cyclic behaviour. CPN models can be extended with timing information and then it is possible to analyse the performance of the modelled system, e.g. to determine throughput, queue lengths, and waiting times.

The CPN language has a wide range of application areas and many CPN projects have been carried out in industry, e.g., in the areas of communication protocols, operating systems, hardware designs, embedded systems, software system designs, and workflow engineering. The use of CPN models is supported by CPN Tools which allow the construction, simulation, and functional and performance analysis of CPN models. The tool has more than 4000 licenses in 123 different countries. It is available free of charge, also for commercial use.

Coloured Petri Nets are developed by the CPN group at the University of Aarhus, Denmark over the last 25 years. Much more information can be found on: CPnets.

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