Mathai Joseph

Early life and education Joseph studied for a BSc in physics at Wilson College (Mumbai, India, 1962) and an MSc in the same subject at the University of Mumbai in 1964. He later studied for a Postgraduate Diploma in electronics at the Welsh College of Advanced Technology (1965) and then undertook a PhD in computing at Churchill College, Cambridge under the supervision of David Wheeler Joseph was the first person from India to be elected to the Council of the ACM. In addition, he was a member of the ACM India Council until 2012. He chaired the ACM India Education Committee until 2014.

Mathai Joseph's main research interest is in the area of formal methods related to computer systems, including real-time systems. His most cited paper, "Finding Response Times in a Real-Time System", with over 1,500 citations on Google Scholar in 2021, was joint work with Paritosh Pandya, published in The Computer Journal in 1986. This paper won a 2020 Test-of-Time Award, announced at the 27th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS 2021).

Joseph's joint work with Zhiming Liu on fault tolerance gives a formal model that precisely defines the notions of fault, error, failure and fault-tolerance, and their relationships. It also provided the properties that models fault-affected programs and fault-tolerant programs in terms of transformations. Together, they proposed a design process for fault-tolerant systems from requirement specifications and analysis, fault environment identification and analysis, specification of fault-affected design and verification of fault-tolerance for satisfaction of the requirements specification.

Joseph is the author of Digital Republic, a personal reminiscence that also charts the development of Information Technology in India and the issues involved. He is interested in improving science in India.

Books