Dexter Kozen

Who is Dexter Kozen?

Dexter Campbell Kozen is an American theoretical computer scientist. He is Joseph Newton Pew, Jr. Professor in Engineering at Cornell University. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1974 and his PhD in computer science from Cornell University in 1976, where he was advised by Juris Hartmanis.

He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, a Guggenheim Fellow, and has received a Outstanding Innovation Award from IBM Corporation. He has also been named Faculty of the Year by the Association of Computer Science Undergraduates at Cornell.

He is known for his seminal work at the intersection of logic and complexity. He is one of the fathers of dynamic logic and developed the version of the mu calculus most used today. Moreover, he has written several textbooks on the theory of computation, automata theory, dynamic logic, and algorithms.

Kozen was also a guitarist, singer, and songwriter in the band "Harmful if Swallowed." He also holds the position of faculty advisor for Cornell's Rugby Football club and plays for the Cortland Homer Thundering Herd rugby team.