Randal E. Bryant

Dr. Randal E. Bryant is a professor and dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. He is internationally known for developing methods of reasoning about digital circuits using ordered binary decision diagrams (OBDDs), and for using OBDDs to formally verify hardware designs.

Dr. Bryant began his research in hardware verification developing switch-level simulation, enabling efficient modeling of large-scale circuits by using a discrete model of transistor operation. Over time, his focus shifted from simulation, where a design is tested for a representative set of cases, to formal verification, where the design is shown to operate correctly under all possible conditions. OBDDs enable circuits to be simulated symbolically, covering all possible behaviors in a single execution. OBDDs are now widely used for circuit verification, synthesis, and testing, as well as in such diverse areas as artificial intelligence planning and compiler optimization.