About LIF

The Formal Computer Science Laboratory (in French: Laboratoire d’informatique formelle or LIF) is a research group based in the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Faculty and students work on applied research projects combining mathematics and computer systems. Projets led at LIF are funded by both public programs and contributions from the industry.

Expertise

At LIF, we develop new techniques to discover or prevent bugs in computer systems. The expertise of our researchers and students revolves around the following axes:

  • computer security, and in particular the detection of attacks and faults in real time
  • software testing and verification: how to speed up or even automate the discovery of bugs in a system under development

These axes are the source of multiple projects, applied to web applications, network management, video game development and Complex Event Processing, among other things.

For more information, read a summary of the projects under way.

Awards

The students and researchers at LIF conduct cutting-edge research, which earned them numerous awards. In the past years, three research papers published by LIF have won the Best Paper Award in an international conference. One of the software tools developed at LIF also won the Best Tool Paper Award in 2015 at the International Conference on Software Testing held in Graz, Austria.

Moreover, students working at LIF have earned multiple grands and prizes; for example, a fourth position at the Défi Coveo Blitz and a second position at the 2014 CS Games 2014, as well as various excellence scholarships from NSERC and Fonds recherche Québec. Two of LIF’s faculty have also received the Governor General of Canada’s Academic Medal.

Team

Founded in 2012 by two UQAC professors, LIF has enjoyed a steady growth ever since. At the moment, three professors of Computer Science conduct research at LIF, where they supervise students at the undergraduate, M.Sc. and Ph.D. level.

The LIF’s premises are located in Chicoutimi (Québec) in UQAC’s Main Building. They can accommodate up to fifteen workstations in an open and laid-back environment.


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