Patrick COUSOT was research engineer at IMAG in Grenoble (1971—73) and nominated junior researcher (“attaché de recherche”, 1974—78), senior researcher (“chargé de recherche”, 1978—79) at the french national center for scientific research (CNRS) from 1974 to 1979. Professor of the universities, he was nominated at the University of Metz (1979—84) and seconded to the École Polytechnique (Palaiseau, France, 1984—91), part-time (1991—1997). Since 1991 he is professor of computer science at computer science department of the École normale supérieure (Paris, France) where he is director of studies in computer science (“Directeur des études en informatique”) since 1992. He was distinguished by the silver medal of CNRS in 1999. He is doctor honoris causa (Dr.-Ing. E.h.) of the Sarreland University (2001).
Patrick COUSOT's research work is on the semantics of programming languages, formal program proof methods and static program analysis. He is known to be the creator with Radhia Cousot, of abstract interpretation, a mathematical model of discrete approximation introduced in his state thesis, with main applications to the automatic analysis of computer programs and the design of programming languages semantics.
Patrick COUSOT founded two computer science research laboratories (LIX & LRIM) and research teams working on semantics and abstract interpretation. He was site leader of French projects, Europeans projects (ESPRIT 2 SEMANTIQUE I, ESPRIT 3 SEMANTIQUE II & LOMAPS) and the European-NSF project ATLANTIQUE and is presently scientific coordinator of the FP5-IST DAEDALUS project.