PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Steve Reeves

Steve Reeves is a formal methods researcher who coauthored a protocol that uses machine-learning rankings to reach consensus. Born in Brighton in 1957, he studied at Birmingham and joined Waikato in 1994 after academic posts at Essex and Queen Mary. He coauthored Logic for Computer Science with Michael Clarke in 1990 and became New Zealand’s first university professor in formal methods in 2004. From 2023 to 2024, he developed a logic for veracity and coauthored its implementation paper with Daniel Britten. As of October 2026, he is Waikato’s Programme Lead for Software Engineering and works with Tom Levy on a Lean 4 workflow.

Born
1957
Works
188
Citations
1,139
h-index
17
Badges

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1957

    Brighton and Birmingham

    He is born in Brighton, England, in 1957 and studies at the University of Birmingham.

  2. 1982–1994

    Early academic appointments

    He lectures in computer science at the University of Essex from 1982 to 1983, then at QMC in the University of London from 1983 to 1994, before joining Waikato as a senior lecturer in 1994.

  3. 1990

    Logic for Computer Science

    In 1990, he publishes Logic for Computer Science with Michael Clarke.

  4. 2004

    Waikato’s first formal methods professor

    In 2004, he becomes New Zealand’s first university professor in formal methods in Waikato’s computer sciences department. Since 1999, Waikato has had the country’s only specialist formal methods laboratory.

  5. 2005

    Opening the BCS-FACS seminar

    In 2005, he gives the opening talk of the BCS-FACS seminar series at the British Computer Society in London. With Martin Henson, he studies the formal semantics of the Z notation in relation to the ISO standard for Z.

  6. 2019

    Proof-of-Learning and WekaCoin

    In 2019, he coauthors the DAPPCON paper Proof-of-Learning with Felipe Bravo-Marquez and Martin Ugarte. It presents WekaCoin, a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency whose consensus protocol ranks machine-learning systems for a task to reduce the computational waste of hashing-based puzzles.

  7. February 2023–July 2024

    A logic for veracity

    In February 2023, he posts A Logic for Veracity to arXiv, setting out a first-principles formal logic for demonstrability, truth, trust and authenticity; he presents it at an ANU seminar in August 2023. In July 2024, he and Daniel Britten publish a follow-up on developing and implementing the logic, motivated by organic certification in New Zealand’s wine industry.

  8. As of October 2026

    A Lean 4 assurance pipeline

    He is a professor and the Programme Lead for Software Engineering in Waikato’s Formal Methods Group. With master’s student Tom Levy, he builds a Lean 4 workflow that uses one specification to produce conformance tests, a verified reference implementation and CI evidence.

Career

  1. Since 1994University of WaikatoSenior Lecturer, Professor in Formal Methods
  2. 1983–1994University of LondonLecturer in Computer Science

Education

  1. University of Birmingham

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes University of Waikato. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Waikato. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes University of Waikato. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  4. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of London. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Steve Reeves yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Steve Reeves (computer scientist) - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Steve Reeves’s email & phone number - Professor, Computer Science at The University of Waikato | SignalHire signalhire.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. CiNii Books - Logic for computer science ci.nii.ac.jp. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Waikato Professor Breaks New Ground | Scoop News scoop.co.nz. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. ResearchID.co - Steve Reeves researchid.co. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. [2302.06164] A Logic for Veracity arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. A logic for veracity | Foundations Cluster Seminar comp.anu.edu.au. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. [2407.16117] A Logic for Veracity: Development and Implementation arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Waikato Formal Methods Group | University of Waikato waikato.ac.nz. Checked 21 October 2026.