Rate My Professor Simon Read

Simon Read serves as a tenured Associate Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at St. Mary's College of Maryland, a position he has held since 2002. He earned a B.S. in Microelectronics Systems Engineering in 1989 and a Ph.D. in Computation in 1994, both from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. Prior to his academic career, Read worked extensively in industry across radar systems, data security, and formal verification. At Plessey Radar, he designed an application implemented in FORTRAN to determine aircraft visibility based on local topography for proposed sites. At Plessey Crypto, he participated in a technology transfer program developing a low-cost RSA encryption integrated circuit using the Walter-Brickell algorithm. At COMPASS Design Automation, he oversaw the productization and promotion of VFormal, the first commercial tool for static logic equivalence verification in VHDL, and later served as lead engineer for the VFormal-Verilog product adaptation.

Read's transition to academia began as an adjunct professor at American University and the University of Maryland–College Park during his time as an independent consultant. In 1999, he took a full-time position at American University before joining St. Mary's College of Maryland. His research specializes in the application of proof assistants to formal verification in hardware/software co-design, particularly with Verilog and SystemC, formal verification of hardware systems, genetic programming, and theorem-proving technology for systems-level hardware/software co-design. He teaches introductory computer science courses alongside systems-oriented classes including Computer Architecture, Operating Systems, and Distributed and Parallel Computing. For Fall 2026, his schedule includes COSC 120 – Introduction to Computer Science I, COSC 230 – Computer Architecture, and COSC 401 – Software Startup Simulator (Capstone).