Paul received his B.Sc. in Mathematics in 1981, an M.Sc. in Computer Science in 1982, and Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1987, all from the University of Toronto. He was a Post-doctoral Research Associate at M.I.T. for the 1986-87 academic year and joined the University of Washington in Autumn 1987.
Research
Paul's research is concerned primarily with computational complexity. His main interest is in proving lower bounds on the resources needed for solving computational problems. Such topics include communication complexity, time-space tradeoff lower bounds, proof complexity, and data structures. In addition, Paul is interested in problems related to formal reasoning and verification. (There are connections to proof complexity and time-space tradeoff lower bounds!) He has worked on the application and extension of the techniques of symbolic model checking for the verification of software specifications.