Rate My Professor Chris Pollett

Christopher J. Pollett serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at San José State University, where he is located in 207 MacQuarrie Hall. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego in 1997, with a thesis titled Arithmetic Theories with Prenex Normal Form Induction. His research specializations encompass bounded arithmetic, computational complexity, quantum circuits, databases, nonmonotonic logics, neural nets, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies, proof theory, logic, and web development. Pollett has affiliations with institutions including UCLA Mathematics, Clark University Computer Science, Boston University Computer Science, UCSD Mathematics, and Caltech Mathematics. He has supervised numerous master's students and contributes to departmental service through roles on the Recruitment Committee, Graduate Curriculum Committee, RTP Committee, PTR Committee, Software Engineering and Databases Committee, AI Specialty Courses Committee, and others such as the Executive Committee, Programming Algorithms and Theory Committee, and Undergraduate Curriculum Committee.

Pollett's key publications include Arithmetics within the Linear Time Hierarchy (arXiv 2025), Autonomous Lending Organization on Ethereum with Credit Scoring (Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Conference 2023), TontineCoin: Survivor-based Proof-of-Stake (Journal of Peer-to-Peer Networking Applications 2022), TontineCoin: Murder-Based Proof-of-Stake (IEEE DAPPS 2020), On the Finite Axiomatizability of ∀Σb1(prenex R12) (Mathematical Logic Quarterly 2018), Conservative Fragments of S²₁ and R¹₂ (Archive for Mathematical Logic 2011), The Weak Pigeonhole Principle for Function Classes in S¹₂ (Mathematical Logic Quarterly 2006), Circuit Principles and Weak Pigeonhole Variants (Theoretical Computer Science 2007), On the Computational Power of Probabilistic and Quantum Branching Programs (Information and Computation 2005), and Languages to diagonalize against advice classes (Computational Complexity 2005). His research appears in journals such as Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, Journal of Symbolic Logic, and conferences including ICALP and IEEE Computational Complexity.