I am an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department and UMIACS, and an affiliate assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, at the University of Maryland, College Park. I am also a member of CHESS.

The overarching goal of my research is to learn how to develop more flexible, reliable, and secure software. My research bridges the areas of "systems" and programming languages, in that I have frequently applied or developed language-based technology to solve systems problems, particularly in networking and distributed systems. My current projects are described below. I am fortunate to be a part of the programming language research group here at Maryland.

Here is my current vita and a list of my publications, organized by year and by category.

I received my Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania in August 2001, and I spent one year as a post-doctoral associate affiliated with the Information Assurance Institute of the Computer Science Department at Cornell University. 

Students

• Brian Corcoran
• Chris Hayden
• Gary Jackson (co-advisor, with Jeff Foster)
• Iulian Neamtiu
• Pavlos Papageorgiou
• Nick Petroni (co-advisor, with Bill Arbaugh)
• Polyvios Pratikakis (primary advisor, co-advised by Jeff Foster)
• Saurabh Srivastava (co-adviser, with Jeff Foster)
• Nikhil Swamy

Research

I am currently working on a number projects.

Dynamic Software Updating (students: Iulian Neamtiu and Chris Hayden) - a practical system for dynamically updating running software.

LockSmith (student: Polyvios Pratikakis) - a static analysis tool for proving the absence of race conditions in C programs, requiring few or no annotations.

Runtime Kernel Integrity Monitoring (student: Nick Petroni) - a technique for automatically monitoring the integrity of kernel code/control-flow behavior in an effort to detect rootkits.

RX (student: Nik Swamy) - a programming language that supports proving the absence of illicit information flows in programs while allowing policies to evolve over time. We are targeting multi-tier web applications.

CMod (student: Saurabh Srivastava) - A module system for legacy C programs.

Measurement-aware Data Transport (student: Pavlos Papageorgiou). We are exploring ways in which passive and active measurement schemes can be integrated with transport protocols to reduce overhead and improve performance.

Here are a number of currently-inactive projects, but have some shot at restarting:

Cyclone (student: Nik Swamy) - a dialect of C for more reliable and secure systems programming. A hallmark of Cyclone is type safety combined with a high degree of control over data layout and memory management.

Transparent Proxies for Java (students: Polyvios Pratikakis and Jaime Spacco). A static analysis for adding or checking proxy-based functionality in Java programs, e.g., to support asynchronous method invocation in which proxies store futures---the results of computations not yet completed.

FindLocks (students: James Rose and Nik Swamy) - a tool for proving the absence of race conditions in Java programs, which uses dynamic trace data to aid a sound static analysis.

MediaNet is a distribution network for streaming data using distributed, adaptive scheduling to provide Quality-of-Service.

Teaching

• CMSC 631 (Program Analysis and Understanding) Fall 2006
• CMSC 433 (Programming Language Technologies and Paradigms) Spring 2006, Fall 2003, Fall 2002
• CMSC 412 (Operating Systems) Spring 2007, Fall 2005, Fall 2004
• CMSC 838Z (Language-Based Security) Spring 2005
• CMSC 838Z (Tools and Techniques for Software Dependability) Spring 2004
• CMSC 838Y (Agile and Adaptive Programming Systems) Spring 2003

Professional Activities

I have served (or am serving) on the program committees for

• PLAS 2007 (chair)
• OOPSLA 2007
• COORDINATION 2007
• PLDI 2007
• FTfJP 2006
• PLAS 2006
• SPACE 2006
• OOPS 2006 (part of SAC 2006)
• SCOOL 2005
• VEE 2005
• IWAN 2001, IWAN 2002, IWAN 2003, IWAN 2004
• USE 2002, USE 2003, FUSE 2004
• ICPP 2004