Michael Hicks

I am an associate professor in the Computer Science Department and UMIACS, and an affiliate associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, at the University of Maryland, College Park. My primary research interest is to develop and evaluate techniques to improve software reliability and security. With Jeff Foster I direct PLUM, the lab for Programming Languages research at the University of Maryland. You may find it interesting to read about how we organize our group.

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. During academic 2008 - 2009, I was on sabbatical in Cambridge, England. From September to November I was at Microsoft Research and from December to August 2009 I was at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. 

How fast can you type? (My best so far is 100 wpm.)

Research

I am currently working on a number projects.

Dynamic Software Updating - how to safely, efficiently, and flexibly update running code.

Diamondback Ruby - static typing for the Ruby scripting language.

Language-based Security - means to enforce security policies through programming languages and analyses. A recent exemplar, though currently inactive, is SELinks. A follow-on project Coco, examines how to add coercions to programs automatically, which can be used to include security-checking code, among many other more general constructions.

Symbolic Execution - we are looking at novel ways of employing symbolic execution for testing and verification.

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

Previously, I was involved with LockSmith, a static analysis tool for proving the absence of race conditions in C programs, and a novel user interface technique applied to it called Path Projection, which is a browser-based UI toolkit for presenting, navigating, and querying paths emitted as static analysis results. I was also a core developer of Cyclone, a safe dialect of C. Links to all past projects may be found on the PLUM home page.

Students

I am also working with Martin Ma and Elnatan Reisner, advised by Jeff Foster.

Graduated students:

Saurabh Srivastava*	Post-doc, Berkeley, since July 2010
Pavlos Papageorgiou	Software Engineer, Google, New York, since December 2008
Iulian Neamtiu	Asst. Prof, UC Riverside, since Fall 2008
Polyvios Pratikakis*	Post-doc, Institute of Computer Science, FORTH (Crete, Greece), since Spring 2010 (previously a post-doc at CNRS/VERIMAG)
Nikhil Swamy	Researcher, Microsoft Research, Redmond, since Fall 2008
Jeff Meister* (undergrad)	Grad student, UCSD, since Fall 2008
Nick Petroni**	Research scientist, IDA/CCS since Spring 2008
Manuel Oriol (postdoc)	Senior Lecturer, University of York (UK), since Fall 2008

* co-advised with Jeff Foster

** co-advised with Bill Arbaugh

I have also worked with Mike Furr and David An (advised by Jeff Foster), Adam Bender (advised by Bobby Bhattacharjee), and Suriya Subramanian (advised by Kathryn McKinley at UT Austin). I have previously advised with Brian Corcoran, Eric Hardisty, James Rose, and Jaime Spacco. I've also worked with post-grad Patrick Jenkins, and high school students, Ted Smith (Walt Whitman High), and Matt McCutchen and Cody Burton (both at Montgomery Blair). Both Ted and Matt are now undergraduate students in our Department.

Teaching

• CMSC 838G (Software Security) Spring 2011
• CMSC 433 (Programming Language Technologies and Paradigms) Fall 2010, Spring 2006, Fall 2003, Fall 2002
• CMSC 330 (Organization of Programming Languages) Spring 2010
• CMSC 631 (Program Analysis and Understanding) Fall 2009, Fall 2007 and Fall 2006
• 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

2012	POPL (program chair)
2011	TLDI, HotSWUp (co-organizer), OOPSLA
2010	ESOP, PLDI (RC and tutorials chair), ICFP (PC and local arrangements), PASTE
2009	POPL, IEEE S&P;, PLDI SRC
2008	CCS, CATARS, COORDINATION
2007	PLAS (general and program chair), OOPSLA, COORDINATION, PLDI
2006	FTfJP, PLAS, SPACE, OOPS (part of SAC 2006)
2005	SCOOL, VEE
2004	IWAN, ICPP, FUSE
2003	IWAN, USE
2002	IWAN, USE
2001	IWAN