Research Group

Students, postdocs, and collaborators

in Research Group

October 22, 2025

Current

I am currently looking for talented PhD students to work on projects in computer security and software quality! See my research page for things I’ve worked on previously.

At present I am pleased to be regularly interacting with Noopur Bhatt (advised by Sebastian Angel) and Thia Richey and Joe Cutler (both advised by Benjamin Pierce).

Past

I worked with many talented post-docs and students while at UMD. They are now off doing amazing things!

Post-doctoral Researchers

Liyi Li2023Assistant Professor, Iowa State
Ethan Cecchetti2023Assistant Professor, Wisconsin
Michael Coblenz2022Assistant Professor, UCSD
Leonidas Lampropoulos2020Assistant Professor, University of Maryland
Robert Rand2020Assistant Professor, University of Chicago
Shiyi Wei2017Associate Professor, University of Texas at Dallas
Matthew Hammer2015Research scientist at DFinity 2019-2023; previously Assistant Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder
Nataliya Guts2012Security Solutions Engineer, Futurae
Stephen Magill2012Principal Scientist, Amazon Web Services, since 2025; formerly VP, Product Innovation at Sonatype, 2021-2025; CEO of MuseDev; Principal scientist, Galois, 2014-2020; researcher at IDA/CCS, 2012-2014
Manuel Oriol2008President of Constructor Institute and Professor of Software Engineering, since 2021; Principal Scientist, R&D manager at ABB Switzerland Ltd. 2011-2021; Senior Lecturer, University of York (UK), 2008-2014

PhD Students

Kesha Hietala2022A Verified Software Toolchain for Quantum Programming
Researcher, Sandia National Labs, since October 2024; previously Applied Scientist, Amazon Web Services, July 2022-October 2024
Ian Sweet2022Language-Based Techniques for Secure Programming
Researcher, IDA/CCS; previously Research Engineer, Galois, July 2022-April 2025
James Parker2020Advanced Language-based Techniques for Correct, Secure Networked Systems
Software research engineer, Galois, since June 2020 (part-time 2019)
Andrew Ruef2018Tools and Experiments for Software Security
Quantitative Researcher at IDA/CCS February 2019-2021
Chang Liu****2016Trace Oblivious Program Execution
Researcher at Citadel Securities since 2019; previously post-doc at UC Berkeley, 2016-2018;
Aseem Rastogi2016Language-based Techniques for Practical and Trustworthy Secure Multi-Party Computations
Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India since June 2016
Luis Pina***2016Practical Dynamic Software Updating (for Java)
Assistant Professor at University of Illinois, Chicago, starting Fall'19; previously post-doc at George Mason (Aug 2017-19) and Imperial College, London (Mar 2015-Aug 2017)
Karla Saur*2015Dynamic Upgrades for High Availability Systems
Distributed Systems Engineer, Nvidia DGX Cloud since October 2024; previously a researcher at Microsoft (2018-2024) and Intel Labs (2015-2018)
Piotr Mardziel2015Modeling, Quantifying, and Limiting Adversary Knowledge
Head of AI, RealmLabs; previously, Systems Scientist at CMU (previously, post-doc) June 2016-2020; post-doc at UMD Jan'15 - Jun'16
Khoo Yit Phang*2013User-centered Program Analysis Tools
Senior Team Lead at MathWorks since August 2013
Chris Hayden*2012Clear, Correct, and Efficient Dynamic Software Updates
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon Web Services since Mar. 2020; previously at SocialCode 2015-2019; WaPo Labs/Trove 2012-2015
Justin McCann2012Automating Performance Diagnosis in Networked Systems
Avere Systems since July 2012
Martin Ma*2011Improving Program Testing and Understanding via Symbolic Execution
Software Engineer at Google since 2013 (previously at Amazon)
Saurabh Srivastava*2010Satisfiability-based Program Reasoning and Program Synthesis
Founder, Synthetic Minds, since 2017; founder, 20n, 2013-2017; post-doc at Berkeley 2012-2014
Pavlos Papageorgiou2008The Measurement Manager: Modular and Efficient End-to-end Measurement Services
Software Engineer, Google (AI), since December 2008
Iulian Neamtiu2008Practical Dynamic Software Updating
Full Prof, NJIT; there since Fall 2015 (at UC Riverside, 2008-2015).
Polyvios Pratikakis*2008Sound, precise, and efficient static race detection for multithreaded programs
Associate professor in CS, University of Crete, since 2014; researcher, Institute of Computer Science, FORTH, 2010-2014; post-doc at CNRS/VERIMAG 2008-2009
Nikhil Swamy2008Language-based Enforcement of User-defined Security Policies as Applied to Multi-tier Web Programs
Senior Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research, Redmond, since Fall 2008
Nick L. Petroni**2008Property-based Integrity Monitoring of Operating System Kernels
Chief scientist, Volexity, since 2015; research scientist, IDA/CCS 2008-2015

Masters Students

Yiyun Liu2021PhD student, University of Pennsylvania, since September 2021
Nate Parsons2012Implementing and Typing a Core Calculus for Mixed-mode Secure Multi-party Computations (scholarly paper)
Missions software engineer at Planet since 2013; previously, engineer at JHUAPL
* co-advised with Jeff Foster** co-advised with Bill Arbaugh*** co-advised with Luís Veiga**** co-advised with Elaine Shi

I have also worked closely with Kelsey Fulton and Dan Votipka (advised by Michelle Mazurek), Aravind Machiry (PhD student interned at UMD, advised by Giovanni Vigna and Chris Kruegel at UCSB), Niki Vazou (postdoc supervised by David Van Horn), David Darais (advised by David Van Horn), Andrew Miller (co-advised with Jon Katz and Elaine Shi), Avik Chaudhuri, Mike Furr, David An, and Elnatan Reisner (advised by Jeff Foster), Adam Bender (advised by Bobby Bhattacharjee), Jaime Spacco (advised by Bill Pugh), and Suriya Subramanian (advised by Kathryn McKinley while at UT Austin). I have previously advised Willem Wyndham, Jonathan Turpie (now at Amazon), Brian Corcoran (now at Palantir), Eric Hardisty, and James Rose (now at Google). I’ve also worked with post-grad Patrick Jenkins, and undergrads Jeff Meister and Ted Smith, as well as high school students Yael Pinsky, George Klees, Matt McCutchen, and Cody Burton (from Montgomery Blair High School; Ted Smith was from Walt Whitman High). Both Ted and Matt later became undergraduate students at UMD and Ted, Matt, and Cody all went to graduate school (at UMass, MIT CSAIL, and MIT Physics, respectively). I ended up working with Matt at Correct Computation.

Posted on:
October 22, 2025
Length:
5 minute read, 872 words
Categories:
Research Group
See Also: