News

Jos Craaijo received the Best Presentation Award at the 26th IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security (QRS 2026) for his presentation of "Sem86: A Full-System Emulator without Hard-Coded Semantics," with Freek Verbeek and Binoy Ravindran. Congratulations Jos!

Our paper "Abstract Interpretation for Exception-Aware Function Summaries in Binaries," with Daniel Engel and Freek Verbeek, is accepted at the 26th IEEE International Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM 2026). Congratulations Daniel and Freek!

Our MS students, Priyatam Annambhotla, Kartik Goel, Pranav Kumar, and Shubham Tiwari, who worked on the LLRM project, have successfully defended their theses. Congratulations Priyatam, Kartik, Pranav, and Shubham!

Our former Research Assistant Professor Ruslan Nikolaev is awarded NSF's CAREER grant! Congratulations Prof. Nikolaev!

Daniel Engel from Open University of the Netherlands visits SSRG. Welcome back Daniel!

Prof. Zhoulai Fu from SUNY Korea joins SSRG for AY'25-26. Welcome back Prof. Fu!

Our MS student, Srikar Puranam has successfully defended his thesis on Linux eBPF fuzzing and has joined SSRG as a PhD student. Congratulations, and welcome back Srikar!

Isaac Velasquez from University of Minnesota visits SSRG. Welcome aboard Isaac!

Our postdoc, Ali Shokri has joined University of Houston's Department of Computer Science as an Assistant Professor. Best wishes Prof. Ali!

PhD student Ilan Buzzetti from UT Dallas and undergraduate student Aadi Rave from Purdue visits SSRG during Summer'25. Welcome aboard Ilan and Aadi!

Prof. Antonio Barbalace from The University of Edinburgh visits SSRG for April-May'25. Welcome Antonio!

Our postdoc Dr. Ruotong Yu who worked on the LLRM project has completed his postdoc and has joined Fortinet. Congratulations and best wishes Ruotong!

Our PhD student Md Syadus Sefat who worked on the LLRM project has successfully defended his dissertation and has joined AMD. Congratulations and best wishes Dr. Sefat!

A warm welcome to our newly joined graduate and undergraduate students: Harrison Bui, Jamie Fulford, Rufus Hinton, Pranav Kumar, and Shubham Tiwari. Welcome aboard SSRG-ers!

Prof. Hyeonjoong Cho from Korea University joins SSRG for AY'24-25. Welcome Hyeonjoong!

Prof. Sang-Hoon Kim from Ajou University, Korea visits SSRG for AY'24-25. Welcome back Sang-Hoon!

Our PhD student Jae-Won Jang who worked on the LLRM project has successfully defended his dissertation. Jae-Won has joined Northrop Grumman. Congratulations and best wishes Dr. Jang!

Prof. Zhoulai Fu from SUNY Korea visits SSRG for Summer'24. Welcome back Prof. Fu!

Dr. Ruotong Yu has joined SSRG as a postdoctoral scholar. Welcome aboard Ruotong!

Prof. Ruslan Nikolaev, our former Research Assistant Professor and now Assistant Professor at PennState visits SSRG for Summer'24. Welcome back Prof. Nikolaev!

Our MS student, Robbie Platt, who worked on the LLRM project, has successfully defended his thesis and has joined Anduril Industries. Best wishes Robbie!

Our MS student, Aditya Gawali, who worked on the LLRM project, has successfully defended his thesis and has joined Qualcomm. Best wishes Aditya!

Basavesh Shivakumar has joined SSRG as a research associate. Welcome aboard Basavesh!

Dr. Swarn Priya has joined SSRG as a postdoctoral scholar. Welcome aboard Swarn!

Our MS student, Abilesh Sundarasamy, a Popcorn Linux hacker, has successfully defended his thesis and has joined NVIDIA. Congratulations Abilesh!

Our MEng student, Sagar Atla who worked on the LLRM project, has completed his MEng project and has joined MathWorks. Congratulations Sagar!

Our 2022 PhD graduate, Xiaoxin (Cindy) An has joined Shenzhen Technology University, China as an Assistant Professor. Best wishes Prof. An!

Dr. Jonas Haglund has joined SSRG as a postdoctoral scholar. Welcome aboard Jonas!

Dr. Ali Shokri has joined SSRG as a postdoctoral scholar. Welcome aboard Ali!

Our Research Assistant Professor, Xiaoguang Wang has joined University of Illinois at Chicago as an Assistant Professor. Best wishes Prof. Wang!

Our postdoctoral scholar, Nico Naus has joined The Open University, the Netherlands as an Assistant Professor. Best wishes Prof. Nico!

Prof. Zhoulai Fu from SUNY Korea visits SSRG for Summer'23. Welcome aboard Prof. Fu!

Our MS student, Hemanth Ramesh, a Popcorn Linux hacker, has successfully defended his thesis and has joined Synopsys. Best wishes Hemanth!

Our MS student, Mohamed Husain, a Popcorn Linux hacker, has successfully defended his thesis and has joined Apple. Best wishes Mohamed!

Dr. Khushboo Rani has joined SSRG as a postdoctoral scholar. Welcome aboard Khushboo!

Our MS student, Sandeep Errabelly, a Popcorn Linux hacker, has successfully defended his thesis and has joined Apple. Best wishes Sandeep!

Our PhD students Mincheol Sung and Fazla Mehrab who worked on the LibrettOS project have successfully defended their dissertations. Mincheol has joined VMware and Mehrab has joined ByteDance. Congratulations and best wishes Dr. Sung and Dr. Mehrab!

Our PhD student Joshua Bockenek who worked on the LLRM project has successfully defended his dissertation. Josh has joined the US Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA. Congratulations and best wishes Dr. Bockenek!

Dr. David Narvaez has joined SSRG as a postdoctoral scholar. Welcome aboard David!

Our MS student, Abhishek Bapat, a Popcorn Linux hacker, has successfully defended his thesis and has joined Zoox. Best wishes Abhishek!

Our PhD students Xiaoxin (Cindy) An who worked on the LLRM project, and Ho-Ren (Jack) Chuang, a Popcorn Linux hacker, have successfully defended their dissertations. Jack has joined ByteDance in Mountain View, CA. Congratulations and best wishes Dr. An and Dr. Chuang!

Our Master's students and Popcorn Linux hackers Balvansh Heerekar, Ashwin Krishnakumar, and Naarayanan VSathish have successfully defended their MS theses and project. Balvansh has joined Splunk, Ashwin has joined Apple, and Naarayanan has joined Qualcomm. Best wishes graduates!

Our Research Assistant Professor, Dr. Ruslan Nikolaev has joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Penn State as an Assistant Professor. Congratulations and best wishes Prof. Nikolaev!

Dr. Mohammadreza Ashouri and Dr. Nico Naus have joined SSRG as postdoctoral scholars. Welcome aboard postdocs!

Our PhD students Mincheol Sung, Jae-Won Jang, and Md Syadus Sefat have successfully defended their dissertation proposals. Congratulations ABD-ers!

Our MS students Chris Blackburn and Abhijit Mahurkar have successfully defended their theses. Chris has joined Lockheed Martin and Abhijit has joined Analog Devices. Best wishes graduates!

Our PhD student Balaji Arun has successfully defended his thesis. Balaji has joined LinkedIn in Mountain View, CA. Congratulations and best wishes Dr. Arun!

LLRM project's C code decompilation paper received the Best Paper award at the SEFM 2020 conference. Congratulations LLRMers!

Our PhD students Xiaoxin An, Ho-Ren Chuang, and Fazla Mehrab have successfully defended their PhD proposals. Congratulations!

Our MS students Abhijith Bharadwaj, Hassan Nadeem, and SengMing Yeoh have successfully defended their MS theses. Abhijith has joined Intel India, Hassan has joined Bloomberg, and SengMing has joined Amazon. Best wishes graduates!

LLRM project's FMUC paper has been nominated for the TACAS 2020 EASST Award for Systematic and Rigorous Engineering of Software & Systems. Congratulations LLRMers!

Dr. Edson Horta has joined SSRG as a Research Assistant Professor. Welcome aboard Dr. Horta!

Popcorn-ers are presenting a tutorial on the Popcorn Linux project at the 2019 ACM SOSP conference. See video teaser!

Our HermiTux paper won the best paper award at VEE 2019. Congratulations HermiTux-ers!

Our PhD student Rob Lyerly has successfully defended his PhD thesis. Rob has joined Facebook in Boston, MA. Congratulations and best wishes Dr. Lyerly!

SSRG's latest project, HermiTux enables native Linux executables to run as a unikernel operating system. Check out sources!

Our direct PhD students Mincheol Sung and Fazla Mehrab and MS student Anthony Carno have defended their MS theses. Congratulations guys! Anthony has joined Lockheed Martin in CA. Best Wishes Anthony!

Our MS students Daniel Chiba and Mohit Garg have defended their MS theses. Congratulations Daniel, Mohit!

Former SSRGers and Popcorners, Dr. Antonio Barbalace and Dr. Sang-Hoon Kim, have respectively joined the Department of Computer Science at Stevens Institute of Technology, USA, and the Department of Software and Computer Engineering at Ajou University, South Korea, as Assistant Professors. Congratulations Antonio and Sang-Hoon! Our best wishes.

Dr. Xiaoguang Wang has joined the SSRG and the Popcorn Linux project as a postdoctoral researcher. Welcome aboard Dr. Wang!

Our postdoctoral research Dr. Pierre Olivier has been promoted to a Research Assistant Professor! Congratulations Prof. Olivier!

Our HydraVM project's Lerna paper won the best paper award at the 2018 ACM Systor conference. Congratulations folks!

See our recruitment advertisements for various research positions here.

Our direct-Ph.D. student, Joshua Bockenek, successfully defended his M.S. thesis on December 8th, 2017. Congratulations Josh!

Dr. Frederic Tuong has joined the SSRG as a postdoc. Welcome aboard Dr. Tuong!

Dr. Freek Verbeek has joined the SSRG as a Research Assistant Professor. Welcome aboard Dr. Verbeek!

Dr. Jaeho Kim has joined the SSRG as a postdoc. Welcome aboard Dr. Kim!

Dr. Peter Lammich and Dr. Ruslan Nikolaev have joined the SSRG as Research Assistant Professors. Welcome aboard professors!

Dr. Mohamed Karaoui and Dr. Mohamed Mohamedin have joined the SSRG as postdocs. Welcome aboard folks!

The Naval Science & Technology Future Force magazine's July 2017 issue features Popcorn Linux on the cover. Go Popcorn-ers!

Rob Lyerly, a Ph.D. student on the Popcorn Linux project, has won the ACM SRC 2017 competition, co-located with PLDI 2017. You can read his abstract here. Congratulations Rob!

Our direct Ph.D. student, Balaji Arun, has successfully defended his M.S. thesis. Congratulations Balaji!

Rob Lyerly, a Ph.D. student on the Popcorn Linux project, has been selected for the ACM SRC 2017 competition, co-located with PLDI 2017. You can read his abstract here. Good luck Rob!

The Popcorn Linux project's ASPLOS 2017 conference paper has been selected as a Highlight Paper at the ACM SYSTOR 2017 conference. Congratulations to the Popcorn folks!

Dr. Sang-Hoon Kim, Dr. Yakoub Nemouchi, and Dr. Amer Tahat have joined the SSRG as postdocs. Welcome aboard folks!

SSRG research faculty members and postdocs will be teaching three new graduate/undergraduate courses: Linux Kernel Programming, Certified Programming, and Transactional Programming. Linux Kernel Programming will be offered in Spring 2017, and Certified Programming and Transactional Programming will be offered in Fall 2017.

Our Popcorn Linux project is recruiting multiple postdoc positions. Details are here.

The newest member of the SSRG family is Dr. Buse Yılmaz, who joins us as a postdoc in the Popcorn Linux project. Welcome aboard Buse!

Our latest graduates are Utkarsh Pandey, Mohamed Saad, and Yuzhong Wen. Mohamed successfully defended his PhD dissertation in May and joins Alexandria University, Egypt as a faculty member. Utkarsh defended his MS thesis in August and joins Hughes Networks in Washington DC. Yuzhong defended his MS thesis in June and joins Qualcomm in San Diego. Congratulations and best wishes guys!

Our postdocs Sebastiano Peluso and Giuliano Losa have been promoted as Research Assistant Professors. Congratulations guys, and welcome aboard professors!

Our postdoc Sebastiano Peluso has won the 2016 William C. Carter PhD Dissertation Award. The award will be presented at the 2016 DSN conference. Congratulations Sebastiano!

Daniel Chiba, Vinit Gala, and Walker Sensabaugh have joined SSRG. Daniel and Vinit are MS students. Walker just received his BS in Spring 2016 (congratulations class of 2016!) starts his MS in Fall 2016. Welcome guys!

Our Popcorn Linux project is recruiting multiple postdocs positions. Details are here.

A postdoctoral position is available in the Popcorn Linux project that involves developing compiler, run-time, and language support for emerging heterogeneous multicore architectures, in particular those with heterogeneous instruction sets (e.g., Xeon/Xeon-Phi, ARM/x86), from node-scale to rack-scale. The project aims to develop systems software for such platforms and scales, including OS, compiler, run-time, and language support, with high performance, energy efficiency, and programmability (e.g., hardware-agnostic programming). The position involves developing techniques and mechanisms, and contributing to open-source (e.g., LLVM, GCC) and experimental projects (e.g., Popcorn Linux).

Recent computer science or computer engineering PhD graduates with background in compilers, run-times, programming languages, and virtualization are sought. Strong system building skills are necessary. The position is for two-year minimum, with strong possibilities for additional years, and have no teaching obligations.

Our undergraduate students, Thomas Lazor and Alexander Sun have been selected for the 2015 Naval Research Enterprise Internship Program. Thomas will be working at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren and Alex will be working at the Naval Research Lab. Congratulations guys!

Popcorn Linux project's HotPower 2015 paper has been selected as one of the Best Papers for publication in ACM Operating Systems Review (OSR), December 2015. Congratulations Popcorn folks!

Our direct PhD student, Christopher Jelesnianski, has successfully defended his MS thesis. Congratulations Chris!

Our Research Assistant Professor Dr. Antonio Barbalace has received the Office of Naval Research (ONR)'s Young Investigator Award. Congratulations Dr. Barbalace!

Our PhD student, Sachin Hirve, has successfully defended his PhD thesis. Sachin will be joining MathWorks in Natick, MA. Congratulations and best wishes Sachin!

Our PhD student, Ahmed Hassan, has successfully defended his PhD thesis. Ahmed joins SSRG as a postdoc. Congratulations, and welcome back Ahmed!

Our PhD student, Mohamed Mohamedin, has successfully defended his PhD thesis. Mohamed joins Alexandria University, Egypt, as an Assistant Professor in August. Congratulations and best wishes Mohamed!

Giuliano Losa is joining SSRG as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in August. Giuliano's research focus is on distributed computing, with a particular emphasis on theory, system building, and formal modeling and analysis. Welcome Giuliano!

Pierre Olivier joins us as a Postdoc in September. Pierre's research focus is on operating systems (especially Linux!), storage and embedded storage, simulation, and performance evaluation. Welcome Pierre!

Sandeep Hans joins us as a Postdoc in September. Sandeep's research focus is on concurrency and synchronization, with a particular focus on transactional memory. Welcome Sandeep!

Our MS student, Duane Niles has passed his thesis defense. Duane will be joining Bloomberg in New York. Congratulations and best wishes Duane!

Our MS student, Michael Drescher has passed his thesis defense. Michael will be joining Zeta Associates. Congratulations and best wishes Michael!

Our PhD student, Mohamed Saad has passed his PhD preliminary exam. Congratulations Mohamed!

Our undergraduate student Kevin McGee has been selected for the Naval Research Enterprise Internship Program at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren for Summer 2015. Congratulations Kevin!

Our PhD student, Alex Turcu has successfully defended his PhD thesis. Alex will be joining Google in New York, starting 1/26/15. Congratulations and best wishes Alex!

Our PhD student Saif's short paper is accepted at 2015 ASPLOS ACM Student Research Competition. Congratulations Saif!

The HyFlow team has released hyflow-go: a geo-replicated, main-memory, highly consistent datastore. Kudos folks!

Mohamed Mohamedin successfully passed his PhD preliminary exam. Congratulations Mohamedin!

Sachin Hirve successfully passed his PhD preliminary exam. Congratulations Sachin!

Dave Katz successfully defended his MS thesis Popcorn Linux: Cross Kernel Process and Thread Migration in a Linux-Based Multikernel. Dave will be continuing his employment at the Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, MD. Best wishes, Dave!

Our postdoc Alastair Murray has wrapped up his postdoc work and has joined Codeplay in Edinburgh, UK

Kevin Burns successfully defended his MS thesis Real-Time Hierarchical Scheduling of Virtualized Systems on September 3, 2014. Kevin will be joining Cisco in San Jose, CA. Best wishes, Kevin!

Roberto Palmieri and Antonio Barbalace are joining VT (and SSRG) as Research Assistant Professors. Congratulations and a warm welcome to our new professors!

Sebastiano Peluso defended his PhD thesis at "Sapienza", University of Rome, Italy. Congratulations Sebastiano!

Ahmed Elsayed successfully passed his PhD preliminary exam. Congratulations Ahmed!

Two of SSRG's students defended their MS theses recently: Curt Albert and Rob Lyerly. Curt is joining NSWC Dahlgren, and Rob is interning with IBM T.J. Watson for the summer (and will return for his PhD in Fall). Congratulations guys!

We are looking to fill three postdoctoral positions for projects involving scalable multicore operating systems, multicore virtualization with quality of service guarantees, and compilers/transactional memory. For more information, visit our recruitment page.

Vincent Legout is joining SSRG as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Vincent's research focus is on virtualization, real-time operating systems, embedded systems, and power optimization. Welcome Vincent!

The CS department has nominated Brandon Amos for the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award. Congratulations and Good Luck Brandon!

We are looking to fill three postdoctoral positions for projects involving scalable multicore operating systems, multicore virtualization with quality of service guarantees, and compilers/transactional memory. For more information, visit our recruitment page.

Four of SSRG's students defended their PhD/MS theses recently: Aditya Dhoke, Mohammed El-Shambakey, Junwhan Kim, and Peng Lu. Aditya is joining Juniper Networks, Mohammed is joining the City of Scientific Research and Technological Applications, Egypt, Junwhan is joining the University of D.C., and Peng is joining Citifinancial. Congratulations and best wishes guys!

Sebastiano Peluso is joining SSRG as a Research Associate. Sebastiano's research focus is on transactional systems, concurrency control, dependability, and distributed systems. Sebastiano will join SSRG's HyFlow project. Welcome Sebastiano!

Ben Shelton successfully defended his MS thesis, Popcorn Linux: enabling efficient inter-core communication in a Linux-based multikernel operating system on May 2, 2013. Incidentally, this is our first thesis on the Popcorn project. He will be joining National Instruments in Austin, TX. Best wishes, Ben!

Alex Turcu will intern this summer with Google, NYC.

Sudhanshu Mishra successfully defended his MS thesis HyflowCPP: A Distributed Transactional Memory framework for C++ on January 28, 2013. He will be joining Juniper Networks in Sunnyvale, CA. Best wishes, Sudhanshu!

The Systems Software Research Group has launched a new project called Popcorn Linux, which is exploring a replicated kernel design for the Linux OS kernel. The goal of this project is to understand scalable OS architectures for emerging high core-count multicore hardware, especially those that are non cache-coherent and highly heterogeneous. Details are available at popcornlinux.org.

Mohammed El-Shambakey, a Ph.D. student in the Systems Software Research Group, has been nominated for the Best Paper Award at the 18th ACM Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2013), Yokohama, Japan, January 2013, for his paper "On Real-Time STM Concurrency Control for Embedded Software with Improved Schedulability". Mohammed's research interests include concurrency control, transactional memory, and real-time systems, with a particular focus on multicore and multiprocessor hardware. Congratulations Mohammed!

Dr. Roberto Palmieri, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Rome with a focus on software transactional memory (STM), will be joining the Systems Software Research Group in the Spring of 2013. His research focuses distributed STM, dependability, and distributed systems. As part of the group he will be working on the HyFlow project. The Systems Software Research Group looks forward to working with Dr. Palmieri! Visit Dr. Palmieri's website to learn more about him.

The HyFlow Project has released a second generation of the HyFlow distributed transactional memory software, called Hyflow2, targeting the Scala language. For more information on the HyFlow project, visit the HyFlow website. For more information on Hyflow2, visit the Hyflow2 Project webpage.

Alex Turcu, a Ph.D. student in the Systems Software Research Group, won the Best Student Paper award at the 5th Annual International Systems and Storage Conference (SYSTOR'12), Haifa, Israel, June 2012, for his paper, "On Open Nesting in Distributed Transactional Memory". Alex's research involves Distributed Transactional Memory (DTM), a method for conducting distributed concurrency control by using in-memory transaction. He has worked on Hyflow2, a platform that provides DTM support for the Scala and Java programming languages. Congratulations Alex!

Dr. Alastair Murray, who recently completed his Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh with a focus on compilers, will be joining the Systems Software Research Group in August 2012. His research focuses on code generation, compiler optimization, transformation, and parallelization. He has contributed for several years to GCC and is also contributing to Google's Summer of Code. The Systems Software Research Group looks forward to working with Dr. Murray! Visit Dr. Murray's website to learn more about him.