Started another internship at Microsoft Research

This is my third internship at Microsoft Research, it seems I just can't get enough of that place :).
I'll be working again with Shaz Qadeer and Shuvendu Lahiri in the RiSE team. The main goal of the internship is to find important concurrency bugs in Microsoft's software using my concurrency checker called STORM. Exciting!

Amir Pnueli dies at 68

The New York Times published an article about the recently deceased pioneer of formal verification Dr. Amir Pnueli:
Amir Pnueli, Pioneer of Temporal Logic, Dies at 68

Passed my PhD thesis proposal defense

Today I passed my PhD thesis proposal defense and finally squared that off! I believe I am now a PhD candidate :). I got very useful feedback from my committee members that is definitely going to make my thesis stronger. So a big thanks for that to Alan, Ken, and Mark. Thanks to Eric as well for chairing the defense.

Visited IST Austria

A couple of days ago, I visited the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria in Klosterneuburg near Vienna. IST Austria is a brand new research institution on track to become a world-class research center. I was invited by its president Prof. Tom Henzinger to give a talk about my research on verification of concurrent systems code. I was impressed by smooth organization of my visit, people who work there and their research, as well as institute's surroundings in the Vienna Woods.
Thanks again to everybody at the IST Austria who made my stay a very pleasant one!

Attending Dagstuhl Seminar

I am attending Dagstuhl Seminar titled "Interaction versus Automation: The two Faces of Deduction". I gave a talk there about my work on the verification of concurrent systems code using SMT solvers.

Visited Intel Strategic CAD Labs in Hillsboro

I was invited recently to visit John O'Leary's group at Intel Strategic CAD Labs in Hillsboro, OR, USA. So, last week I visited them for a day. I gave a talk about my work on verification of concurrent systems code. Also, I had interesting in-depth conversations with John, Amit, and Jim about my tool SMACK and my concurrency related research, as well as their software verification work. I am glad there are a few more guys out there working on software verification and checking. They are very interested in using SMACK or parts of it in their own projects, so I am excited about this possible future collaboration.

Visited Verimag in Grenoble

I gave an invited talk about my recent work on finding concurrency errors in systems code at Verimag in Grenoble, France. Verimag is a very nice place and it was a pleasant visit. I would like to thank Radu Iosif again for hosting me.