I am a Professor in Virginia Tech’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where I lead the Systems Software Research Group. Here is my bio.

Research

My research interests are in computer systems, with a focus on security, performance, energy-efficiency, and timing properties. (I used to view systems as a research sub-discipline in the James Mickens sense. Over the years, I have come to view systems as a mindset, well articulated by Stephen Kell.) Recently, I have been dabbling in software verification.

Current projects

Low-level reasoning machine (LLRM), verifying security properties of binaries.
Popcorn Linux, system software for ISA-heterogeneous hardware.
MESA, program analysis via mathematical optimization.
LibrettOS, multiserver/library OS with POSIX and legacy driver support.

Recent past projects

Hyflow, concurrency control abstractions and algorithms.
HermiTux, binary-compatible unikernel OS.
SlimGuard, secure, fast, and memory-efficient heap allocator.
HydraVM, automated concurrency refactoring of legacy software.
KairosVM, KVM-based real-time hypervisor.

Teaching

ECE/CS 5510 Multiprocessor Programming (Fall)
ECE/CS 5544 Compiler Optimizations (Spring)
ECE 5984/SS Modern Binary Exploitation (Fall)

Service

Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing
Associate Editor, ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems
Program Co-Chair, ACM Systor'25
Program Committee, SoCC'26, EuroSys'27, EMSOFT'26, PLDI'26, ASPLOS'26 (ERC), ASPLOS'25 (ERC)

Recent news

03/06/26. Popcorn’s enclave offloading is conditionally accepted at MIDDLEWARE'26.
03/06/26. Presented an invited talk at Illinois on LLRM’s verified binary lifting.
03/05/26. MESA’s SAT solving via optimization is conditionally accepted at PLDI'26.
02/09/26. LLRM’s extended ELF format is accepted at EuroLLVM'26.
02/03/26. Popcorn Linux’s CPU/FPGA checkpoint-rollback is accepted at ACM TACO.
11/17/25. Presented an invited talk at Houston CS on LLRM’s verified binary lifting.