Trustworthy Systems

Research Group Leader

Gernot Heiser Gernot Heiser  Scientia Professor; John Lions Chair

Gernot's main research interests are in operating systems, especially microkernel-based systems, and their use in embedded/cyber-physical systems, OS security and robustness issues, general cyber-security, energy/power management, real-time systems, virtualization and architectural support for operating systems.

Academic Staff

Carroll Morgan Carroll Morgan  Emeritus Professor

Carroll's research is on formal methods, semantics, security, program correctness and probability.

Rob Sison Rob Sison  Senior Research Associate

Rob is a postdoctoral researcher who is broadly interested in discovering how best to design and construct software systems with formally proved functional-correctness and security properties at scale.

Roger Su Roger Su  Senior Research Associate

Roger is interested in formal verification, and theoretical computer science in general. Roger currently works on the PISTIs-V project, in particular on the reasoning framework of real-time properties of seL4's scheduler.

Thomas Sewell Thomas Sewell  Lecturer

Thomas is interested in software verification, programming languages and operating systems. He has contributed extensively to major software verification projects such as the seL4 verified microkernel and the CakeML verified compiler.

Vincent Jackson Vincent Jackson  Senior Research Associate

Vincent is interested in logic, program semantics, and information-flow security.

Research and Engineering Leaders

Courtney Darville Courtney Darville  Adjunct Associate Professor

Courtney works on secure multi-server operating system design, and on applying model checking to verify inter-component communication in a highly modular seL4-based OS.

Ivan Velickovic Ivan Velickovic  Lead OS Engineer

Ivan is working on the seL4 Microkit, seL4 Device Driver Framework, virtualisation on seL4, and LionsOS. Most of his time is spent mentoring and helping others in the team towards building a functional and usable LionsOS.

Miki Tanaka Miki Tanaka  Senior Proof Engineer

Miki is interested in formal verification techniques and their application to software systems, and broadly proof engineering as a discipline. Miki has contributed to the verification of architecture porting for seL4 and also the verification of the seL4 MCS extensions as the technical lead. Miki is currently involved in a project for device driver verification using the Pancake language (based on cakeML/HOL4).

Peter Chubb Peter Chubb  Senior Systems Consultant; Adjunct Senior Lecturer

Peter's research interests include operating system abstractions for, intra alia, storage, scheduling, memory management, and locking. He is also interested in capacity planning, and in systems performance measurement and optimisation. His main expertise is in Unix and Linux kernels, and low level system support built on these. He also maintains the Trustworthy Systems website and internal infrastructure.

Engineers and Research Assistants

Bill Nguyen Bill Nguyen  OS Engineer

Bill is involved in low-level work for the sDDF and LionsOS.

Cheng Li Cheng Li  OS Engineer

Cheng is working on adding persistence to seL4 components. This involves implementing filesystems and block device drivers on top of LionsOS.

Daniel Seo Daniel Seo  Proof Engineer

Daniel has been attempting to prove properties about blocking system calls.

Jakub Duchniewicz Jakub Duchniewicz  OS Engineer

Jakub is interested in FPGAs, device drivers, efficient system design and high-performance systems. Has deep experience in 5G/LTE in L1 (Physical layer) and interfacing custom hardware in commercial settings.

Julia Vassiliki Julia Vassiliki  OS Engineer

Julia is working on implementing time protection on top of seL4.

Krishnan Winter Krishnan Winter  OS Engineer

Krishnan is working on OS development infrastructure, especially support for profiling.

Lesley Rossouw Lesley Rossouw  OS Engineer

Lesley works on sDDF/LionsOS drivers, and various networking, hardware and FPGA projects. Currently responsible for the sDDF/LionsOS I2C protocol, drivers/hardware for the device interface formalism project, and various odd jobs around the hardware lab. Lesley's honours thesis was on studying driver dataflow dynamics in the sDDF.

Liam Murphy Liam Murphy  Research Assistant

Liam is working on formalising device controllers and verifying their drivers against that interface.

Simon Sillitoe Simon Sillitoe  OS Engineer

Simon is investigating worst case execution time for seL4 on RISC-V and learning about verification.

Terry Bai Terry Bai  OS Engineer

Terry is doing low-level sDDF and LionsOS work, and is currently looking at clock initialisation on a variety of platforms.

Research Students

Dao Le Dao Le  Masters Student
Supervised by Miki Tanaka

Dao has a special interest in programming languages, logic and software verification. He is currently working on the decompilation-into-logic framework for Pancake and coinductive proofs.

Guangtao Zhu Guangtao Zhu  Masters Student
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

Guangtao is working on secure, high-performance microservices on seL4

Jingyao Zhou Jingyao Zhou  PhD Student
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

Jingyao is interested in real-time operating systems and hardware. She presently works on device virtualisation for seL4

Joshua Shim Joshua Shim  Masters Student; UNSW
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

Joshua is interested in performance measurement and optimisation. His thesis topic is ‘Performance Limits of a Microkernel-based System’

Junming Zhao Junming Zhao  PhD Student
Supervised by Rob Sison

Junming is interested in memory management and formal methods. She is currently working on verifiying a Pancake ethernet driver using SMT solvers.

Kevin Tran Kevin Tran  PhD Student
Supervised by Rob Sison

Kevin's research is on creating a framework for reasoning about concurrent programs, with the ultimate goal of verifying multicore seL4.

Kurt Wu Kurt Wu  PhD Student
Supervised by Rob Sison

Kurt is working on verification of sDDF components under weak memory models. He is interested in formal verification and parallel computing.

Minh Do Minh Do  Masters Student
Supervised by Thomas Sewell

Minh is currently working on new verified compiler optimizations for the Pancake programming language.

Szymon Duchniewicz Szymon Duchniewicz  PhD Student
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

Szymon is interested in memory management, secure operating systems.

Coursework Students

Alex Blackmore Alex Blackmore  Honours Thesis Student
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

Alex is working on a Human Interface stack (keyboards, mice, display) for LionsOS

Alex Knight-Viale Alex Knight-Viale  Honours Thesis Student
Supervised by Peter Chubb

Alex is working on understanding and optimising virtualisation performance on seL4/LionsOS

Callum Berry Callum Berry  Honours Thesis Student
Supervised by Peter Chubb

Callum is looking into LionsOS IOMMU support.

Etkin Tetik Etkin Tetik  Honours Thesis Student
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

Etkin is interested in kernels. His thesis topic is to do with adding persistence to LionsOS

Fadi Al-Khameesi Fadi Al-Khameesi  Honours Thesis Student
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

Fadi is working on an ARINC 653 OS on seL4.

Hongtian Yu  Honours Thesis Student
Supervised by Miki Tanaka

Hongtian is interested in programming languages and formal methods.

Jean du Plessis Jean du Plessis  Honours Thesis Student
Supervised by Peter Chubb

Jean is working on Secure Boot Process of LionsOS

Jonah Hopkin Jonah Hopkin  Honours Thesis Student
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

Jonah is cautiously optimistic about getting a Bluetooth client working on LionsOS.

Lucas Harvey Lucas Harvey  Honours Thesis Student
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

Lucas is working on a LionsOS-based Wifi Router.

Ryan Wong  Honours Thesis Student
Supervised by Peter Chubb

Ryan is working on over-the-air update for SunSwift firmware.

Student Interns

Alex Dugina Alex Dugina  Student Intern
Mentored by Courtney Darville and Peter Chubb

Alex is working on a native USB stack for LionsOS.

Amirul Juarimi  Student Intern
Mentored by Courtney Darville and Peter Chubb

Amirul is working on improving multiple protocol support in the firewall project.

Charran Kethees Charran Kethees  Student Intern
Mentored by Thomas Sewell

Charran is working on the development and verification of Hoare Logic over interaction trees.

Daiva Addia  Student Intern
Mentored by Ivan Velickovic and Krishnan Winter

Daiva is working on improving PMU support in LionsOS

Emrys Dai  Student Intern
Mentored by Courtney Darville and Peter Chubb

Emrys is working on improved ICMP support in the firewall project.

Freya D'Mello Freya D'Mello  Student Intern
Mentored by Unknown

Freya is working on a research internship to establish multikernel support in the Microkit based on Kent McLeod's multikernel seL4.

Harry Guan  Student Intern
Mentored by Courtney Darville and Peter Chubb

Hary is working on the Firewall LionsOS project, to add proper Network Address Translation (NAT) to it.

Jenny Liu Jenny Liu  Student Intern
Mentored by Courtney Darville and Peter Chubb

Jimmy Kirkpatrick Jimmy Kirkpatrick  Student Intern
Mentored by Miki Tanaka

Jimmy is working on the Pancake to Viper transpiler.

Larry Tang Larry Tang  Student Intern
Mentored by Ivan Velickovic

Larry is interested in operating system design, implementation and optimisation.

Louie O'Connell Louie O'Connell  Student Intern
Mentored by Ivan Velickovic

Luke Zeng Luke Zeng  Student Intern
Mentored by Lesley Rossouw and Peter Chubb

Michael Tanto Michael Tanto  Student Intern
Mentored by Peter Chubb

He is interested in systems research

Peng Yu Liu Peng Yu Liu  Student Intern
Mentored by Courtney Darville

Peng is working on the Automatic validation of SPIN models

Samuel Tyler Samuel Tyler  Student Intern
Mentored by Miki Tanaka

Annotating device drivers written in Pancake for SMT backend automated verification.

Support

Alex Long Alex Long  System Administrator

Alex manages Trustworthy Systems infrastructure. He also assists researchers whenever they may have questions about Linux, networking, device drivers, bootloaders, or anything else.

Tessa Lunney Tessa Lunney  Administrator

Tessa works part-time as the Administrative Officer, managing the office. She works Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

Affiliates

Alex Potanin Alex Potanin  Senior Visiting Fellow; Associate Professor, ANU

My research area is programming languages and software verification. My contributions to type systems around ownership, immutability, and capabilities redefined the security guarantees that modern software engineering can provide. I am currently working on some ideas for the modern module systems designs based on capabilities, combinations of abstract and algebraic effects, including for the world of fully verified and secure software targeting embedded and quantum computing systems.

Johannes Åman Pohjola Johannes Åman Pohjola  Adjunct Senior Lecturer

Johannes is interested in beauty and truth. He works on interactive theorem proving, program verification and concurrency theory, specifically for the Pancake language

Kevin Elphinstone Kevin Elphinstone  Honorary Associate Professor

Kevin works on operating system microkernels and the infrastructure required to support larger systems upon them. His current focus includes secure embedded operating systems suitable for formal verification, and for being the basis of secure systems for embedded devices. He also has interests in componentised operating systems, operating systems in general, security, real-time systems, computer architecture as it pertains to operating systems, and virtualisation.

Michael Norrish Michael Norrish  Adjunct Associate Professor; Associate Professor, ANU

Michael is interested in the use of mathematics and logic to help in the specification and development of computer hardware and software. He is interested both in working on specific applications projects in this area, and in the development of tools to make all such projects easier to work on. Michael now is a Associate Professor at ANU.

Zoltan Kocsis Zoltan Kocsis  Adjunct Lecturer

Zoltan, a non-standard analyst by training, working on the correctness proof seL4-based OS code.