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.

Kevin Elphinstone Kevin Elphinstone  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.

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.

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.

Research and Engineering Leaders

Courtney Darville Courtney Darville  Researchers

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.

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.

Sai Nair Sai Nair  Proof Engineer

Sai is working on verifying time protection enforcement on the seL4 microkernel. In particular, he is validating addresses touched in said enforcement are within partitions allocated to a given context.

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

Junming Zhao Junming Zhao  PhD Student
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

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

Etkin Tetik Etkin Tetik  Honours Thesis Student
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

Etkin is interested in kernels.

Tom Tan Tom Tan  Masters Student
Supervised by Gernot Heiser

Tom is working on optimizing Driver Virtual Machine performance in LionsOS

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 Amirul Juarimi  Student Intern
Mentored by Courtney Darville and Peter Chubb

Callum Berry Callum Berry  Student Intern
Mentored by Peter Chubb

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 Daiva Addia  Student Intern
Mentored by Ivan Velickovic and Krishnan Winter

Daniel Seo Daniel Seo  Student Intern
Mentored by Rob Sison

Emrys Dai Emrys Dai  Student Intern
Mentored by Courtney Darville and Peter Chubb

Freya D'Mello Freya D'Mello  Student Intern
Mentored by Ivan Velickovic

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

Hamzah Ahmed  Student Intern
Mentored by Unknown

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

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 Mospan Michael Mospan  Student Intern
Mentored by Peter Chubb

Michael is currently working on two projects: creating a Linux library with the goal of emulating the seL4 Microkit, and a CPU core management tool for multi-core systems within LionsOS.

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

Richard Shen Richard Shen  Student Intern
Mentored by Ivan Velickovic

Richard is working on evaluating programming languages for verified LionsOS components.

Samuel Tyler Samuel Tyler  Student Intern
Mentored by Miki Tanaka

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

Tasfia Ahmed Tasfia Ahmed  Student Intern
Mentored by Ivan Velickovic

Tasfia is implementing and evaluating dynamic features for the sel4 microkit.

Tony Shao Tony Shao  Student Intern
Mentored by Miki Tanaka

Working on Pancake

Udit Samant Udit Samant  Student Intern
Mentored by Courtney Darville

Udit is working on dynamic features in sDDF

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

Corey Lewis Corey Lewis  Visiting Fellow; Engineer at Proofcraft

Corey was a senior proof engineer and the lead engineer for verifying multi-core seL4. During his time at TS he has been involved in a wide variety of projects to do with seL4. These include developing the original CapDL translation tools, helping complete the information flow proofs, and contributing to the verification of the seL4 MCS extensions. His research interests include formal methods, functional programming, and program verification. Corey now works at Proofcraft.

Gerwin Klein Gerwin Klein  Adjunct Professor; Founder and Chief Scientist at Proofcraft

Gerwin's research interest is in Formal Methods, more specifically in interactive theorem proving, software verification, semantics of programming languages, and in the emerging field of proof engineering. Generally, he wants software systems to be dependable, and thinks that formal specification and proof can make a significant contribution towards that goal.

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

June Andronick June Andronick  Adjunct Professor; Founder and CEO at Proofcraft

June had joined the Trustworthy Systems research group in 2008 (in NICTA), and led the group from end of 2016 to end of 2020. Her main research interest is in formal verification and certification of software systems, more precisely in formal proof of correctness and security properties of programs using interactive theorem proving, as well as concurrency reasoning, targeting interruptible and multicore systems.

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.

Rafal Kolanski Rafal Kolanski  Adjunct Lecturer; Founder at Proofcraft

Rafal worked as a proof engineer at Trustworthy Systems until April 2021. He led the Proof Engineering team from 2016 until 2021.

Rafal is interested in the formal verification of high assurance, system-level software, both from the perspective of verification in practice, but also proof maintenance and increasing the proof coverage of already verified systems.

Zoltan Kocsis Zoltan Kocsis  Adjunct Lecturer

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