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CS Seminar Series – Prof. Zvonimir Rakamaric (University of Utah) – SMACK Software Verification Tool Chain

Date: September 23, 2016

Speaker: Prof. Zvonimir Rakamaric (University of Utah)

Location:  DBH 3011

Time: 11am – 12pm

Title: SMACK Software Verification Tool Chain

Abstract:  Tool prototyping is an essential step in developing novel software verification algorithms and techniques. However, implementing a verifier prototype that can handle real-world programs is a huge endeavor, which hinders researchers by forcing them to spend more time engineering tools, and less time innovating. In this talk, I will present the SMACK software verification toolchain. The toolchain provides a modular and extensible software verification ecosystem that decouples the front-end source language details from back-end verification algorithms. It achieves that by translating from the LLVM compiler intermediate representation into the Boogie intermediate verification language. SMACK benefits the software verification community in several ways: (i) it can be used as an off-the-shelf software verifier in an applied software verification project, (ii) it enables researchers to rapidly develop and release new verification algorithms, (iii) it allows for adding support for new languages in its front-end. We have used SMACK to verify numerous C/C++ programs, including industry examples, showing it is mature and competitive. Likewise, SMACK is already being used in several existing verification research prototypes.

Bio: Zvonimir Rakamaric is an assistant professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah. Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in Silicon Valley, where he worked closely with researchers from the Robust Software Engineering Group at NASA Ames Research Center to improve the coverage of testing of NASA’s flight critical systems. Zvonimir received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Zagreb, Croatia; he obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Zvonimir’s research mission is to improve the reliability and resilience of complex software systems by empowering developers with practical tools and techniques for analysis of their artifacts. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award 2016, Microsoft Research Software Engineering Innovation Foundation (SEIF) Award 2012, Microsoft Research Graduate Fellowship 2008-2010, Silver Medal in the ACM Student Research Competition at the 32nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2010, and the Outstanding Student Paper Award at the 13th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS) 2007.

For more information about Zvonimir, visit www.zvonimir.info.


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