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Prospective Research Students

Seeking Motivated Students

I am always seeking motivated students interested in pursuing research.

Advice for Potential Students

My research concerns computer security, and is motivated by the central questions of:

• why should one computer system be considered more secure than another?
• how can we build systems that are more secure, and do so more cheaply, than current ad hoc methods?
• what evidence should we use to judge the security of a system, especially before it has been fielded?

My research tends to favour formal approaches to answering these questions, although not exclusively. For instance, using machine checked proofs or sound empirical measurement to demonstrate system security, or using verifying or verified compilation to more easily build verified systems, are examples of formal approaches to building secure systems. On the other hand, some aspects of security like human behaviour need to be understood through a different lens but are no less vital.

The most important quality I look for in potential research students (whether summer interns, undergraduate thesis students or higher degree research students) is genuine curiosity. That means

I look for students who are excited by the prospect of reading the latest research papers in their area of interest, and who—when reading such papers—are likely to ask (and answer) questions such as:

• “What are the unstated assumptions and limitations of this work?”
• “How does it compare to other state-of-the-art research that attempts to solve the same problem?”
• “How can this work be improved?”

Being able to answer these kinds of questions is more important than having specific experience with e.g. formal methods or particular areas of security; although such experience may be beneficial for some topics. As you'll see from the overview of my research on my main page, my interests in security are relatively broad.

How to Contact Me

If you are interested in pursuing research with me, please get in touch by email. Tell me what papers you've been reading, what ideas you are interested in, and why you want to work witih me (after all, there are so many good researchers to work with). I look forward to hearing from you.