About

I’m a tenured faculty member at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), a position equivalent to a US associate professorship, and head of the Real-Time Systems Group.

Prior to joining MPI-SWS, I was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2006–2011), where I worked with Jim Anderson. At UNC, I was supported in part by the German-American Fulbright Program. Originally, I’m from Berlin, Germany, where I attended TU Berlin (2003–2006).

Research Interests

My main research interests are real-time systems, operating systems, and embedded systems. My focus is the design and implementation of systems that are robust, efficient, and amenable to a priori analysis. To this end, my group engages in both systems building and the development of novel formal analysis methods. I am most excited about work that combines formal and practical aspects.

Presently, my main focus is the Prosa project, a formalization of real-time scheduling theory with the Coq proof assistant.

Awards and Grants

RTSS 2024 Outstanding Paper Award (paper)
RTAS 2023 Best Paper Award (paper)
RTSS 2022 Best Paper Award (paper)
ECRTS 2022 Outstanding Paper Award (paper)
RTSS 2021 Best Paper Award (paper)
ECRTS 2020 Outstanding Paper Award (paper)
RTAS 2020 Distinguished Paper Award (paper)
TOROS: 2018 ERC Starting Grant (≈1.5M EUR)
ECRTS 2018 Outstanding Paper Award (paper)
2018 ACM SIGBED Early Career Award — recipient of the inaugural award
RTAS 2018 Outstanding Paper Award (paper)
RT-PROOFS: Bilateral ANR-DFG grant (≈660k EUR, with INRIA, ONERA, & TU Braunschweig)
2017 ACM Future of Computing Academy — member of the inaugural class
RTAS 2017 Best Paper Award (paper)
RTAS 2017 Outstanding Paper Award (paper)
RTSS 2016 Best Paper Award (paper)
ECRTS 2016 Best Paper Award (paper)
ECRTS 2013 Outstanding Paper Award (paper)
SIES 2013 Best Paper Award (paper)
2012 EDAA Outstanding Dissertation Award (details, dissertation)
2012 CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award (details)
2012 UNC Dean Linda Dykstra Distinguished Dissertation Award (details)
EMSOFT 2011 Best Paper Award (paper)
RTSS 2010 Best Student Paper Award (paper)
Fulbright Fellowship (2006–2007), awarded by the German-American Fulbright Commission
Klaus Murmann Fellowship (2005–2007), awarded by Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft

Future Students and Interns

When contacting me directly, please include samples of your work that you are proud of (e.g., major projects, open-source contributions, etc.) and writing samples (e.g., your technical blog, an undergrad or semester thesis, project reports, some documentation that you wrote, etc.). If available, please also include your undergraduate and graduate transcripts.

Regarding summer internships: Due to high demand, MPI-SWS’s summer internship program uses a competitive application process. Please apply through the portal and mention my name as someone you would be interested in working with. Feel free to contact me directly in addition after you’ve submitted your application through the portal.

I’m interested in growing the Prosa team: if you are familiar with the Coq proof assistant (or similar tools or computational logic in general) and would like to apply it to timing-related problems (as either intern, PhD student, or postdoc), please get in touch. If you have a background in real-time systems or formal methods and would like to learn Coq, I’m also open to discussing opportunities.

Current Group Members

Sergey Bozhko
Kimaya Bedarkar (co-advised with Derek Dreyer)
Filip Marković (postdoc)
Bite Ye

Alumni

Cédric Courtaud (postdoc 2021–2024), now research engineer at Huawei Research in Paris, France.
Marco Perronet (MSc student 2019–2022)
Master’s thesis: Dynamic Extraction of Real-Time Models from Arbitrary Workloads on Unmodified Linux Kernels
Marco Maida (MSc student 2019–2022)
Master’s thesis: Automatic Generation of Proof-Carrying Response-Time Bounds
Tobias Stark (2018–2021), now in the middleware group at Apex.AI, UK.
Thesis: Real-Time Execution Management in the ROS 2 Framework [PDF]
Georg von der Brüggen (postdoc 2020–2021), now tenured research group leader within the DAES chair at TU Dortmund, Germany.
Manohar Vanga (2012–2019), now research scientist at Bell Labs, Stuttgart.
Thesis: High-Throughput and Predictable VM Scheduling for High-Density Workloads [PDF]
Arpan Gujarati (2012–2019), now assistant professor at The University of British Columbia, Canada.
Thesis: Towards “Ultra-Reliable” CPS: Reliability Analysis of Distributed Real-Time Systems [PDF]
Recipient of the 2021 ACM SIGBED Paul Caspi Memorial Dissertation Award
Felipe Cerqueira (2013–2018), now at Google, Brazil.
Mitra Nasri (postdoc 2016–2018), first assistant professor at TU Delft, now assistant professor at TU Eindhoven.
Alexander Wieder (2012–2017), now at Huawei Research in Munich, Germany.
Thesis: Blocking Analysis of Spin Locks under Partitioned Fixed-Priority Scheduling [PDF]

In the past, I’ve also had the pleasure to work closely with Pierre Roux (visited in 2023, researcher at ONERA), Matteo Zini (visited in 2023), Daniel Casini (visited in 2019, now assistant professor at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna - Pisa, Italy), Alessandro Biondi (visited in 2016, now professor at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna - Pisa, Italy), Pedro Fonseca (graduated 2015, now assistant professor at Purdue University), and Pramod Bhatotia (graduated 2015, now a full professor at TU Munich).

Software

I enjoy building software tools for research purposes. Here are some of the more notable ones released over the years.

Prosa: A Foundation for Formally Proven Schedulability Analysis. An open-source Coq framework/library for readable mechanized schedulability analysis. Please see prosa.mpi-sws.org for details.
SAG: a schedulability analysis tool for (originally) non- and limited-preemptive workloads based on schedule-abstraction graph (SAG) reachability. I built the original version, which has since been thoroughly overhauled by others. Now maintained by Geoffrey Nelissen.
repository on GitHub
LITMUS^RT: The Linux Testbed for Multiprocessor Scheduling in Real-Time Systems. LITMUS^RT is a real-time extension of the Linux kernel that implements state-of-the-art multiprocessor real-time scheduling policies and locking protocols. Please see www.litmus-rt.org for details. No longer maintained by me.
SchedCAT: The Schedulability test Collection And Toolkit. SchedCAT is a Python/C++ library containing real-time schedulability tests, blocking analysis, overhead accounting methods, and task set generators. repository on GitHub. Now outdated and unmaintained.

Additionally, I maintain some niche Python and Rust packages:

response-time-analysis-rs: A Rust crate providing traits, definitions, and algorithms for response-time analysis.
crate on crates.io • repository on GitHub
py-abs-sleep: A Python library for absolutely timed sleeps and periodic activations on Linux.
package on PyPI • repository on GitHub
py-lllqos: A Python wrapper for Linux’s wake-up latency QoS interface.
package on PyPI • repository on GitHub

Teaching

Fall 2019: Operating Systems (UdS core lecture)
Fall 2017: Operating Systems (UdS core lecture)
Fall 2015: Operating Systems (UdS core lecture)
Fall 2014: Foundations of Cyber-Physical Systems (lecture)
Fall 2013: Operating System Design & Implementation (seminar)
Summer 2013:
- Fault-Tolerant Distributed Real-Time Systems (seminar)
- Operating Systems (UdS core lecture)
- Operating System Design & Implementation “privatissimum” (small-scale, in-depth seminar)
Fall 2012: Real-Time Scheduling and Synchronization (seminar)

Professional Activities

Professional associations:

senior member of IEEE
member of ACM
member of GI

Editor:

LITES (2023–)

Chair appointments:

PC Chair of RTSS 2025

Past steering committee involvement:

IEEE TCRTS Executive Committee (2018–2023)
EMSOFT Steering Committee (2017–2022)
ACM SIGBED Board of Directors (2019–2021)

Past editorships:

ACM TECS — associate editor for real-time systems (2017–2023)

Past chair appointments:

PC Chair of ECRTS 2021
General Chair of RTAS 2020
PC Chair of RTAS 2019
PC Chair of EMSOFT 2018
PC Co-chair of EMSOFT 2017
Publications chair of ECRTS 2017
Chair of OSPERT 2015 (co-located with ECRTS 2015)
Chair of the RTAS 2015 Applications, RTOSs and Run-Time Software and Tools track
Co-chair of OSPERT 2014 (co-located with ECRTS 2014)
Chair of the RTAS 2014 Work-in-Progress Session

Past PC involvement: RTAS 2024, PLOS 2023, EMSOFT 2023, RTAS 2023, ERSA 2022, EMSOFT 2022, ECRTS 2022, RTAS 2022, EuroSys 2021, RTSS 2020, EMSOFT 2020, ECRTS 2020, ECRTS 2019, OSPERT 2019, NGOSCPS 2019, ASPLOS 2019 ERC, EuroSys 2019, RTSS 2018, Middleware 2018, RTCSA 2018, RTAS 2017, CMAAS 2017, RTSS 2016 + WiP, EMSOFT 2016, RTNS 2016, RTAS 2016 + WiP, EuroSys 2016, SYSTOR 2016, WMC 2015, RTNS 2015, EMSOFT 2015, RTSOPS 2015, ECRTS 2015, SYSTOR 2015, RTAS 2015 WiP track, SAC 2015 ES track, RTNS 2014, ETFA 2014 RTSOPS 2014, ECRTS 2014, RTAS 2014, RTSS 2013, RTNS 2013, ECRTS 2013, OSPERT 2013, RTAS 2013, EuroSys 2013, RTSS 2012, RTCSA 2012, RTNS 2012, OSPERT 2012.

Contact

Pre-covid, most days I could be found in the Kaiserslautern building of MPI-SWS in my office (room 416). Nowadays, it’s best to email me first before stopping by.

MPI-SWS Kaiserslautern is located right at the corner of Trippstadter Straße and the TUKL campus.

Mailing address:

MPI-SWS
Paul-Ehrlich-Straße G 26
D-67663 Kaiserslautern
Germany

Email: bbb -at- mpi-sws.org
Phone: +49 681 9303–8401

Please note that I strongly prefer emails over phone calls.