Stefan Heule

Computer Science PhD Student at Stanford

I am a PhD candidate in my forth year in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. Alex Aiken is my advisor.

Recent News

• April 15, 2016: Our paper on stratified synthesis for learning a specification for x86-64 got accepted to PLDI'16 and is now available.
• March 7, 2016: New blog post on counting x86-64 instructions.
• June 28, 2015: New blog post on browser extension security.
• June 8, 2015: Our paper on model synthesis of opaque code is now available, along with the replication artifact we sent to FSE'15.
• June 7, 2015: I decided to start a blog.
• March 15, 2015: Our paper on browser extension security got accepted to HotOS'15.
• December 19, 2014: Our paper on IFC language design got accepted to POST'15 (part of ETAPS).

Research Interests

Broadly speaking, my interests include program synthesis, programming languages and their design, software verification, type systems, static analysis, and formal methods in general. More specifically, I want to find ways to build correct software, where tools provide guarantees about the desired behavior of a system. With computer systems becoming more and more widely used, specifically also in situations where their malfunction can have severe consequences, there is an increasing demand for software with very high reliability. I am interested in finding ways to statically reason about various correctness criteria as well as building automated tools that employ these techniques.

Publications

Also see my Google Scholar page, or my dlbp entry.

Refereed Conference Publications

• SpaceSearch: A Library for Building and Verifying Solver-Aided Tools
  by Konstantin Weitz, Steven Lyubomirsky, Stefan Heule, Emina Torlak, Michael D Ernst, and Zachary Tatlock.
  In International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP), 2017. To appear.
• Stratified Synthesis: Automatically Learning the x86-64 Instruction Set
  by Stefan Heule, Eric Schkufza, Rahul Sharma, and Alex Aiken.
  In Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2016.
• Mimic: Computing Models for Opaque Code
  by Stefan Heule, Manu Sridharan, and Satish Chandra.
  In Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), 2015.
• IFC Inside: Retrofitting Languages with Dynamic Information Flow Control
  by Stefan Heule, Deian Stefan, Edward Z. Yang, John C. Mitchell, and Alejandro Russo.
  In Principles of Security and Trust (POST), 2015.
• Verification Condition Generation for Permission Logics with Abstract Predicates and Abstraction Functions
  by Stefan Heule, Ioannis T. Kassios, Peter Müller, and Alexander J. Summers.
  In European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP), 2013.
• HyperLogLog in Practice: Algorithmic Engineering of a State of The Art Cardinality Estimation Algorithm
  by Stefan Heule, Marc Nunkesser, and Alexander Hall.
  In Extending Database Technology (EDBT), 2013.
• Abstract Read Permissions: Fractional Permissions without the Fractions
  by Stefan Heule, K. Rustan M. Leino, Peter Müller, and Alexander J. Summers.
  In Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI), 2013.

Refereed Workshop Publications

• The Most Dangerous Code in the Browser
  by Stefan Heule, Devon Rifkin, Alejandro Russo, and Deian Stefan.
  In Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS), 2015.
• Fractional Permissions without the Fractions
  by Stefan Heule, K. Rustan M. Leino, Peter Müller, and Alexander J. Summers.
  In Formal Techniques for Java-like Programs (FTfJP), 2011. Superseded by the VMCAI'13 publication.

Unrefereed Publications

• Security and the Average Programmer
  by Daniel Griffin, Stefan Heule, Amit Levy, David Mazières, John C. Mitchell, Alejandro Russo, Amy Shen, Deian Stefan, David Terei, and Edward Z. Yang.
  In Principles of Security and Trust (POST), 2014. Invited Contribution.

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