Dr. Michael Maass (CS 2016)

Bio

In March of 2016, I finished my PhD in Software Engineering at the Institute for Software Research in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. I was co-advised by Bill Scherlis and Jonathan Aldrich. My research interests fall within the scope of security, semantics-based methods, evidence-based software assurance, multi-faceted software defense strategies, and techniques for preventing software vulnerabilities.

My thesis research focused on sandboxing. Sandboxes are encapsulation mechanisms that are used to impose security policies on software components. They are particularly useful in cases where components must be used but can't be trusted or verified. Sandbox these components to limit their behavior and verify the relatively simple sandbox instead. Others have spent the last few decades inventing new sandboxing mechanisms; my thesis focused on making those mechanisms more secure and easier to use.