Michael Ernst's students

I am very fortunate to have a group of extraordinarily talented colleagues — both students and otherwise. Current and former members of my research group are listed below. Also see their publications.

I am always seeking bright, motivated students (at the undergraduate, master's, or PhD level), postdocs, and staff to contribute to a variety of program understanding and analysis research projects. Students looking for research projects (from UROPs to dissertations) should see my list of projects and research interests for a flavor (not an exhaustive list) of potential topics. If you are not at UW, then see my current projects to get a flavor for my interests.

Students

Ph.D. students:

• Ivan Beschastnikh (co-advised with Arvind Krishnamurthy and Tom Anderson)
• Ravi Bhoraskar (co-advised with David Wetherall)
• Brian Burg (co-advised with Andy Ko)
• Colin Gordon (co-advised with Dan Grossman)
• Darioush Jalali
• Kivanc Muslu
• Stuart Pernsteiner
• Eric Reed
• Todd Schiller
• Konstantin Weitz
• Edward Wu (co-advised with Yoshi Kohno)
• Sai Zhang

Master's students (BS/MS program):

• Jenny Abrahamson
• Forrest Coward
• Stephanie Dietzel
• Kellen Donohue
• Eric Spishak

Undergraduates:

• Jake Bailey
• Abhishek Gupta
• Philip Lai
• Wing Lam
• Nat Mote
• Tyler Rigsby
• Roykrong Sukkerd

Postdocs

• Werner Dietl
• René Just

Research staff

• Jonathan Burke
• Suzanne Millstein
• Mark Roberts

Graduated alumni

• Laura Dean
  M.Eng. thesis (2001): “Improved Simulation of Input/Output Automata”
  Now at Soundbite Communications
• Michael Harder
  M.Eng. thesis (2002): “Improving Test Suites via Generated Specifications”
  Now at Microsoft
• Jeremy Nimmer
  M.Eng. thesis (2002): “Automatic Generation and Checking of Program Specifications”
  This thesis won the Charles and Jennifer Johnson Thesis Award.
  Now at Vanu, Inc.
• Alex Rolfe
  M.Eng. thesis (2002): “Code Versioning in a Workflow Management System”
  Now at MIT
• Ben Morse
  M.Eng. thesis (2002): “A C/C++ Front End for the Daikon Dynamic Invariant Detection System”
• Nii Dodoo
  M.Eng. thesis (2002): “Selecting Predicates for Conditional Invariant Detection Using Cluster Analysis”
  Now at Harvard Business School (previously at Oracle)
• Adrian Birka
  M.Eng. thesis (2003): “Compiler-Enforced Immutability for the Java Language”
  Now at Microsoft
• Toh Ne Win
  M.Eng. thesis (2003): “Theorem-Proving Distributed Algorithms with Dynamic Analysis”
  This thesis won the Charles and Jennifer Johnson Thesis Award.
  Now at Goldman Sachs
• Yuriy Brun
  M.Eng. thesis (2003): “Software Fault Identification via Dynamic Analysis and Machine Learning”
  Now at UW
• David Saff
  S.M. thesis (2004): “Automated continuous testing to speed software development”
  Now at Google
• Lee Lin
  M.Eng. thesis (2004): “Improving Adaptability via Program Steering”
  Now at Microsoft
• Alan Donovan
  S.M. thesis (2004): “Converting Java Programs to Use Generic Libraries”
  Now at Google
• Jonathan Grall
  Advanced Undergraduate Project (2004): “Robocraft Programming Competition Engine”
  Now at Electronic Arts
• Aaron Iba
  Advanced Undergraduate Project (2004): “Robocraft Programming Competition Engine”
  Now at AppJet, Inc.
• Amy Williams
  S.M. thesis (2005): “Static Detection of Deadlock for Java Libraries”
  Now at MIT
• Michael Gebauer
  Advanced Undergraduate Project (2006): “Extending the Personal Response System”
• Philip Guo
  M.Eng. thesis (2006): “A Scalable Mixed-Level Approach to Dynamic Analysis of C and C++ Programs”
  This thesis won the Charles and Jennifer Johnson Thesis Award.
  Now at Stanford
• Matthew Tschantz
  M.Eng. thesis (2006): “Javari: Adding Reference Immutability to Java”
  This research won the Anna Pogosyants undergraduate research prize.
  This thesis also won the Charles and Jennifer Johnson Thesis Award.
  Now at Applied Quantitative Research
• Chen Xiao
  M.Eng. thesis (2007): “Performance Enhancements for a Dynamic Invariant Detector”
  Now at Google
• David Glasser
  M.Eng. thesis (2007): “Test Factoring with amock: Generating Readable Unit Tests from System Tests”
  Now at Google
• Matt Papi
  M.Eng. thesis (2008): "Practical Pluggable Types for Java"
  This thesis won the Charles and Jennifer Johnson Thesis Award.
  Now at TripAdvisor
• Jaime Quinonez
  M.Eng. thesis (2008): "Inference of Reference Immutability in Java"
  Now at D.E. Shaw
• Stephen McCamant
  Ph.D. dissertation (2008): “Quantitative information-flow tracking for real systems”
  Now at U.C. Berkeley
• Carlos Pacheco
  Ph.D. dissertation (2009): “Directed random testing”
  Now at Google
• David Harvison
  Advanced Undergraduate Project (2009)
• Shay Artzi
  Ph.D. dissertation (2009)
  Now at IBM
• Adam Kiezun
  Ph.D. dissertation (2009): "Guided constraint-based testing"
  Now at the Broad Institute
• Robert Rudd
  M.Eng. thesis (2010): "An Improved Scalable Mixed-Level Approach to Dynamic Analysis of C and C++ Programs"
  Now at Oracle
• Gareth Snow
  Bachelor's project: "Analysis of Mutation Testing Tools"
  Now at Zillow
• Mahmood Ali
  S.B. thesis: "Type Annotations and Pluggable Type-Checking for Java"
• Timothy Vega
  Bachelor's project (2012): "Traceur: Inferring Variable Control Flow Using Synoptic With Multiple Relation Types"

... and many others who did research (and even got publications) but did not turn it into a thesis or final project for their degree.

Former postdocs & research staff

• Steve Garland
  now a consultant
• Sandra Loosemore
  now at CodeSourcery
• Yoav Zibin
  now at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
• Sung Kim
  now at Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
• Greg Sullivan
  now at BAE
• Danny Dig
  now at University of Illinois
• Jeff Perkins
  now at MIT CSAIL
• Yuriy Brun
  now at University of Massachusetts

Back to Michael Ernst's research page.