Cristian Cadar

Lecturer (Assistant Professor)
Department of Computing
Imperial College London

I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, where I lead the Software Reliability Group. My research interests span the areas of software engineering, computer systems and software security, with a focus on building practical tools for improving the reliability and security of software systems.

Previously, I received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, an M.Eng. in Computer Science from MIT, and a B.S. in Computer Science and one in Mathematics also from MIT.

Prospective PhD Students:

A new PhD position funded by Microsoft Research is available in my research group. Please click here for details.

I am always looking for bright and motivated PhD students interested in developing novel techniques and tools for improving software reliability. I am particularly interested in students having a strong background in systems programming and compilers, and experience with building and working with large software systems. Please send me email if you are interested in doing a PhD in my group, and attach a CV to your email. If your background matches our research interests, I will try to send a reply soon. Note that most funding opportunities are for European Union students, but there are limited opportunities for overseas students as well. We advertise specific funding opportunities here.

Selected Publications

• make test-zesti: A Symbolic Execution Solution for Improving Regression Testing
  Paul Dan Marinescu, Cristian Cadar
  International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2012)
  Zurich, Switzerland, June 2012
  
  
• Symbolic Execution for Software Testing in Practice – Preliminary Assessment
  Cristian Cadar, Patrice Godefroid, Sarfraz Khurshid, Corina Pasareanu, Koushik Sen, Nikolai Tillmann, Willem Visser
  International Conference on Software Engineering, Impact Project (ICSE Impact 2011)
  Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, May 2011
  
  
• Symbolic Crosschecking of Floating-Point and SIMD Code
  Peter Collingbourne, Cristian Cadar, Paul H. J. Kelly
  European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys 2011)
  Salzburg, Austria, April 2011
  
  
• Multiplicity Computing: A Vision of Software Engineering for Next-Generation Computing Platform Applications
  Cristian Cadar, Peter Pietzuch, Alexander Wolf
  FSE/SDP Workshop on the Future of Software Engineering Research (FoSER 2010)
  Santa Fe, NM, November 2010
  
  
• KLEE: Unassisted and Automatic Generation of High-Coverage Tests for Complex Systems Programs
  Cristian Cadar, Daniel Dunbar, Dawson Engler
  USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 2008)
  Awarded the Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award
  San Diego, CA, December 2008
  
  
• EXE: Automatically Generating Inputs of Death
  Cristian Cadar, Vijay Ganesh, Peter Pawlowski, David Dill, Dawson Engler
  ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC)
  Volume 12, No. 2, December 2008
  This is an extended version of our CCS 2006 paper
  
  
• Preventing memory error exploits with WIT
  Periklis Akritidis, Cristian Cadar, Costin Raiciu, Manuel Costa, Miguel Castro
  IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland Security 2008)
  Berkeley/Oakland, California, May 2008
  
  
• Data Randomization
  Cristian Cadar, Periklis Akritidis, Manuel Costa, Jean-Phillipe Martin, Miguel Castro
  Microsoft Research TR-120-2008
  
  
• RWset: Attacking Path Explosion in Constraint-Based Test Generation
  Peter Boonstoppel, Cristian Cadar, Dawson Engler
  ETAPS Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS 2008)
  Budapest, Hungary, March-April 2008
  
  
• Automatically Generating Malicious Disks using Symbolic Execution
  Junfeng Yang, Can Sar, Paul Twohey, Cristian Cadar, Dawson Engler
  IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland Security 2006)
  Berkeley/Oakland, California, May 2006
  
  
• Execution Generated Test Cases: How to Make Systems Code Crash Itself
  Cristian Cadar, Dawson Engler
  International SPIN Workshop on Model Checking of Software (invited paper)
  San Francisco, CA, August 2005
  A longer version of this paper appeared as Stanford Technical Report CSTR-2005-04
  
  
• Exploring the Acceptability Envelope
  Martin Rinard, Cristian Cadar, Huu Hai Nguyen
  Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications Companion (OOPSLA 2005 Companion)
  San Diego, CA, October 2005
  
  
• Enhancing Server Availability and Security Through Failure-Oblivious Computing
  Martin Rinard, Cristian Cadar, Daniel Dumitran, Daniel Roy, Tudor Leu, William Beebee Jr.
  USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 2004)
  San Francisco, CA, December 2004
  
  

Selected Talks

• KLEE: Effective Testing of Systems Programs
  Available in PPSX and PDF format
  Versions of this talk were presented at:
  • Stanford Security Workshop 2009, Stanford, CA, USA, April 16, 2009
  • USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 2008), San Diego, CA, USA, December 9, 2008
  • Workshop on State-space Exploration for Automated Testing (SSEAT 2008), Seattle, WA, USA, July 24, 2008
  
  
• RWset: Attacking Path Explosion in Constraint-Based Test Generation
  Available in PPSX and PDF format
  ETAPS Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS 2008)
  Budapest, Hungary, April 2, 2008
  
  
• EXE: Automatically Generating Inputs of Death
  Available in PPSX and PDF format
  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2006)
  Alexandria, Virginia, USA, November 2, 2006
  
  
• A Dynamic Technique for Eliminating Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities (and Other Memory Errors)
  Available in PPSX and PDF format
  Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2004)
  Tucson, AZ, December 8, 2004
  
  

Teaching

Autumn 2011-12

• Networks and Communications (2nd year)

Spring 2010-11

• Operating Systems (2nd year)
• Software Engineering Practice (MSc)
• MSc Group Projects

Autumn 2010-11: Networks and Communications (2nd year)

Spring 2009-10: Operating Systems (2nd year), Software Engineering Practice (MSc)

Service

Please consider submitting papers to the following conferences and workshops:

2013

• PC member, European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys 2013)
• PC member, International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST 2013)
• PC member, European Symposium on Programming (ESOP 2013)
• PC member, International Symposium on Engineering Secure Software and Systems (ESSoS 2013)
• PC member, ICSE - New Ideas and Emerging Results Track (ICSE-NIER 2013)

2012

• PC member, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P 2012)
• PC member, ACM International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA 2012)
• PC member, ICSE - New Ideas and Emerging Results Track (ICSE-NIER 2012)
• Co-chair, Workshop on Constraints in Software Testing, Verification and Analysis (CSTVA 2012)
• PC member, International Symposium on Runtime Verification (RV 2012)
• PC member, Workshop on Developing Tools as Plug-ins (TOPI 2012)

2011

• PC member, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P 2011)
• PC member, ESEC/FSE - New Ideas Track (ESEC/FSE - NI 2011)
• PC member, Workshop on Constraints in Software Testing, Verification and Analysis (CSTVA 2011)
• ERC member, ACM International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA 2011)
• PC member, International SPIN Workshop on Model Checking Software (SPIN 2011)

2010

• PC member, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P 2010)
• PC member, ACM International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA 2010)
• PC member, Workshop on Constraints in Software Testing, Verification and Analysis (CSTVA 2010)

Software

• KLEE is now open source! Please go to the new KLEE website for more details.

© Cristian Cadar 2000-2012. Last updated: April 2012