gparmer

I am an Associate Professor in the Computer Science department at George Washington University. I received my PhD. from Boston University under the direction of Professor Richard West. I lead the real-time systems, and Operating Systems groups at GWU.

Much of our research centers around the Composite component-based operating system. Fine grained system policies, mechanisms, and abstractions are defined as independent components, which are composed together to create a specialized and functional system. In doing so, a focus is on taking advantage of the increased system flexibility to bring predictability to cloud-scale systems, and rich functionality to embedded systems. Topics of interest include:

• the design and implementation of operating systems
• real-time and embedded systems
• operating system dependability
• embedded system security
• specialized and component-based systems
• operating systems for massive parallelism
• formal verification

We’ve also researched and developed one of the fastest software sandboxing systems for WebAssembly outside of the browser, aWsm. We’ve investigated runtimes for the smallest of microcontrollers up to a serverless runtime for the edge. Unifying Wasm and Composite runtimes will enable universal binaries able to run efficiently with tight security and reliability properties.

Please see our publications for more detail.

Interested in Research?

We have a highly ranked research lab in embedded and real-time systems. We approach that domain mainly through OS design and implementation.

• Prospective PhD students with previous experience in systems should highlight that past experience in any correspondences with me. Generally, if I’m looking for a PhD researcher, I’ll post as such in a banner on this webpage. However, I have hired PhD researchers even when I wasn’t looking when it was a significant opportunity for me and the researcher. Please email me, highlighting your past accomplishments in systems. Please read my PhD student rights document if you want a perspective on figuring out where to do your PhD.
• Undergraduates are more than welcome to join our group. We have a long history of undergraduate research, including many undergraduate co-authors on papers. Our research tends to be much heavier on the systems side (think 3410 and 3411), so know what you’re getting into! I view undergraduate research as a core mechanism to be able to go “deeper” into an area you’re interested in, guided by a “mentor” relationship with the professor.
• MS students should take one of my graduate classes (e.g. Advanced OS), or otherwise demonstrate an interest and capability in systems. Learning to do research in my domain often takes more time than an MS allows, so it helps to come in with experience. That said, around a third of my PhD students were initially MS students.

For undergrads and MS students: depending on a number of conditions, research can be conducted for class credit as a special topics class, and stipends might be appropriate once a student can contribute.

Systems Musings Meetup

If you’re considering diving into systems, anyone at GWU is welcome to attend our weekly systems musings discussion, which we conduct remotely. We talk about a systems article or topic each week to stay up-to-date on core technologies and topics – from Linux, to embedded systems, to compilers, to architectures. See the Scheduled Discussions for our queue of what we’re going to discuss. Feel free to add topics in List of Potential Topics. Email me for information if you’re interested.

Other Links

• The amazing current researchers and alumni of the lab.
• A list of systems heros, undergraduates who have demonstrated an exceptional passion and capability in the OS class.
• A long list of random facts about me.