FERMAT Lab

(Formal Engineering Research with Models, Abstraction, and Transformations)

Director: Prof. Sandeep K. Shukla

Assistant Professor (joining in Fall 2002)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Department

Virginia Tech.

http://www.visc.vt.edu/~skshukla

 

Send mail to: shukla@vt.edu if you are interested in joining this Lab.

There is no research assistant position at the moment.

 

Research Opportunities

 

 

Research in Hardware/Software Co-Design for Embedded Systems

 

1.      C++ like languages for System Design, which will be translated to hardware, or software or both and embedded systems will be designed from them

2.      Verification/Validation methods to prove that what you designed is what you wanted to design (implementation conforms to specification)

3.      Synthesis methods (Synthesize automatically hardware or software from system level specification)

 

Research in Networking, Mobile and Ad-hoc Networking

 

1.      Formal (mathematically correct) modeling of requirements of a networked system

2.      How to partition the functional requirement into components which will reside in various places in the network

3.      How to integrate these functional partitions with middleware which allows the components to communicate with each other

4.      How to mathematically proved that the network behaves as required

5.      How to guarantee Quality of Service in the networked environment

 

Probabilistic Modeling of Embedded, Networked Systems and Guarantees of Correctness

 

  1. Stochastic/Probabilistic Modeling of Hardware/Software/ Network Protocols
  2. How to analyze probabilistic models using tools that can analyze probabilistic systems
  3. How to guarantee correctness of systems when there is random behavior involved
  4. How to create tools that can automatically prove probabilistic guarantees

 

Analysis of Concurrent, Parallel, Complex Computing Systems

 

  1. How to mathematically model and understand Concurrent, Parallel and Complex Computing systems
  2. How to guarantee correctness of such systems
  3. How to automatically transform such systems into a system which is more efficient
  4. How to prove that the transformation is correct

 

 

 

 

Low-Power Design of Systems

 

1.      How to build systems which consume low power and hence has extended battery life

2.      How to probabilistically model behavior of the environment where systems are placed, and design low-power systems assuming such environments

3.      How to hack the linux/windows device-drivers to put more intelligence into the systems to make them power/energy efficient