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PODCAST · technology

Building Better Systems

by Galois, Joey Dodds, Shpat Morina

Exploring tools and approaches that make us more effective engineers and make our systems safe and reliable. Join us for discussions on recent developments in topics such as best practices in reliability and security, applied formal methods, encryption, and safe and secure hardware.

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Episodes

  1. Episode #22: Eric Daimler — Guaranteeing the Integrity of Data Models with Category Theory

    In this episode, we're joined by Eric Daimler, CEO & co-founder of Conexus AI, Inc, an MIT spin out. We discuss the Conexus software platform, which is built on top of breakthroughs in the mathematics of Category Theory, and how it guarantees the integrity of universal data models. Eric shares...

  2. Episode #21: Nikhil Swamy — Fully In Bed With Dependent Types

    Today we're joined by Nikhil Swamy, Senior Principal Researcher in the RiSE group at Microsoft Research. We are very excited to hear about what he's been working on. In particular, we're going discuss a language that he's co-created and continually develops called F* (pronounced F star). F* is a...

  3. Episode #20: Ankush Desai — P: The Modeling Language That Could

    Joey and Shpat talk with Ankush Desai, a Senior Applied Scientist at AWS and one of the primary developers behind the P language. They dig into uses for P, bug finding, and what it takes for formal methods researchers to build useful tools for applied engineers. Watch all our episodes on the...

  4. #19: Steve Weis — Security Shouldn't Be the Last Check Box

    In this episode, we talk with Steve Weis, a Senior Staff Security Engineer at Databricks with extensive knowledge of security, cryptography, and software engineering. Steve shares his experience working for large companies like Google and Facebook and how their security needs differ from…

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  5. #18: Jordan Kyriakidis — Helping People Write More Useful Requirements

    In episode #18, we chat with Jordan Kyriakidis, co-founder and CEO of QRA Corp. QRA is developing QVScribe, a product that helps engineers write requirements and analyze those requirements to gauge whether they are framed well and capture the writer's intent. We discuss the impact of writing…

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  6. #17: Iain Whiteside — The Twists and Turns of Validating Neural Networks for Autonomous Driving (Part 2)

    In this two-part episode, we speak with Iain Whiteside about the challenges and some of the more novel solutions to make autonomous vehicles safer and easier to program. In part 1, we discuss how Ian and his team formalize and check the different actions and situations that a car finds itself in...

  7. #16: Iain Whiteside – Autonomous Driving: Reasoning About the Rules of the Road (Part 1)

    In this two-part episode, we speak with Iain Whiteside about the challenges and some of the more novel solutions to make autonomous vehicles safer and easier to program. In part 1, we discuss how Ian and his team formalize and check the different actions and situations that a car finds itself in...

  8. #15: Dr. Kathleen Fisher – Sparking the New Age of Formal Verification at DARPA

    In this episode, we chat with Dr. Kathleen Fisher, who was chair of the Computer Science department at Tufts University at the time of the interview. We talk about Kathleen’s experience in applying formal methods and PL theory to solve significant practical problems throughout her career. Equally...

  9. #14: Leo de Moura — Combining the Worlds of Automated and Interactive Theorem Proving In Lean

    In this episode, we talk with Leo de Moura, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research. We’ll dive into his work on Lean, how goals for Lean have evolved, and who can use it. We also discuss how Leo was able to implement such a system without being a programming languages expert. Watch all our...

  10. #13: Rod Chapman – It's Either Automated or It's Wrong

    Rod Chapman explains his recent verification of TweetNACL using SPARK/ADA. We discuss how every aspect of his proofs are automated, how the correctness proofs actually enabled better performance after compilation, and higher confidence in some otherwise risky-seeming optimizations. Watch all our...

  11. #12: Alex Malozemoff & Marc Rosen – Censorship Circumvention with ROCKY Balboa

    We chat with Alex Malozemoff and Marc Rosen about a recently published paper on a novel system for censorship circumvention, and it's corresponding implementation. The paper authors also include James Parker. Watch all our episodes on the Building Better Systems youtube channel. Joey Dodds:...

  12. #11: Alastair Reid – Meeting Developers Where They Are

    Alastair Reid describes Google's efforts to bring formal methods to developers so that they can be useful today. We cover a recent publication describing their approach, Alastair's project to document all of the papers he read for a year, and a prototype tool that they've been building to...

  13. #10: Gregory Malecha – Formal Methods and Systems Programmers Working Together

    Gregory Malecha talks with Joey and Shpat about Bedrock, a startup bringing systems engineers together with formal methods engineers to build some of the most secure and correct systems in the world. Watch all our episodes on the Building Better Systems youtube channel. Joey Dodds:...

  14. #9: Tycho Andersen – Commit Log Spelunking

    Tycho Andersen shares lessons that Linux kernel developers have learned from decades of open-source interactions. We discuss how the open-source community works together to make the Linux kernel better for everyone, and also what it's like to work debugging the kernel. Watch all our episodes on…

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  15. #8: Eric Davis – Building Better Data Models

    Dr. Eric Davis walks us through what it means for a data model to be trustworthy, what common pitfalls predictive models run into, reproducibility issues, and what can be done. We chat about how subject area experts are expected to be many things: statisticians, computer scientists, and...

  16. #7: Aditya Thakur – “If it goes too slow, they'll turn it off”: Analysis Tools That Work

    Dr. Aditya Thakur, a computer science professor at U.C. Davis, walks us through his work on developing analysis tools that he wished he had while working in industry at places like Google. Aside from program analysis, we talk about making a research group successful by exposing them to industry....

  17. #6: Dan Guido – What the hell are the blockchain people doing, and why isn't it a dumpster fire?

    Dan Guido, CEO of Trail of Bits, walks us through how they work with customers to make long-term improvements in security and software quality. He also describes what blockchain has done right, and how the rest of the software world should learn from them. You can watch this episode on our…

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  18. #5: Talia Ringer – Proof Engineering for the People

    Talia Ringer, a Ph.D. candidate at University of Washington, explains how they do deep people-centric PL research. We discuss proof repair, UX for software correctness, and how to ask users of tools for feedback to react to. You can watch this episode on our Youtube Channel. Joey Dodds:...

  19. #4: Alex Malozemoff – New attack on homomorphic encryption libraries: what does it mean?

    Principal Researcher, Alex Malozemoff, walks us through what homomorphic encryption is, what CKKS is, and how a recent new attack on CKKS will impact progress on homomorphic encryption. You can watch this episode on our Youtube channel. Galois, Inc. Joey Dodds Shpat Morina Alex Malozemoff On the...

  20. #3: Stephen Magill & Tom DuBuisson – Musing on continuous code analysis

    The founders of MuseDev discuss making modern static analysis usable and leveraging the latest promising research for automatic bug finding. MuseDev is a spin-off of Galois. Video of this podcast can be found on our Youtube channel: Galois, Inc.: https://galois.com/ Joey Dodds:...

  21. #2: Jean Yang – "Formal" Methods? How about "Business Casual" Methods? Part 2

    Video of this podcast can be found on our Youtube channel Jean Yang: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-yang-96575030/ Akita Software: https://www.akitasoftware.com/ Galois, Inc.: https://galois.com/ Joey Dodds: https://galois.com/team/joey-dodds/ Shpat Morina: https://galois.com/team/shpat-morina/...

  22. #1: Jean Yang – "Formal" Methods? How about "Business Casual" Methods? Part 1

    Video of this podcast can be found on our Youtube channel. Jean Yang: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-yang-96575030/ Akita Software: https://www.akitasoftware.com/ Galois, Inc.: https://galois.com/ Joey Dodds: https://galois.com/team/joey-dodds/ Shpat Morina…

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ABOUT THIS SHOW

Exploring tools and approaches that make us more effective engineers and make our systems safe and reliable. Join us for discussions on recent developments in topics such as best practices in reliability and security, applied formal methods, encryption, and safe and secure hardware.

HOSTED BY

Galois, Joey Dodds, Shpat Morina

Produced by Galois Inc.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does Building Better Systems have?

Building Better Systems currently has 22 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.

What is Building Better Systems about?

Exploring tools and approaches that make us more effective engineers and make our systems safe and reliable. Join us for discussions on recent developments in topics such as best practices in reliability and security, applied formal methods, encryption, and safe and secure hardware.

How often does Building Better Systems release new episodes?

Building Better Systems has 22 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.

Where can I listen to Building Better Systems?

You can listen to Building Better Systems on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.

Who hosts Building Better Systems?

Building Better Systems is created and hosted by Galois, Joey Dodds, Shpat Morina.
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