Joe Kiniry

Principal Scientist focusing on Rigorous Systems and Software Engineering (Model-based Systems Engineering with Digital Twins), Hardware/Firmware Security, Trustworthy and Verifiable Elections, High-assurance Cryptography, and Audits-for-Good

I have extensive experience in formal methods, high-assurance systems engineering, foundations of computer science and mathematics, and information security. Specific areas I have worked in include software and hardware verification foundations and tools, digital election systems and democracies, smart-cards, smart-phones, critical systems for nation states, and CAD systems for asynchronous hardware.

I am really excited to be working at Galois, as I have been a fan of Galois, a darling of the formal methods community, for many years. Galois is full of super-sharp researchers and engineers doing really interesting work on hard problems. My goal is to further the Galois mission of applying formal methods for good.

Background

Dr. Kiniry is a Principal Scientist at Galois and the Research Lead of several programs: High-assurance Secure Hardware/Firmware Design and Verification, Rigorous Systems Engineering (High-assurance Model-Based Systems and Software Engineering with Digital Twins), Trustworthy and Verifiable Elections, High-assurance Cryptography, and Audits-for-Good.  Dr. Kiniry is also the Principled CEO and Chief Scientist of Free & Fair, a Galois spin-out focusing on high-assurance elections technologies and services.

Prior to joining Galois in 2014, Dr. Kiniry was a Full Professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). There, he was the Head of DTU’s Software Engineering section. Dr. Kiniry also held a guest appointment at the IT University of Copenhagen. Over the past decade, he has held permanent positions at four universities in Denmark, Ireland, and The Netherlands.

Dr. Kiniry has over twenty years experience in the design, development, support, and auditing of supervised and internet/remote electronic voting systems while he was a professor at various universities in Europe. He co-led the DemTech research group at the IT University of Copenhagen and has served as an adviser to the Dutch, Irish, and Danish governments in matters relating to electronic voting.  He now advises the U.S. government on these matters via his participation in the EAC-NIST VVSG public working groups.

His primary research interest is in applying formal methods to systems development (hardware, firmware, and software), especially in the areas of system correctness and security. Notable achievements include leading the network and external security evaluation team for the Dutch national internet voting system (KOA) and the Danish national single sign-on system; participating in, or leading the development of, verified voting systems for the American, Danish, Dutch, and Irish electoral systems; leading the development of the EU FP6-funded Mobius Program Verification Environment, the ESC/Java2 platform for extended static checking, and a number of other widely-used software platforms including AutoGrader, BONc, Beetlz, CLOPS, DiVS, FreeBoogie, IDebug, KOA, OBJ3, RCC, SATConfig, Simplify, Uilioch, Votail, and others.

Dr. Kiniry is a founding member of the JML Consortium, has been on the Management Committee of COST Program Actions, is on the editorial board of the Journal of Object Technology and the Journal of Election Technology and Systems, and he has been on over fifty program committees for top international venues.

He is an entrepreneur and has founded and/or worked closely with a number of early-stage companies, raising around $1M in angel funding. He has raised over $30M in basic and applied research funding from national agencies in the U.S.A., Europe, and the European Commission. He has organized around a dozen tutorials and workshops on security and language issues at major conferences such as ETAPS, FM, ESEC/FSE, TOOLS, ECOOP, and OOPSLA. He holds five advanced degrees, including a Ph.D. from Caltech.