Michael Swift

Michael Swift is Professor of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison within the College of Letters and Sciences. He leads the Sonar research group and co-leads the Multifacet architecture group with Mark Hill, while contributing to the Wisconsin Institute on Software-defined Datacenters (WISDoM).

His research centers on operating system/hardware interaction, with seminal work in device driver reliability (Nooks, Shadow Drivers), memory systems (storage-class memory integration), and cloud security. Projects like Microdrivers and Carburizer address driver complexity and fault tolerance, while recent work explores learned OS policies and heterogeneous processor support.

Analysis of his 2023-2025 publications reveals intensifying focus on memory tiering, security in cloud environments, and hardware-accelerated systems, with growing integration of machine learning for system optimization.

Key awards include:

• Best paper award at OSDI 2004
• Best paper award at SOSP 2003
• Best paper award at the 3rd Asia-Pacific Workshop on Networking (2019)

Professor Swift mentors numerous PhD students (current and past) and secures research funding through NSF grants CNS-0915363 and CNS-0745517 plus Google support. He serves as Instructional Program Director and chairs both the Space committee and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee.

The Sonar group drives innovation in system support for emerging hardware technologies, while Multifacet focuses on computer architecture advancements, particularly in heterogeneous computing and memory systems.