Derek DreyerView profile
Professor
Derek Dreyer is the Scientific Director at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) and an Honorary Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University , Germany. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 2005 under advisors Bob Harper and Karl Crary. Research Interests : Programming languages, formal verification, type theory, separation logic, concurrent systems, memory models, and machine code verification. His work bridges theoretical foundations with practical verification of real-world systems, notably in Rust and C programming. Recent Publications : Focus on Rust's aliasing models (e.g., Tree Borrows), foundational verification (e.g., RefinedC), and separation logic frameworks (e.g., Iris and its extensions). Trends include robust property preservation, interoperability verification (OCaml-C), and incorrectness logic for bug detection. Scientific Awards : European Research Council (ERC) Grant for high-impact research and the ACM SIGPLAN Robin Milner Young Researcher Award (POPL 2018). As an educator and mentor, he has contributed to workshops like PLMW and RTFM, offering guidance on academic writing, talks, and career challenges. His personal blog reflects on impostor syndrome, academic life, and interdisciplinary parallels between science and the arts.











