Georgios Portokalidis

Roles and Affiliations: Georgios Portokalidis is an Associate Research Professor at IMDEA Software Institute (since Sept 2023) and a Visiting Research Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology (since Sept 2024). He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2010) and has held academic positions including Assistant/Associate Professor roles at Stevens and postdoctoral research at Columbia University.

Education:

• PhD, 2010: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Computer Science)
• MS, 2004: Leiden University (Computer Science)
• BS, 2002: University of Crete (Computer Science)

Research Interests: Focuses on software systems security, binary analysis, control-flow integrity, and debloating. His work includes hardening software through dynamic/static analysis, mitigating code-reuse attacks, and enhancing embedded system security. He also explores privacy-preserving technologies and secure compiler designs.

Recent Article Trends: Recent work emphasizes leveraging hardware debugging extensions for security, system call filtering in binaries, and Rust language analysis. Key themes include embedded systems security, vulnerability mitigation, and efficient control-flow enforcement techniques.

Awards and Grants:

• María de Maeztu Excellence Award (2025)
• DARPA YFA Grant ($492K)
• Pwnie Award (2021) for 'Speculative Probing'
• Multiple best paper awards at CCS, RAID, and EuroS&P

Advising and Grants: Advises PhD students on binary analysis, debloating, and embedded security. Leads grants totaling over $4M from DARPA, ONR, and IARPA. Current projects include 'SIDECAR' (ACSAC 2024) and 'Effective Software Monitoring via Hardware Extensions' (DARPA YFA).

Labs/Teams: Leads the IMDEA Software Institute's research group focused on trustworthy software systems. Collaborates with industry partners like Huawei and institutions like University of Utah.