معرفی
Jana Hofmann is a tenure-track faculty member at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) in Bochum, Germany, starting October 2024. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research (Azure Research), and completed her Ph.D. at Saarland University in collaboration with CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. She holds an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh and a B.Sc. from Saarland University.
- B.Sc. in Computer Science, Saarland University (2013–2016)
- M.Sc. in Computer Science, University of Edinburgh (2016–2017)
- Ph.D. in Computer Science, Saarland University / CISPA (2018–2022)
Her research lies at the intersection of formal methods, computer security, and logic. She develops principled techniques to detect, specify, and prevent information leakage in software and hardware systems. Her work focuses on hyperproperties—advanced formal specifications that capture security policies like non-interference and observational determinism—and their application to smart contracts and microarchitectural side-channels. She designs specification languages, verification and synthesis algorithms, and testing methodologies for black-box systems.
Her recent publications span top venues in security (CCS, USENIX Security), formal methods (CAV, CSF, LICS), and verification (ATVA, NFM). Key themes include smart contract synthesis, automata-based model checking, microarchitectural isolation, and logical foundations of hyperlogics. Her work has received multiple distinguished paper awards, including at CSF’23 and CCS’24.
She has been recognized with several scientific awards, including the Dr.-Eduard-Martin prize for the best computer science Ph.D. thesis at Saarland University (2022), the CSF and CCS Distinguished Paper Awards, the Claire Jones Prize for her M.Sc. at Edinburgh, and teaching awards such as the Busy Beaver and BeStE awards.
Jana has advised multiple bachelor’s students on topics related to hyperproperties and smart contracts. She has contributed to teaching at Saarland University and the University of Edinburgh, covering programming, verification, and logic. She has also been actively involved in academic service, serving on program committees for CAV, CSF, LICS, and others, and participating in artifact evaluation.
She leads research in the Confidential Computing Group at Microsoft Research and will establish her independent research group at MPI-SP, focusing on principled reasoning for relational security properties in hardware and software systems.
