John Wickerson

Dr. John Wickerson is an Associate Professor in the Circuits and Systems group at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London. His research focuses on improving the reliability of high-performance computing through formal methods, with contributions to high-level synthesis, memory models, and concurrency verification. He holds leadership roles including Course Director for the Electrical and Information Engineering degree and Deputy Tutor for PhD students.

Research Interests:

• Formal Verification of Hardware/Software Systems
• High-Level Synthesis (HLS) and FPGA Compilation
• Weak Memory Models and Concurrency Semantics
• Fuzz Testing for Hardware Tools
• Compiler Optimization and Correctness
• Digit Elision and Arbitrary-Precision Arithmetic

Notable Achievements:

• Best Paper Award at EuroSys 2024 (database isolation validation)
• Pioneered formal methods for HLS tools (e.g., QuteFuzz, C4)
• Co-developed the C4 C compiler concurrency checker
• Published over 60 peer-reviewed papers across top venues (ASPLOS, PLDI, FPGA)

Lab/Team: Part of the Circuits and Systems group at Imperial College, collaborating with industry partners like Kaihong Yann and ARM.