Marco Guarnieri

Marco Guarnieri is an Associate Professor at IMDEA Software Institute in Madrid, Spain. His research focuses on the design, analysis, and implementation of practical systems for securely storing and processing sensitive data, with particular emphasis on security at the hardware-software boundary and microarchitectural attacks and defenses.

Guarnieri received his PhD in Computer Science in 2017 from ETH Zurich's Institute of Information Security, following an MSc (2012) and BSc (2010) in Computer Engineering from Università degli Studi di Bergamo.

His research spans security and privacy, program verification, programming languages, and formal methods. Guarnieri's work has particularly focused on addressing vulnerabilities related to speculative execution (Spectre attacks), side-channel analysis, hardware-software security interfaces, and leakage contracts. His approach often combines formal verification techniques with practical system implementation to develop robust security solutions.

Guarnieri's publications reveal a strong focus on microarchitectural security, with recent work addressing secure speculation countermeasures, compiler security guarantees against Spectre attacks, side-channel security of cryptographic implementations, and hardware-software leakage contracts. His research shows a progression from database security early in his career to the hardware-software security boundary that characterizes his current work.

Among his notable achievements are a Best Paper Award at CCS 2024 and Distinguished Paper Awards at CCS 2023 and CCS 2022. His paper 'Hardware-Software Contracts for Secure Speculation' also received a Best Paper Award.

Guarnieri actively contributes to the academic community through program committee roles, including the PriSC Steering Committee, and has organized events such as PLMW@PLDI 2023. He is seeking talented researchers (interns, PhD students, and postdocs) to join his group at IMDEA Software Institute to work on security at the hardware-software interface.