Marco Guarnieri

Marco Guarnieri is an Associate Professor at the IMDEA Software Institute in Spain. His research focuses on the design, analysis, and implementation of secure systems, with particular emphasis on security at the hardware-software boundary. His work addresses microarchitectural attacks (e.g., Spectre), secure compilation, hardware verification, and database security.

Education

• PhD in Computer Science, ETH Zurich (2017)
• MSc in Computer Engineering, Università degli Studi di Bergamo (2012)
• BSc in Computer Engineering, Università degli Studi di Bergamo (2010)

Research Focus

Guarnieri's research spans several interconnected areas:

• Hardware-Software Security: Developing foundations for reasoning about security at the hardware-software boundary
• Microarchitectural Attacks: Analysis and mitigation of speculative execution attacks
• Formal Methods: Application of verification techniques to security problems
• Secure Compilation: Ensuring compiler-generated code maintains security guarantees
• Database Security: Information flow control and access mechanisms

Research Trends

His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on hardware-software co-design for security, with increasing emphasis on formal verification of processor security (especially RISC-V), automated testing of speculation countermeasures, and leakage contract frameworks. His work consistently bridges theoretical foundations with practical implementations.

Awards and Honors

• Best Paper Award at CCS 2024
• Distinguished Paper Award at CCS 2023
• Distinguished Paper Award at CCS 2022
• Best Paper Award at S&P 2021

Research Leadership

Guarnieri leads research projects on secure speculation and hardware-software contracts. He actively recruits research interns, PhD students, and postdocs to work on security at the hardware-software interface. His group develops tools like SPECTECTOR for detecting speculative information flows and LeaVe for verifying processor security.