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Dr Thomas Sewell

Dr Thomas Sewell

Lecturer
Engineering
Computer Science and Engineering

Thomas is a software verification expert working at CSE.

Thomas has worked in the field of software verification since 2006, and has contributed to major verification projects, include the and the . These were significant milestone projects in the field, and remain to this day some of the most substantial pieces of software to have been proven correct.

Thomas worked for the UNSW lab of the NICTA research organisation from 2006-2012, working mostly on seL4. He completed his PhD at UNSW from 2013 - 2017, working on the binary analysis of seL4. He was a postdoc at Chalmers University in Sweden 2018-2020, working on dynamic evaluation in the CakeML environment. Thomas then moved to Cambridge University in the UK and worked on CPU security proofs and proof systems for the C language in 2020-2024.

Thomas returned to UNSW in 2024, and rejoined the where he is working on the Pancake language (part of the CakeML family) and proofs about systems running on seL4.

Thomas is an expert user of the Isabelle/HOL theorem prover, and also the HOL4 system and SMT-based approaches. At UNSW he teaches on topics such as theorem proving and programming language semantics.

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Location
Level 3, K17 Building
  • Journal articles | 2014
    Klein G; Andronick J; Elphinstone K; Murray T; Sewell T; Kolanski R; Heiser G, 2014, 'Comprehensive Formal Verification of an OS Microkernel', ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 32,
    Journal articles | 2013
    Sewell T; Myreen M; Klein G, 2013, 'Translation validation for a verified OS kernel', Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), pp. 471 - 481,
  • Conference Papers | 2016
    O'Connor L; Chen Z; Rizkallah C; Amani S; Lim J; Murray T; Nagashima Y; Sewell T; Klein G, 2016, 'Refinement Through Restraint: Bringing down the cost of Verification', in Garrigue J; Keller G; Sumii E (eds.), International Conference on Functional Programming, ACM New York NY, USA, Nara, Japan, pp. 89 - 102, presented at International Conference on Functional Programming, Nara, Japan, 19 September 2016 - 21 September 2016,
    Conference Papers | 2016
    Rizkallah C; Lim J; Nagashima Y; Sewell T; Chen Z; O Connor L; Murray T; Keller G; Klein G; O'Connor-Davis L, 2016, 'A framework for the automatic formal verification of refinement from COGENT to C', in Blanchette JC; Merz S (ed.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Springer Nature, Nancy, France, pp. 323 - 340, presented at 7th International Conference, ITP 2016, Nancy, France, 22 August 2016 - 25 August 2016,
    Conference Papers | 2009
    Winwood SJ; Klein G; Sewell TA; Andronick J; Cock D; Norrish M, 2009, 'Mind the gap: A verification framework for low-level C', in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Theorem Proving in Higher Order Logics, Springer, Germany, presented at Theorem Proving in Higher Order Logics - TPHOL`s, Munich, Germany, 17 August 2009 - 20 August 2009,

  • 2022: ACM Software Systems award, together with the original seL4 team, for the seL4 verification project
  • 2019: ACM SIGOPS Hall of Fame award, together with the seL4 team, for the paper ''seL4: Formal Verification of an OS Kernel''
  • 2019: CORE John Makepeace Bennett Award for a Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation