In the past, I led GrammaTech's recruiting efforts and headed a project on security analysis for the semantic web.
I also contribute to other research and commercial projects.
Generally I am interested software engineering and security issues,
especially the application of formal methods to those issues. (There's
a decent plain-english
article about this field in an old Economist.)
My dissertation was on policy automata, a formal model of
stateful access-control policies. I implemented a tool called
Polaris
that checks these policies, looking for problems like
conflicts and redundancies. This work is part of the OpEm project. I was
interviewed
by the Daily Pennsylvanian (the local student paper) about this work.
Here are some
specific projects I was involved in while in school:
- The OpEm project:
exploring the use of open programming interfaces in embedded devices.
This project evolved out of our work on
MiRL :
the Mircowave Oven Recipe Language.
- Hermes : a
model checker. We have developed a model checker (in Java) for a
graphical language called Hierarchical Reactive Machines. Work with
Rajeev Alur, Radu Grosu and
Zijiang Yang.
- QCM : Secure
distribution of certificates and other information.
- QCMD: Managing security on the ABONE. Here is the web page for
QCMD.
- Infinite Sets: Using static analysis to see if database queries
to infinite sets can be resolved in finite space.
- Fonts: dynamic fonts that simulate
handwriting.
- Knot Theory: especially algorithms for
calculating invariants.
E-mail:mmcdouga |at| saul.cis.upenn.edu
