David Swasey
Senior Research Scientist Formal Methods at Riverside Research
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Summary
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Senior🎓
Top SchoolDavid Swasey is a Senior Research Scientist specializing in formal methods with 16 years of experience applying program verification, concurrent separation logic, and type-system techniques to real-world systems. He has driven verification efforts from academia to industry—co-designing the Iris separation logic framework during his Ph.D. work and later leading specification and proof efforts for a microhypervisor and C++ semantics at BlueRock.io. His background spans low-level systems and tooling (Plan 9 contributions, WebAssembly spec edits) and security-focused proof systems such as proof-carrying authorization and robust safety for separation logic. Based in Pittsburgh, he combines deep theoretical insight with pragmatic engineering: clarifying formal specs, automating proofs, and shipping audited system components. Notably, he pairs advances in logic and semantics with hands-on fixes to system utilities and standards documentation, signaling a rare mix of formal rigor and systems craftsmanship.
16 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
Ph.D. Candidate, Ph.D. Candidate at Max Planck Institute for Software SystemsB.S., Computer Science with a minor Mathematical Sciences, B.S., Computer Science with a minor Mathematical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University
Github Skills (6)
filesystem10
go10
webassembly10
system-programming10
specification10
documentation10
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
9fans/plan9port
Apr 2010 - Sep 2011
Plan 9 from User Space
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:3 reviews, 6 commits, 1 PR in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:David primarily contributed to the Plan 9 from User Space project by implementing features and fixing bugs related to the `vac` and `9term` commands. Their work included adding functionality for keyboard input, fixing insert behavior, and debugging the `vac` file system implementation. The user's contributions focused on the core functionality of Plan 9 utilities, demonstrating an understanding of system-level programming.
user-spaceplan
WebAssembly/spec
Jan 2018 - Feb 2018
WebAssembly specification, reference interpreter, and test suite.
Role in this project:Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:6 commits, 6 PRs, 15 comments in 1 month
Contributions summary:David primarily focused on improving the WebAssembly specification documentation. Their contributions involved fixing typos, clarifying ambiguous sections, and restructuring documentation for clarity. They updated the prose and rules in various parts of the specification, ensuring accuracy and consistency. They also streamlined the instantiation process and improved the overall readability of the specification documents.
rustspecificationwebassemblyinterpretersuite
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