Nicholas Mosier
Course Assistant at Stanford University Department of Computer Science
Palo Alto, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolNicholas Mosier is a fifth-year CS PhD candidate at Stanford specializing in compiler- and hardware-software co-designed defenses against Spectre, with a track record of uncovering real-world vulnerabilities in OpenSSL and Libsodium that influenced Intel guidance. He combines deep systems research with practical engineering—contributing to gem5 by fixing x86 emulation bugs, improving KVM integration, and adding performance-counter support—to evaluate defenses' performance accurately. His internships at Google and Intel yielded novel fuzzing discoveries and prototype hardware-protection implementations, respectively, showing he moves between adversarial testing, simulator development, and hardware modeling. Based in Palo Alto, he also teaches as a course assistant and maintains hands-on full-stack projects from his undergraduate days, reflecting a blend of rigorous research, open-source impact, and pragmatic software delivery.
9 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Computer Science, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Computer Science at Stanford University School of EngineeringBachelor of Arts - BA Computer Science and Mathematics, Bachelor of Arts - BA Computer Science and Mathematics at Middlebury CollegeUniversity High School
German
Github Skills (12)
kvm10
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
x8610
performance-optimization9
simulations9
simulation9
debug8
debugging8
assembler7
assemble7
assembly7
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
gem5/gem5
Sep 2023 - Apr 2025
The official repository for the gem5 computer-system architecture simulator.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:12 reviews, 32 PRs, 40 comments in 1 year 7 months
Contributions summary:Nicholas primarily focused on improving the gem5 simulator's core functionality by fixing bugs related to system call emulation and memory management. They addressed issues causing crashes, memory corruption, and incorrect behavior in the simulator's x86 architecture, including fixes for specific instructions like `PACK` and `POPX87`. Furthermore, they contributed to the KVM integration, optimizing the x86 CPU and adding support for hardware performance counters, alongside various other core x86 related architectural improvements.
storedsimulationupstreamsimulatorgem5-simulator
nmosier/zemu
May 2019 - Sep 2020
Contributions:487 commits, 237 pushes, 3 branches in 1 year 3 months
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