About
Computer scientist, mathematician and engineer with 12 years of experience spanning academic research, startup founding, and technical leadership. Specializes in program analysis, formal verification, and software security, with a track record of translating deep theoretical work into production tools and commercial products.
During my PhD I developed highly precise and efficient static data-flow and pointer analysis algorithms (Boomerang, IDEal, Synchronized Pushdown Systems). Since then, I’ve carried that research into industry: building static analysis tooling at Fraunhofer, founding CodeShield to tackle cloud IAM security, and, until recently, pushing the limits of formal verification as R&D Director at Certora.
My current personal interest is in foundational computer science and interactive theorem proving with Lean.
Education
PhD in Computer Science (Dr. rer. nat.)
Paderborn University
Master of Science in Mathematics with Specialisation in Computer Science
Technical University of Darmstadt
Bachelor of Science in Mathematics
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz
Interests
Experience
R&D Director (since Dec 2023, initially hired as Senior Software Engineer)
Certora Ltd
Certora provides security audits and automated formal verification for web3 protocols. With the “Prover”, Certora builds a product that uses SMT solvers to mathematically verify the implementation of smart contracts.
- Leading a teams of compiler and software engineers to enhance the Prover across different blockchain ecosystems (Ethereum, Stellar, Solana)
- Contributed to the Prover and to Certora’s specification language (CVL and CVLR): added support for strong invariant logic, lifted LLVM debug information to present counterexamples in IDEs, implemented a program interpreter over the IR, and worked on LLM-based spec generation
- Delivered hands-on Certora Prover workshops at TrustX 2023 (Istanbul) and Meridian 2024 (London), introducing developers to formal verification techniques for smart contract security
CEO & Co-Founder
CodeShield GmbH
CodeShield is a Software-as-a-Service that detects and fixes cloud security vulnerabilities (Gartner terms: CIEM, CNAPP, CSPM).
- Acquiring and implementing proof-of-concepts with national and international clients
- Securing funding to build and grow the team
- Leading customer research, defining the product vision, iterating on MVP: discover IAM permission misconfigurations and demonstrate exploitable attack vectors (IAM privilege escalations)
Senior Expert & Research Associate
Fraunhofer IEM - Institute for Mechatronic Systems Design
The department of Software Engineering and IT Security at Fraunhofer IEM develops and researches methods and tools for secure development, maintenance, and operation of software-intensive systems.
- Research on efficient and precise program analysis with focus on security (pointer and taint analyses)
- Development of the IDE plugin Eclipse CogniCrypt: a spell checker for developers detecting insecure usages of cryptographic APIs, presented at EclipseCon Europe 2018 and heise devSec 2019
- Integration of static code analyses with industry partners (SAST & SCA for DevOps)
Research Intern
Oracle
Oracle Labs Brisbane is one of Oracle’s eight research centers. The team in Brisbane develops program analysis technologies for internal use (Oracle Parfait).
- Research stay to work on existing data flow and code analyses solution
- Prototyping and implementing concepts for efficient program analysis based on soufflé (Datalog-based program analysis)
- C++ implementation for points-to summaries on top of soufflé
Research Associate
Fraunhofer SIT - Institute for Secure Information Technology
- Researching and prototyping program and data-flow analyses (pointer and taint analyses)
- Security analysis of the source code of TrueCrypt using Coverity Scan and Fortify, commissioned by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI)
- Security & pen testing of web applications using OWASP ZAP & Wireshark
Education
PhD in Computer Science (Dr. rer. nat.)
Paderborn University
Master of Science in Mathematics with Specialisation in Computer Science
Technical University of Darmstadt
Bachelor of Science in Mathematics
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz