About
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science department at Cornell University advised by Prof. Justin Hsu. Previously, I worked on software-defined networking as a software engineer at Microsoft for a year and prior to that, I was an undergraduate student at BITS Pilani, India. During my undergrad, I had the pleasure to spend a semester at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany working with Dr. Bjoern Brandenburg on a theory-oriented real-time operating system (TOROS) toward my undergraduate thesis.
Research Focus
My dissertation research focus is to design provably correct runtime monitoring mechanisms for enforcing safety and security properties in systems with opaque behavior that cannot be statically verified. A central theme of this monitoring mechanism is that it is distributed, non-invasive, and treats the system as a blackbox. To demonstrate its practical impact, I've implemented the monitor for microservice applications. The class of safety properties enforceable by this framework naturally transfer to finance, healthcare, and cyber-physical systems.Selected Publications
Talks
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SafeTree: Expressive Tree Policies for Microservices
- Upstate Programming Languages Seminar, Aug 2025
- UIUC Formal Methods Seminar, Apr 2025
- New Jersey Programming Languages and Systems Seminar, Dec 2024
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Expressive Policies for Microservice Networks
- UCSC Languages, Systems, and Data Seminar, Mar 2024
- HotNets'23
- UIUC Service Layer Networking Workshop, Oct 2023
- Bloomberg NYC, Sep 2023
- PLDI'22
- Bellairs Network Verification Workshop, May 2022
Service
Currently, I am serving as a PLTea organizer and the Czar for the Cornell PL Discussion Group. I have also served on the artifact evaluation committee for POPL'{24, 25}.
News
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Aug'25"SafeTree: Expressive Tree Policies for Microservices" has been accepted to OOPSLA'25.
This paper highlights the central theme of my dissertation research!! -
Apr'24I passed my A exam! Thanks to my advisor and collaborators---Justin, Brighten, and Loris!
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Mar'24I'll spend this summer as an Applied Scientist intern at Amazon Science's Automated Reasoning research group.
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Feb'24I'll be presenting "Expressive Policies for Microservice Networks" at UCSC's Languages, Systems, and Data Seminar.
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Nov'23I'll be presenting "Expressive Policies for Microservice Networks" at HotNets'23.
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Oct'23I'll be presenting "Expressive Policies for Microservice Networks" at UIUC Service Layer Networking Workshop.
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Sep'23"Expressive Policies for Microservice Networks" with Brighten Godfrey and Justin Hsu to appear at HotNets'23.
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May'23I will be organizing the PLTea social events at PLDI'23. Do join us!
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Apr'23I am joining the organizational team of PLTea --- meetup for programming languages enthusiasts.
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Jun'22I'll be presenting P4BID at PLDI in San Diego.
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May'22I'll be attending the Bellairs Network Verification Workshop.
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Feb'22P4BID: Information Flow Control in P4 got accepted to PLDI’22.
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Sep'21I started my Ph.D. at Cornell (advised by Prof. Justin Hsu).
Teaching
- Spring'26 - CS3410: Computer System Organization and Programming, by Prof. Adrian Sampson
- Spring'22 - CS5412: Topics in Cloud Computing, by Prof. Ken Birman
Contact
You can reach me at: [(λx.x @ cs.cornell.edu) kgrewal; LinkedIn; or GitHub.