Milijana Surbatovich
University of Maryland, MD·Computer Science·Early-career
Tiny computers that run without batteries, powered by energy harvested from their surroundings, could operate for years in places normal devices cannot go, such as disaster zones, body implants or tiny satellites. But harvested energy is unreliable, so these intermittent computing devices lose power often.
- Fields
Computer Science
Engineering
- Topics
intermittent computing
batteryless devices
energy harvesting
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2031
What they work on
- Develop the first formal model of an intermittence-safe operating system, with defined abstraction layers that separate tiers of trust and allow each component to be verified on its own.
- Create domain-specific languages for writing intermittent systems code that use ownership type systems, which track who controls each piece of data, to give correctness and security guarantees by construction.
- Build libraries for the Rocq and Verus verification frameworks that reason about the effects of power failures, so machine-checked proofs apply directly to intermittent system implementations.
- Evaluate the framework by porting a slice of the TOCK embedded operating system to run provably safely on intermittent, energy-harvesting power.
More about the research
Each power failure can introduce errors and bugs into the software, making the devices unsafe for health or defense uses where a bug could cause harm, either by accident or through attack.
Why it matters
Batteryless devices could monitor disaster zones, run medical implants or fly on tiny satellites, but only if their software stays correct through constant power loss. Provably correct and secure operating system software could make these devices trustworthy for safety-critical biomedical, remote monitoring and defense uses. Verification tools that work with AI coding workflows could also help developers catch costly bugs and security holes.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Andrew Hirsch
University at Buffalo, NY·Computer Science
Develop open choreographies, choreographic programs whose co-designed components can communicate safely with independently written, off-the-shelf software.
Tej Chajed
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Computer Science·Early-career
Define specifications for data-format compatibility that require new code to correctly handle any data the previous software version might have produced.
Deian Stefan
University of California-San Diego, CA·Computer Science
Build static analysis tools for the Rust ecosystem that work with human auditors to detect, triage and classify weaknesses in foreign function interfaces between Rust and C/C++.
The school
University of Maryland: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 602 research doctorates a year.
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