VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Temesghen Kahsai
dblp:02/6790
· DBLP profile ↗
19ranked-venue papers
7as first author
2since 2021 · last 2025
0000-0002-4616-5084ORCID · corroborated
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Software engineering, systems software and programming languages · 14 · 4 first-author · 2 since 2021Theory of computation · 8 · 4 first-authorArtificial intelligence and machine learning · 4 · 2 first-authorSystems, architecture and hardware · 1
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Verified Foundations for Differential PrivacyabstractDifferential privacy (DP) has become the gold standard for privacy-preserving data analysis, but implementing it correctly has proven challenging. Prior work has focused on verifying DP at a high level, assuming either that the foundations are correct or that a perfect source of random noise is available. However, the underlying theory of differential privacy can be very complex and subtle. Flaws in basic mechanisms and random number generation have been a critical source of vulnerabilities in real-world DP systems. In this paper, we present SampCert, the first comprehensive, mechanized foundation for executable implementations of differential privacy. SampCert is written in Lean with over 12,000 lines of proof. It offers a generic and extensible notion of DP, a framework for constructing and composing DP mechanisms, and formally verified implementations of Laplace and Gaussian sampling algorithms. SampCert provides (1) a mechanized foundation for developing the next generation of differentially private algorithms, and (2) mechanically verified primitives that can be deployed in production systems. Indeed, SampCert’s verified algorithms power the DP offerings of Amazon Web Services, demonstrating its real-world impact. SampCert’s key innovations include: (1) A generic DP foundation that can be instantiated for various DP definitions (e.g., pure, concentrated, Rényi DP); (2) formally verified discrete Laplace and Gaussian sampling algorithms that avoid the pitfalls of floating-point implementations; and (3) a simple probability monad and novel proof techniques that streamline the formalization. To enable proving complex correctness properties of DP and random number generation, SampCert makes heavy use of Lean’s extensive Mathlib library, leveraging theorems in Fourier analysis, measure and probability theory, number theory, and topology. Markus de Medeiros, Tancrède Lepoint, Temesghen Kahsai, Tristan Ravitch, Stefan Zetzsche, Anjali Joshi, Joseph Tassarotti, Aws Albarghouthi, Jean-Baptiste Tristan |
Proc. ACM Program. Lang. | 4 |
| 2024 | Unlocking the Power of Environment Assumptions for Unit Proofs
Siddharth Priya, Temesghen Kahsai, Arie Gurfinkel |
SEFM | 2 |
| 2020 | Think Fast: A Tensor Streaming Processor (TSP) for Accelerating Deep Learning WorkloadsabstractIn this paper, we introduce the Tensor Streaming Processor (TSP) architecture, a functionally-sliced microarchitecture with memory units interleaved with vector and matrix deep learning functional units in order to take advantage of dataflow locality of deep learning operations. The TSP is built based on two key observations: (1) machine learning workloads exhibit abundant data parallelism, which can be readily mapped to tensors in hardware, and (2) a simple and deterministic processor with producer-consumer stream programming model enables precise reasoning and control of hardware components, achieving good performance and power efficiency. The TSP is designed to exploit parallelism inherent in machine-learning workloads including instruction-level, memory concurrency, data and model parallelism, while guaranteeing determinism by eliminating all reactive elements in the hardware (e.g. arbiters, and caches). Early ResNet50 image classification results demonstrate 20.4K processed images per second (IPS) with a batch-size of one— a $4 \times$ improvement compared to other modern GPUs and accelerators [44]. Our first ASIC implementation of the TSP architecture yields a computational density of more than 1 TeraOp/s per square mm of silicon for its $25 \times 29$ mm 14nm chip operating at a nominal clock frequency of 900 MHz. The TSP demonstrates a novel hardware-software approach to achieve fast, yet predictable, performance on machine-learning workloads within a desired power envelope. Dennis Abts, Jonathan Ross, Jonathan Sparling, Mark Wong-VanHaren, Max Baker, Tom Hawkins, Temesghen Kahsai, Garrin Kimmell, Jennifer Hwang, Rebekah Leslie-Hurd, Michael Bye, E. R. Creswick, Matthew Boyd, Mahitha Venigalla, Evan Laforge, Jon Purdy, Purushotham Kamath, Dinesh Maheshwari, Michael Beidler, Geert Rosseel, Omar Ahmad, Gleb Gagarin, Richard Czekalski, Ashay Rane, Sahil Parmar, Jeff Werner, Jim Sproch, Adrián Macías, Brian Kurtz |
ISCA | 9 |
| 2019 | Reachability Analysis for AWS-Based NetworksabstractCloud services provide the ability to provision virtual networked infrastructure on demand over the Internet. The rapid growth of these virtually provisioned cloud networks has increased the demand for automated reasoning tools capable of identifying misconfigurations or security vulnerabilities. This type of automation gives customers the assurance they need to deploy sensitive workloads. It can also reduce the cost and time-to-market for regulated customers looking to establish compliance certification for cloud-based applications. In this industrial case-study, we describe a new network reachability reasoning tool, called Tiros, that uses off-the-shelf automated theorem proving tools to fill this need. Tiros is the foundation of a recently introduced network security analysis feature in the Amazon Inspector service now available to millions of customers building applications in the cloud. Tiros is also used within Amazon Web Services (AWS) to automate the checking of compliance certification and adherence to security invariants for many AWS services that build on existing AWS networking features. John D. Backes, Sam Bayless, Byron Cook, Catherine Dodge, Andrew Gacek, Alan J. Hu, Temesghen Kahsai, Bill Kocik, Evgenii Kotelnikov, Jure Kukovec, Sean McLaughlin, Jason Reed 0004, Neha Rungta, John Sizemore, Mark A. Stalzer, Preethi Srinivasan, Pavle Subotic, Carsten Varming, Blake Whaley |
CAV (2) | 7 |
| 2019 | JayHorn: A Java Model Checker - (Competition Contribution)abstractJayHorn is a model checker for verifying sequential Java programs annotated with assertions expressing safety conditions. JayHorn uses the Soot library to read Java bytecode and translate it to the Jimple three-address format, then converts the Jimple code in several stages to a set of constrained Horn clauses, and solves the Horn clauses using solvers like SPACER and Eldarica. JayHorn uses a novel, invariant-based representation of heap data-structures, and is therefore particularly useful for analyzing programs with unbounded data-structures and unbounded run-time. JayHorn is open source and distributed under MIT license ( https://github.com/jayhorn/jayhorn ). Temesghen Kahsai, Philipp Rümmer, Martin Schäf |
TACAS (3) | 1 |
| 2019 | Selected Extended Papers of NFM 2017: Preface
Clark W. Barrett, Temesghen Kahsai |
J. Autom. Reason. | 2 |
| 2017 | Automated analysis of Stateflow modelsabstractStateflow is a widely used modeling framework for embedded and cyberphysical systems where control software interacts with physical processes. In this work, we present a framework and a fully automated safety verification technique for Stateflow models. Our approach is two-folded: (i) we faithfully compile Stateflow models into hierarchical state machines, and (ii) we use automated logic-based verification engine to decide the validity of safety properties. The starting point of our approach is a denotational semantics of Stateflow. We propose a compilation process using continuation-passing style (CPS) denotational semantics. Our compilation technique preserves the structural and modal behavior of the system. The overall approach is implemented as an open source toolbox that can be integrated into the existing Mathworks Simulink/Stateflow modeling framework. We present preliminary experimental evaluations that illustrate the effectiveness of our approach in code generation and safety verification of industrial scale Stateflow models. Hamza Bourbouh, Pierre-Loïc Garoche, Christophe Garion, Arie Gurfinkel, Temesghen Kahsai, Xavier Thirioux |
LPAR | 5 |
| 2017 | Quantified Heap Invariants for Object-Oriented ProgramsabstractHeap and data structures represent one of the biggest challenges when applying model checking to the analysis of software programs: in order to verify (unbounded) safety of a program, it is typically necessary to formulate quantified inductive invariants that state properties about an unbounded number of heap locations. Methods like Craig interpolation, which are commonly used to infer invariants in model checking, are often ineffective when a heap is involved. To address this challenge, we introduce a set of new proof and program transformation rules for verifying object-oriented programs with the help of space invariants, which (implicitly) give rise to quantified invariants. Leveraging advances in Horn solving, we show how space invariants can be derived fully automatically, and how the framework can be used to effectively verify safety of Java programs. Temesghen Kahsai, Rody Kersten, Philipp Rümmer, Martin Schäf |
LPAR | 1 |
| 2016 | JayHorn: A Framework for Verifying Java programs
Temesghen Kahsai, Philipp Rümmer, Huascar Sanchez, Martin Schäf |
CAV (1) | 1 |
| 2016 | CoCoSpec: A Mode-Aware Contract Language for Reactive Systems
Adrien Champion, Arie Gurfinkel, Temesghen Kahsai, Cesare Tinelli |
SEFM | 3 |
| 2016 | JDart: A Dynamic Symbolic Analysis Framework
Kasper Søe Luckow, Marko Dimjasevic, Dimitra Giannakopoulou, Falk Howar, Malte Isberner, Temesghen Kahsai, Zvonimir Rakamaric, Vishwanath Raman |
TACAS | 6 |
| 2016 | Synthesizing Ranking Functions from Bits and Pieces
Caterina Urban, Arie Gurfinkel, Temesghen Kahsai |
TACAS | 3 |
| 2015 | The SeaHorn Verification Framework
Arie Gurfinkel, Temesghen Kahsai, Anvesh Komuravelli, Jorge A. Navas |
CAV (1) | 2 |
| 2015 | Verifying the Safety of a Flight-Critical System
Guillaume Brat, David H. Bushnell, Misty D. Davies, Dimitra Giannakopoulou, Falk Howar, Temesghen Kahsai |
FM | 6 |
| 2015 | Finding Inconsistencies in Programs with Loops
Temesghen Kahsai, Jorge A. Navas, Dejan Jovanovic, Martin Schäf |
LPAR | 1 |
| 2015 | SeaHorn: A Framework for Verifying C Programs (Competition Contribution)
Arie Gurfinkel, Temesghen Kahsai, Jorge A. Navas |
TACAS | 2 |
| 2008 | Implementing Spi Calculus Using Nominal Techniques
Temesghen Kahsai, Marino Miculan |
CiE | 1 |
| 2008 | Specification-Based Testing for Software Product LinesabstractIn this paper, we develop a testing theory for specification-based software product line development. Starting with a framework for the evaluation of test cases with respect to formal specifications, we develop a notion of enhancement, which allows to re-use test cases in a horizontal systems development process. In such a process, more and more features are added to an existing software product. For specification-based testing, this means that the corresponding specifications are enhanced more and more, and that new test cases must be added to an existing test suite in order to test the additional features. We formally define an enhancement relation between Csp-CASL specifications, describe a test evaluation method for software product lines based on Csp-CASL specifications, and prove several preservation results which allow to re-use test cases in a horizontal development. We illustrate our approach with the example of a product line of remote control units for consumer products. Temesghen Kahsai, Markus Roggenbach, Holger Schlingloff |
SEFM | 1 |
| 2007 | Specification-based testing for refinementabstractIn this paper, we present a theory for the evaluation of test cases with respect to formal specifications. In particular, we use the specification language CSP-CASL to define and evaluate black-box tests for reactive systems. Using loose semantics and three-valued test oracles, our approach is well-suited to deal with the refinement of specifications. In a structured development process of computational systems, abstract specifications are gradually refined into more concrete ones. With our approach, it is possible to develop test cases already from very abstract and basic specifications, and to reuse them later on in more refined systems. Temesghen Kahsai, Markus Roggenbach, Holger Schlingloff |
SEFM | 1 |