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Automated Reasoning call for proposals - Fall 2026

Systems assurance by mathematical proof

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About this CFP

Amazon is committed to helping customers achieve the highest levels of security, availability, and robustness in the cloud. We use automated reasoning, the application of mathematical logic to answer questions and prove properties, to increase assurance about critical computer systems. Automated reasoning is applied to analyze policies and configurations, show that protocols and programs work as intended, and to analyze generative AI output. Such applications improve AWS services, and increasingly, are provided as customer-visible features. 

We invite research proposals in the following categories:

  • Sound neurosymbolic reasoning that combines large language models, automated solving, and proof checking to improve the efficiency of reasoning about the behavior of computing systems, including their correctness, security, efficiency, resilience, etc.
  • Interfaces between large language models, solvers, and interactive theorem provers.
  • Applications of symbolic reasoning to the auto-formalization and auto-informalization of system specifications and requirements, including the detection and removal of sources of ambiguity, vacuity and inconsistency in the interpretation of informal descriptions.
  • Approaches for measuring completeness and coverage of formal specifications with respect to implementations.
  • Improvements to automated solvers including SAT, SMT, and CHC solvers. Improved automation and performance of quantifier reasoning and premise selection is particularly welcome.
  • Static analysis of software systems, including dataflow analysis, taint checking, and abstract interpretation.
  • Software model checking. 
  • Improvements to correct-by-construction software methods such as Dafny and Verus.
  • Provable approaches to privacy, security and cryptography, including side-channel properties.
  • Sound and automated software synthesis and transformation, particularly optimization.
  • Verification of distributed protocols and systems.
  • Foundations for reasoning about software systems in theorem provers such as Lean. Including programming logics and semantics for languages such as Rust, Dafny, Python, Go, Java, TypeScript, C, and assembly languages.
  • Applications of automated testing techniques such as model based testing, property based testing, and differential testing as complements to automated reasoning. For example, to validate assumptions or demonstrate conformance between a verified model of a system and its actual behavior.
  • Techniques for building formal models of hardware and for reasoning about hardware/software interfaces.
  • Reasoning systems that can prove a digital circuit schematic (e.g. netlist) satisfies constraints captured by formal models of electronic components, where a model states properties such as each pin's electrical limits, its configuration options, the interface, and power draw.
  • Robustness analysis for perception neural networks. Neural networks are known to be vulnerable to adversarial or natural perturbations: small changes to an input image can lead to wrong predictions by the network. We invite proposals that address testing or formal verification for robustness, with a focus on object detection.

Timeline

Submission period: October 1 — November 4, 2026 (11:59PM Pacific Time).
Decision letters will be sent out in February 2027.

Award details

Selected Principal Investigators (PIs) may receive the following:

  • Unrestricted funds, no more than $80,000 USD
  • AWS Promotional Credits, no more than $40,000 USD
  • Training resources, including AWS tutorials and hands-on sessions with Amazon scientists and engineers

Amazon Research Awards (ARA) are structured as one-time unrestricted gifts. The budget should include a list of expected costs specified in USD and should not include administrative overhead costs. The final award amount will be determined by the awards panel.

Eligibility requirements

Please refer to the ARA Program rules on the Rules and Eligibility page.

Proposal requirements

Proposals should be prepared according to the proposal template and are encouraged to be a maximum of 4 pages, not including Appendices. Proposals should answer the following questions:

  1. What application domain and analysis techniques does your work address?
  2. What are the current applications of your work? (e.g., libraries, codebases, industry code).
  3. What are potential applications of your work to Amazon?
  4. Have you received an Amazon Research Award in the past?
  5. If so, who was your contact? How many talks about your work did you give to Amazon? Please attach a copy of any status updates you sent.
  6. What assumptions are made by your work? In particular, under what conditions is the proposed work sound?
  7. If your work involves the development and maintenance of a tool:
  8. Under what license is or will your tool be released?
  9. What on-boarding/tutorial material is or will be available?
  10. Is your tool actively maintained (i.e., commits within last 3 months)? How many active contributors does your project have?

Selection criteria

ARA funding decisions will be based on relevance to Amazon problems, impact on automated reasoning research, and the development of the automated reasoning scientific community. Amazon's commitment to developing the automated reasoning scientific community includes increasing the number of university researchers engaged in automated reasoning research. We are also committed to increasing the diversity of the automated reasoning community at all levels.

Expectations from recipients

To the extent deemed reasonable, award recipients may acknowledge support from ARA (e.g., (“Research reported in this [publication/press release] was supported by an Amazon Research Award, [Cycle /Year].“). Award recipients will inform ARA of publications, presentations, code and data releases, blogs/social media posts, and other speaking engagements referencing the results of the supported research or the Award. Award recipients are expected to provide updates and feedback to ARA via surveys or reports on the status of their research. Award recipients will have an opportunity to work with ARA on an informational statement about the awarded project that may be used to generate visibility for their institutions and ARA.

How to apply
When you're ready to submit your proposal, use the button below, where you'll be prompted to sign up or log in, and follow the instructions on the site.
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