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Photo grid shows the spring 2021 ARA recipients, from top left to right, Haniel Barbosa, Clark Barrett, Yuriy Brun, Adam Chlipala, Jyotirmoy Deshmukh, Isil Dillig, Parasara Sridhar Duggirala, Philippa Gardner, Jan Hoffmann, Falk Howar, Anthony Lin, Magnus Madsen, Kuldeep S. Meel, Eric Mercer, Peter Müller, Suha Orhun Mutluergil, Jason Nieh, Gennaro Parlato, Ruzica Piskac, Roopsha Samanta, Sanjit Seshia, Alexander Summers, Josef Urban, Diyi Yang, Qirun Zhang, and Danyang Zhuo.
The spring 2021 recipients are, from top left to right, Haniel Barbosa, Clark Barrett, Yuriy Brun, Adam Chlipala, Jyotirmoy Deshmukh, Isil Dillig, Parasara Sridhar Duggirala, Philippa Gardner, Jan Hoffmann, Falk Howar, Anthony Lin, Magnus Madsen, Kuldeep S. Meel, Eric Mercer, Peter Müller, Suha Orhun Mutluergil, Jason Nieh, Gennaro Parlato, Ruzica Piskac, Roopsha Samanta, Sanjit Seshia, Alexander Summers, Josef Urban, Diyi Yang, Qirun Zhang, and Danyang Zhuo.
Machine learning

Spring 2021 Amazon Research Awards recipients announced

The 26 awardees represent 25 universities in 11 countries. Recipients have access to more than 250 Amazon public datasets, and can utilize AWS AI/ML services and tools.

By Amazon Research Awards team
September 07, 2021
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In July 2021, Amazon notified applicants that they were recipients of the Spring 2021 Amazon Research Awards, a program that provides unrestricted funds and AWS Promotional Credits to academic researchers investigating research topics across a number of disciplines.

Today, we’re publicly announcing the 26 award recipients who represent 25 universities in 11 countries. Each award is intended to support the work of one to two graduate students or postdoctoral students for one year, under the supervision of a faculty member.

ARA is funding awards under two call for proposals: Alexa Fairness in AI and AWS Automated Reasoning. Proposals were reviewed for the quality of their scientific content, their creativity, and their potential to impact both the research community, and society more generally. Theoretical advances, creative new ideas, and practical applications were all considered.

Recipients have access to more than 250 Amazon public datasets, and can utilize AWS AI/ML services and tools through their AWS Promotional Credits. Recipients also are assigned an Amazon research contact who offers consultation and advice along with opportunities to participate in Amazon events and training sessions.

Additionally, Amazon encourages the publication of research results, presentations of research at Amazon offices worldwide, and the release of related code under open-source licenses.

"Research in automated reasoning is deeply intertwined with a broad range of other research areas, touching machine learning, hardware and software engineering, robotics, and life sciences," said Daniel Kroening, senior principal scientist for the Automated Reasoning Group. "The 2021 Amazon Research Awards reflect this breadth, and the interdisciplinary nature of research that is necessary to take computing one step closer to that magic spark that drives human reasoning."

ARA funds proposals up to four times a year in a variety of research areas. Applicants are encouraged to visit the ARA call for proposals page for more information or send an email to be notified of future open calls.

Below is the list of Spring 2021 award recipients, presented in alphabetical order.

RecipientUniversityResearch title
Haniel BarbosaUniversidade Federal de Minas GeraisEfficient Checking and Reconstruction of SMT Proofs
Clark BarrettStanford UniversityHydraScale: Solving SMT Queries in the Serverless Cloud
Yuriy BrunUniversity of Massachusetts AmherstFormal Verification via Language-Modeling-Based Proof Synthesis
Adam ChlipalaMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyCorrect-by-Construction IoT Systems and Cloud Servers
Jyotirmoy DeshmukhUniversity of Southern CaliforniaSystematic Testing and Invariant Synthesis for Concurrent Programs using Deep Reinforcement Learning
Isil DilligThe University of Texas at AustinAutomated Code Modernization and Migration
Parasara Sridhar DuggiralaUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillModel Checking For Counterexamples
Philippa GardnerImperial College LondonA Multi-language Platform for Symbolic Testing and Verification
Jan HoffmannCarnegie Mellon UniversityAutomatic Static Resource Analysis for Serverless Computing
Falk HowarTechnical University of DortmundScaling Dynamic Symbolic Execution for Java 
Anthony LinUniversity of KaiserslauternCertified Solvers and Proof Checkers forString Constraints
Magnus MadsenAarhus UniversityType Inference with Boolean Unification
Kuldeep S. MeelNational University of SingaporeGPU-Enabled Parallel SAT Solving
Eric MercerBrigham Young UniversitySymbolic Execution for Generating Java Tests from Dafny Models
Peter MüllerETH ZurichVerification of Rust Programs against TLA+ Specifications
Suha Orhun MutluergilSabanci UniversityLinearizability Checking Via Symbolic Reasoning
Jason NiehColumbia UniversityVerifying System Software on an Arm Multiprocessor Hardware Model
Gennaro ParlatoUniversity of MoliseProgram Analysis in the Clouds (PAC): A Distributed Symbolic Algorithm to Scale Up Bug-finding in Concurrent Programs
Ruzica PiskacYale UniversityCounterexample-Guided Inference of Modular Specifications
Roopsha SamantaPurdue University, West LafayetteAutomated and Modular Parameterized Verification of Distributed Systems (3225)
Sanjit SeshiaUniversity of California, BerkeleyScalable Verification of Secure Distributed Services through Synthesis and Learning
Alexander SummersThe University of British ColumbiaEnriched Type and Memory Encodings for Modular Rust Verification
Josef UrbanCzech Technical University in PragueCombining Neural and Symbolic Methods in Theorem Proving
Diyi YangGeorgia Institute of TechnologyTowards Dialect-Robust and Inclusive Natural Language Understanding
Qirun ZhangGeorgia Institute of TechnologySoftware Model Checking via Interleaved Dyck-Reachability
Danyang ZhuoDuke UniversityPush-Button Verification of Software Middleboxes
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