ROBERT A. COCHRAN III

robbycochran@gmail.com -- Mountain View, CA -- robbycochran.com

INTERESTS

EDUCATION

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill  Chapel Hill, NC

• Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science
  2016
• Thesis: Symbolic Verification of Remote Client Behavior in Distributed Systems
• Advisor: Prof. Michael K. Reiter

Clemson University  Clemson, SC

• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Magna Cum Laude
  2006

EMPLOYMENT AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

StackRox, Inc.  Mountain View, CA

• Member of Technical Staff
  May 2017 - Present
  • Container Security: Developing run-time detection and enforcement platform at a Series A startup.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill  Chapel Hill, NC

• Research Assistant with Prof. Michael Reiter.
  2008 - 2016
  • Cheat Detection in Online Games: Led initial development of an award-winning security method called symbolic client verification; demonstrated and implemented a framework to detect player misbehavior in the network logs of online games [1, 5]
  • Data-Driven Symbolic Execution: Investigated the use of instruction traces to guide symbolic execution; implemented a toolchain using clustering and novel metrics that improved performance significantly [5]
  • Parallel Symbolic Execution: Refactored the KLEE symbolic execution engine to enable thread-level parallelism; developed a lock-free algorithm leading to high performance on many-core architectures [2]
  • Verification of Cryptographic Clients: Designed methods for verification of network behavior in cryptographic clients; enabling detection of OpenSSL client misbehavior (e.g. HeartBleed attacks) [2]

• Research Assistant with Prof. Ketan Mayer-Patel.
  2007- 2008
  • Spline-based Image Compression: Investigated an image compression technique based on image decomposition using L1 splines; implemented the technique to evaluate image quality, compression ratio and speed
• Teaching Assistant
  Fall 2008
  • COMP 535 Introduction to Computer Security: Graded student programs and written assignments; led recitations and exam review sessions

Microsoft Research  Redmond, WA

• Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) Intern with Dr. Ben Livshits
  Summer 2013
  • Program Synthesis via Crowd-sourcing: Explored approaches for improving regular expressions using the "wisdom of crowds"; designed and implemented a toolchain that utilized genetic programming, symbolic automata and on-demand online workers [3, 7]

Intel Corporation  Hillsboro, OR

• Software Engineer in the Visual Computing Group
  2006-2007
  • GPU Hardware Development: Designed and developed a tool to interpret and record for playback Direct3D and OpenGL API calls; tool was crucial in performance analysis of prototype graphics hardware

Clemson University  Clemson, SC

• Independent Research with Prof. Robert Geist
  2006
  • Rendering with Realistic Lighting: Designed and implemented a GPU-based algorithm for computing an approximation of indirect illumination [6]
• Undergraduate Research Assistant with Prof. Jim Martin
  2005
  • Network Data Analysis: Developed a toolchain to evaluate updates to the DOCSIS MAC layer in network simulation research

PUBLICATIONS

Journal Articles

1. D. Bethea, R. Cochran and M. K. Reiter. ``Server-side verification of client behavior in online games,''
   In ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC) 14(4), December 2011.

Peer-reviewed Conference Proceedings

1. A. Chi, R. Cochran, M. Nesfield, M. K. Reiter and C. Sturton. ``A System to Verify Network Behavior of Known Cryptographic Clients,'' In Proceedings of the 14th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implmentation (NSDI), March 2017.

2. R. Cochran, L. D'Antoni, B. Livshits and M. Veanes. ``Program Boosting: Program Synthesis via Crowd-Sourcing,'' In Proceedings of the 42nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), January 2015.

3. R. Cochran and M. K. Reiter. ``Toward online verification of client behavior in distributed applications,''
   In Proceedings of the 20th ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), February 2013.

4. D. Bethea, R. Cochran and M. K. Reiter. ``Server-side verification of client behavior in online games,''
   In Proceedings of the 17th ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), February 2010.

5. R. Cochran and J. Steele. ``Second-order illumination in real-time,'' In Proceedings of the ACM Southeast Regional Conference (ACMSE), March 2007.

Patents Pending

1. B. Livshits and R. Cochran. ``Program boosting including using crowdsourcing for correctness''
   US Patent Application 14/212,462. Sept 17, 2015.

SERVICE

External Reviewer

• ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy
  2013, 2014
• Network and Distributed System Security Symposium
  2013, 2014

TALKS AND PRESENTATIONS

Conference Talks

• Toward online verification of client behavior in distributed applications. [4]
  20th ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, San Diego, CA.
  February 2013
• Server-side verification of client behavior in online games. [5]
  17th ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, San Diego, CA.
  February 2010

Tutorials

• Introduction to General Purpose GPU (GPGPU) Programming.
  45th Annual ACM Southeast Regional Conference, Winston-Salem, NC.
  March 2007

AWARDS

• Best Paper Award, Network and Distributed System Security Symposium [2]
  2010
• Best Paper Award, Annual ACM Southeast Regional Conference [3]
  2007
• Outstanding Senior in Computer Science, Clemson University
  2006
• Donald A. Norton Computer Science Scholarship, Clemson University
  2006
• Upsilon Pi Epsilon Honor Society, Clemson University
  2005

EXPERTISE

PROGRAMMING:	C, C++, C++11, C#, Go, Java, Python, R, Bash
TOOLS AND PLATFORMS:	Docker, Kubernetes, LLVM, Git, LaTeX, VTune, SMT and SAT solvers, Mechanical Turk
COMMUNICATION:	Outstanding presentation skills and excellent writing ability
HOBBIES:	Improv comedy performance, analog synthesizer design, mountain biking

Last updated: August 27, 2017