Kaushik Mallik

Hi! I am a computer scientist broadly working on the foundations of dependable software decision-making systems. These systems can nowadays be found in almost all autonomous devices, starting from vacuum cleaning robots to healthcare products like automated insulin administering systems to autonomous power system management systems to airplanes and self-driving cars. As a large majority of these systems are safety-critical, they need to pass stringent safety criteria. I develop algorithms for verifying the correctness of existing software decision-makers, and for designing them in a way that they are provably correct. See research for further details.

Before joining the IMDEA Software Institute, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) in Thomas A. Henzinger’s group, and before that, I did my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) in Rupak Majumdar’s group.

Open PhD positions: My research group at the IMDEA Software Institute in Madrid has a fully funded open PhD position. The PhD topic will focus on foundational research in the broad area of formal verification and control of cyber-physical systems. Such systems are ubiquitous—ranging from self-driving cars to medical devices—and are typically safety-critical. The design of control software for cyber-physical systems with rigorous correctness guarantees has therefore become a pressing research priority. The goal of the PhD research is to develop algorithms for the automatic synthesis of software that remains reliable in the presence of real-world uncertainties. If you have a master’s degree in computer science, and enjoy working in the intersection of theoretical and practical problems, you are encouraged to apply here. The deadline is February 10, 2026.