Introduction

I am an Assistant Professor for Resilient Operating Systems in the Systems Research Group at the Department of Computer Science of the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology in Munich, Germany.

The goal of my research is to make systems more resilient and efficient. I work in the intersection of hardware, systems software, and applied formal methods.

Until February 2026, I was an Assistant Professor in the Systopia Lab at the Department of Computer Science of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Before that, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with Prof. Margo Seltzer. I did my doctorate (Dr. sc. ETH Zurich) with Prof. Timothy Roscoe in the Systems Group at the Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich. My PhD was about formally specifying the memory subsystem of a hardware platform as it is seen by software.

Updates

Latest News and Upcoming Travel

• March 1, 2026 - I'm excited join the Technical University of Munich as an Assistant Professor for Resilient Operating Systems.
• April 2, 2025 - Paper "Velosiraptor: Code Synthesis for Memory Translation" won the distinguished artifact award at ASPLOS'25.
• Nov 4, 2024 - Paper "Verus: A Practical Foundation for Systems Verification" has won the distinguished artifact award.
• October 1, 2024 - Our Paper 'Verus: A Practical Foundation for Systems Verification' was accepted at SOSP'24
• September 28, 2024 - I'll be serving on the USENIX ATC'25 PC.

Prospective Students

Letter of Recommendation

Biography

Reto Achermann is an Assistant Professor for Resilient Operating Systems in the Systems Research Group at the Department of Computer Science of the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology. His research interests are at the intersection of memory and storage systems, hardware platforms, formal specification and verification, device drivers, and software synthesis. The main goal of his research is to help developers build more reliable system software while at the same time reducing development efforts.

Previously he was an Assistant Professor in the Systopia Lab at the Computer Science Department of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Before joining the University of British Columbia as an Assistant Professor, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Systopia Lab of the Computer Science Department at the University of British Columbia working with Prof. Margo Seltzer.

He was part of the core Barrelfish operating system team, working on various subsystems such as memory management, capabilities, hardware abstractions, and device drivers.

Reto Achermann received a Doctor of Science from ETH Zurich where he was advised by Prof. Timothy Roscoe. His thesis "On Memory Addressing" presents a formal model of address decoding in computer systems and its implementation in a capability-based kernel. He also holds an MSc in Computer Science from ETH Zurich.

He served on the program committees of ASPLOS, OSDI, PLDI, EuroSys and Usenix ATC. While at the University of British Columbia, he received the Faculty of Science Excellence in Service Award for his engagement in the education of undergraduate and graduate students.