Michael D. Ernst is an American computer scientist and Susan J. Eggers Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. His research focuses on software engineering, programming languages, and program analysis.
Career Ernst earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 2000. He previously served as a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and worked as a researcher at Microsoft Research. He has also held roles at Facebook and Amazon.
Research Ernst's research has aimed to improve reliability and security in technology. The subjects of his research include:
Type theory and pluggable type systems Software testing and formal verification Bug prediction and program analysis Dynamic invariant detection
He is the primary creator of Daikon, a tool in the field of dynamic invariant detection which observes program execution to infer likely mathematical properties of the code.
Awards and honors Ernst is recognized as a highly cited researcher in software engineering. In 2013, Microsoft Academic Search ranked him #2 in the world for software engineering research contributions over the previous decade.
ACM Fellow (2014) IEEE Fellow (2021) ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award (2020) CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award (2018) Inaugural John Backus Award (2009) NSF CAREER Award (2002)
Impact and paper awards ICSE Most Influential Paper Award (2017) ACM SIGSOFT Impact Paper Award (2013) ISSTA Impact Awards (2018, 2019, 2024) FSE Most Influential Paper Award (2024) 9 ACM Distinguished Paper Awards (across ICSE, ESEC/FSE, and ISSTA conferences)
Selected publications
References
External links Michael Ernst's homepage at University of Washington