Malte Schwarzkopf Receives DARPA’s Young Faculty Award For Work On Compilers To Facilitate Code Analysis
- Posted by Ellie Chang
- on Sept. 3, 2026
Code analysis tools, which point out potential problems before a computer’s program code even runs, are crucial in preventing security vulnerabilities. But they’re difficult to develop and maintain because they must often deeply integrate with compilers, the powerful programs that turn source code into executables that can run on a computer. Unfortunately, compilers are monoliths of tens of millions of lines of code that are challenging to understand and extend. Enter: Brown CS faculty member Malte Schwarzkopf’s work to “catalyze innovation” with compilers, just awarded the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award (YFA).
Malte’s winning YFA proposal centers around rethinking the compiler as a mosaic of small, interacting tools, known as the Program Analysis and Transformation Toolbox (PATT), rather than a monolithic piece of software. “The limits of compilers were especially evident when working on tools for our upcoming paper on Rust-based systems at PLOS 2026, as well as in prior undergraduate thesis work by Brown students on PEAR and Sniffer,” Malte explains. In response, a modular design changes the compiler’s nature from strict code generation to a general-purpose tool customizable for code analysis, transformation, and optimization. Ultimately, Malte’s research strives to drastically reduce the maintenance and development work for program analysis tools through a redesign of compilers.
The objective of the YFA program is to identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions at American academic institutions. It provides funding, mentoring, and industry and DoD contacts to awardees early in their careers, focusing on junior faculty and emphasizing those without prior DARPA funding. The long-term goal of the YFA program is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers and mathematicians.
“Program analysis is key to addressing the next frontier of critical security bugs beyond memory safety,” Malte says. His research on modular compilers bears immense potential in applications to national security and supply chain security, where finding buggy and malicious code in complex pieces of software is critical.
More broadly, Malte enjoys researching computer systems, especially distributed, operating, and privacy-preserving systems. He conducts research primarily through the Brown Systems group and ETOS, which strives to build practical, efficient, and easy-to-use working systems that are released as open-source software. His work has been internationally recognized by a 2024 Google ML and Systems Junior Faculty Award, an Amazon Research Award, and a EuroSys Test-of-Time Award.
Malte’s awards continue into the Brown classroom where his teaching has been honored by the Philip J. Bray Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Physical Sciences, Barrett Hazeltine Citation for Excellence in Teaching, Guidance, and Support, and Henry Merritt Wriston Fellowship. Most recently, he co-taught CSCI 0300 Fundamentals of Computer Systems and will be teaching a new edition of CSCI 1670/1690 Operating Systems in the upcoming Fall 2026 semester.
Malte joins Brown CS faculty members Ellie Pavlick and Stefanie Tellex, who received a DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2024 and 2015, respectively.
For more information, click the link that follows to contact Brown CS Communications Manager Jesse C. Polhemus.
