Martin Schäf

Martin Schäf

Principal Applied Scientist, AWS

I build analysis and verification systems that turn program behavior into evidence people and machines can act on.

At Amazon Web Services I apply techniques from formal verification and program analysis to cloud billing contracts. Previously at AWS, I worked on AI and security developer tools, including Kiro, CodeWhisperer, and CodeGuru.

Research Themes

Program Analysis and Verification

Developing static analyses that find bugs and prove their absence, from CHC-based heap reasoning and typestate verification to scalable security and compliance analysis.

Fault Localization and Diagnosis

Using proofs and executions to isolate faulty statements, compress error traces into explanations, and turn solver artifacts into diagnoses developers can act on.

Interactive Reasoning Systems

Designing systems where people, language models, and symbolic analyzers work together to formalize knowledge, identify missing facts, check conclusions, and return understandable evidence.

Recent Publications

Career

Amazon Web Services 2017 – present

Principal Applied Scientist. Formal methods for billing contracts, previously security and AI developer tools.

SRI International 2013 – 2017

Computer Scientist. DARPA-funded verification, program similarity, human-in-the-loop analysis.

United Nations University (UNU-IIST), Macau 2010 – 2013

Research Fellow. GUI testing and formal methods transfer.

Education

Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg PhD, 2006 – 2011

Computer Science. Advisor: Prof. Andreas Podelski

Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken MS, 2002 – 2006

Computer Science

Misc

My Erdős number is 3: Pascal Schweitzer → Brendan D. McKay → Paul Erdős.

My academic family tree, including some co-authors, is here.

I'm an ordained minister and marriage officiant in the state of New York.