Aravind Machiry

Aravind Machiry

Assistant Professor @ Purdue ECE

Joining PurS3

We are always looking for new group members with passion, talent, and grit!

Please visit our lab page for details.

Prospective PhD Students

A PhD requires significant effort: typically 5-6 years of focused study of a hard problem. Before applying, please make sure that you understand the potential opportunity cost of spending these years in a PhD program. For example, The Opportunity Cost of a PhD: Spending your Twenties finds that PhD graduates earn significantly less than their peers early in their careers because they enter the labour market later, and that the largest penalties fall on students who leave a PhD program late without completing it.

Ideal Candidate

Our work spans embedded systems security, program analysis, binary analysis, and software supply chain security. An ideal candidate has:

  • Strong systems skills: comfortable programming in C/C++ and working with low-level software such as operating systems, firmware, and bootloaders.
  • Background in (or eagerness to learn) program analysis: static analysis (e.g., LLVM/Clang, CodeQL), fuzzing, symbolic execution, and binary analysis.
  • Familiarity with agentic techniques: using LLM-based agents to automate security tasks such as program analysis and vulnerability detection.
  • Ability to work independently: you can take a loosely defined problem, break it down, make steady progress, and know when to ask for help.
  • Clarity in communication: you can clearly explain your ideas and results, both orally (meetings, talks) and in writing (papers, reports).

Current Purdue Students (MS or Undergrad)

We welcome current Purdue students who are interested in research. To work with us, you should have:

  • Strong systems background: a grade of A or higher in ECE 469 (Operating Systems Engineering) and in ECE 60852 (Holistic Software Security).
  • Time commitment: willingness to spend 10-15 hours per week on research.

We may have funding for strong candidates.

For MS students, we prefer to work on focused thesis problems rather than ad-hoc RA positions.

What to Put in Your Email

Please email me at amachiry@purdue.edu with the following:

  • Subject line: must include 0xJOINPURS3. Emails without it may not be read.
  • Current CV.
  • Summary of one of our papers that you like: what problem it solves, how, and why you find it interesting.
  • Brief description of a problem you would like to work on.