We are pleased to announce that the two keynotes for the seL4 Summit 2024
will be Darren Cofer from
Collins Aerospace and
Ning Qu from
NIO. Darren will talk
about Industrial
Scale Proof Engineering for Critical Trustworthy Applications (INSPECTA)
and Ning about seL4
in Software-Defined Vehicles: Vision, Roadmap, and Impact at NIO.
Darren Cofer is a Principal Fellow at Collins Aerospace. He
earned his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The University of
Texas at Austin. His area of expertise is developing and applying advanced
analysis methods and tools for verification and certification of
high-integrity systems. His background includes work with formal methods for
system and software analysis, the design of real-time embedded systems for
safety-critical applications, and the development of nuclear propulsion
systems in the U.S. Navy. Dr. Cofer has served as principal investigator on
many government-sponsored research programs, developing and using formal
methods for verification of safety and security properties. He served on
RTCA committee SC-205 developing new certification guidance for airborne
software (DO-178C) and was one of the developers of the Formal Methods
Supplement (DO-333). He is currently a member of SAE committee G-34
developing certification guidance for the use of machine learning
technologies onboard aircraft.
Ning Qu is a veteran in the autonomous driving industry and
a seasoned technical leader with extensive experience in operating systems,
high-performance runtime frameworks, and hardware-software co-design.
Currently, Ning serves as the Senior Director of the SkyOS team at NIO,
where he spearheads the development of SkyOS—a comprehensive suite of
platform software (including hypervisor, operating systems, and middleware)
for Software Defined Vehicles, showcased at NIO IN 2023. Before joining NIO,
Ning managed Waymo's ML Runtime team, playing a pivotal role in SF
Rider-only driverless launch on the Jaguar EV. At Baidu, he built the Apollo
OS from the ground up, establishing the foundation for the Apollo project.
Notably, he architected and developed Cyber RT and led Baidu's fully
driverless launch in 2020. Ning holds a B.S. and Ph.D. from Peking
University and has served as a researcher at CMU.