I am excited to announce that I am recruiting PhD students to join my group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), located on the outskirts of Vienna. I am looking for motivated and capable students with a strong interest in Programming Languages and Verification (ISTA | Sammler Group).
The research of my group centers around the theoretical and practical challenges of verifying realistic low-level code, with a focus on verification techniques based on proof assistants like Lean and Rocq and separation logics like Iris. Concrete projects of the group are the RefinedC verification tool for C (RefinedC: Automating the Foundational Verification of C Code with Refined Ownership Types), the DimSum framework for multi-language semantics and verification (DimSum: A Decentralized Approach to Multi-language Semantics and Verification), or work on Iris-Lean (GitHub - leanprover-community/iris-lean: Lean 4 port of Iris, a higher-order concurrent separation logic framework). If any of these sound interesting, I encourage you to apply.
ISTA offers internationally competitive salaries, full health benefits, and subsidized on-campus housing in the first year. Students with a bachelor’s or master’s degree in a relevant field are encouraged to apply. The deadline for PhD applications is January 8, 2026 for a start date in September 2026 (or earlier, if desired).
Applications should be submitted through https://phd.ista.ac.at/. If you apply, please also drop me a note at michael.sammler@ista.ac.at so I am aware of your application. Feel free to reach out to me via email for more information or visit https://phd.ista.ac.at/.