Test of Time Award for Peter Müller
Professor Peter Müller and his co-author have been awarded the prestigious ETAPS Test of Time Award for their paper “A Basis for Verifying Multi-threaded Programs”. The ETAPS Test of Time Award has been established to recognise outstanding papers published more than 10 years ago. Congratulations!
Peter Müller, Full Professor of Computer Science and Head of the Programming Methodology Group at ETH Zurich, has been honoured with an ETAPS Test of Time Award for a paper that he and his co-author K. Rustan M. Leino published more than 10 years ago. The award-winning paper, titled “A Basis for Verifying Multi-Threaded Programs” introduced a verification method for complex multi-threaded programs that use advanced locking strategies to improve performance. The paper presents a novel technique to automate verification in complex program logics. This technique has later evolved into the Viper verification infrastructure, which is the basis of many modern verification tools.
The Test of Time Award was presented at ETAPS 2025, which took place beginning of May in Hamilton, Ontario. At the ceremony, Peter Müller gave a talk reflecting on the results of the original paper and how they evolved since.
Peter Müller has been a Full Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich since August 2008. His research and teaching focus on building reliable and secure software systems. He develops theoretical foundations, practical techniques and tools for specifying and verifying programs – mainly imperative, both sequential and concurrent. His goal is to empower developers to write correct software through advances in programming languages, methodologies, and verification tools. Going forward, he aims to expand his work to security verification and scalable techniques for distributed systems.
Peter Müller studied Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich, earning his Diploma in 1996. He completed his doctorate under Prof. Arnd Poetzsch-Heffter, first at TU Munich and later at the University of Hagen, where he received his doctorate in 2001 with a dissertation on “Modular Specification and Verification of Object-Oriented Programs”. Before joining ETH Zurich, Müller worked as an IT project manager at Deutsche Bank and later as a researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond.
In his career, Peter Müller has received several awards, including the Amazon Research Award (2021), the Facebook Faculty Research Award (2017) and the Microsoft Research Outstanding Collaborator Award (2016).
About the ETAPS Test of Time Award
Established in 2017, the ETAPS Test of Time Award recognises outstanding papers published more than ten years ago in one of the ETAPS constituent conferences. It celebrates research that has had a significant and lasting impact on the field. Each year, an award committee selects up to two papers. Winners receive a recognition plaque and a shared cash prize.