Carl Gunter, PhD

Carl Gunter

Carl A. Gunter received his BA from the University of Chicago in 1979 and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1985. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Cambridge in England before joining the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1987 and the University of Illinois in 2004. He is a professor in the Computer Science Department, director of Illinois Security Lab, and a member of the Information Trust Institute (ITI). Gunter has made research contributions in the semantics of programming languages, formal analysis of networks and security, and privacy.

His contributions to the semantics of programming languages include the interpretation of subtypes using implicit coercions, type inference for continuations and prompts, the use of Grothendieck fibrations as a model of parametric polymorphism, the mixed powerdomain, and the use of Petri nets as a model of linear logic. His 1992 textbook and his chapter in the Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science are standard references on the semantics of programming languages. He also has served extensively as research consultant and expert witness on programming languages. Gunter’s contributions to the formal analysis of networks and security include the Packet Language for Active Networks (PLAN), the WRSPM reference model for requirements and specifications, the first formal analyses of Internet and ad hoc routing protocols, the Verisim system for analyzing network simulations, and exploiting bandwidth contention as a DoS countermeasure. His work on privacy includes the first research on certificate retrieval for trust management and the formal analysis of regulatory privacy rules. He founded Probaris Technologies, a company in the Philadelphia area that provides credentials for employees of government agencies such as the Social Security Administration and the Patent and Trade Office.

His most recent research focuses on security and privacy issues for the power grid and healthcare information technologies.