Bio

Dr. Gordon is an expert in static and dynamic program analysis, programming languages, malware analysis, and mobile application security with over 2500 citations for his research.  He is a cofounder of Aarno Labs where he has +10 years of experience as Principal Investigator (PI), delivering multiple tech transitions.  Before Aarno Labs, Michael Gordon was a Research Scientist at MIT.  At Aarno Labs, as PI, Michael has delivered multiple technology transitions of his work, including DroidSafe's static analysis system's transition to RTX/BBN, the founding of Require Security to commercialize runtime security technology from OPS-5G, and ClearScope's Android runtime monitor deliveries to the DoD and intelligence community.

Michael earned his MS and PhD in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a researcher at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).  His research focused on developing programming language technologies for many-core architectures, specifically, designing programming languages that increase programmer productivity while enabling automatic parallelization to harness massive parallel resources.  He is one of the original designers of the StreamIt programming language and the lead backend developer, developing backends for commodity multicores and research processors like MIT's Raw Architecture.  StreamIt is a highly influential stream processing language that has influenced industry languages such as IBM's X10 Parallel Programming Language.

In 2007, while a PhD student at MIT, Michael developed and delivered a mobile technologies incubator course at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya funded by MIT's Africa Information Technology Initiative (AITI).  The 6-week programming and startup incubator was successful, producing a student later named as one of Forbes 30 under 30, and garnered expansion funding from MIT and Google.  Over the next 6 years, Michael refocused AITI, renamed it MIT's Global Startup Labs (GSL), and created a model to scale the boot camps by training MIT students to deliver the incubator curriculum worldwide.  Michael organized 68 programs in 21 countries, reaching over 2500 student entrepreneurs, teaching personally in Kenya, Rwanda, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and South Africa.  In 2014, Michael handed GSL to MIT's International Science and Technology Initiatives.  Outcomes of the program include multiple startups getting seed funding of over $1M USD, multiple startups named Fast Company's Top 10 startups in Africa, the first mobile tech startup in Rwanda (later winning Transform Africa and being honored by then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton), and a Sri Lankan mobile startup with an App Store top 10 iOS app.

Also, while a PhD student, Michael cofounded Medi-SIM to develop SIM-based tools to improve public health, especially in developing countries and other areas where people lack access to health information systems. Medi-Sim developed programming language technologies to enable medical diagnosis protocols to be digitalized and run directly on a SIM card on a feature phone (for underserved communities).  Medi-SIM won Gemalto's SIMagine Award in 2008.

When not looking at an i3 desktop, Michael can be found cycling north of Boston (road and MTB), playing Switch with his kids, walking his dog, skiing (or praying for snow), or hiking.

Papers