seL4 News

Have a look at the program of the seL4 Summit 2025. We have a great line-up of interesting seL4 work, with a combination of technical research and development, experience reports of seL4 in the field, technical discussions and birds-of-a-feather sessions.

Program at a glance. Go to the full program.

Keynotes

We are pleased to announce that the two keynotes for the seL4 Summit 2025 will be John Hatcliff from Kansas State University and Sebastian Jester from Cyberagentur. John will talk about Model-based Development for seL4 Microkit/Rust with Integrated Formal Methods using HAMR and Sebastian aboutFormally verified IT – Germany’s next cybersecurity paradigm.

Dr. John Hatcliff is a University Distinguished Professor and Lucas-Rathbone Professor of Engineering at Kansas State University working in the areas of safety-critical systems, software architectures, and software verification and certification. He leads the Laboratory on Specification, Analysis, and Transformation of Software (SAnToS Lab), whose research has been funded by national funding agencies and companies including Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, DARPA, Department of Homeland Security, US Army, NASA, NIH, ARO, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, SEI, Collins Aerospace, Galois, and Lockheed Martin.

Sebastian Jester is Head of Secure Hardware and Supply Chains at the Agentur für Innovation in der Cybersicherheit (Cyberagentur), which he joined in 2022. He is on leave from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, latterly responsible for microelectronics R&D policy at the national and EU level. He holds a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Heidelberg and a Master of Physics from the University of Oxford. The Cyberagentur funds high-risk research and development projects with a high disruptive potential in the field of cybersecurity. The Cyberagentur’s goal is to advance internal and external security and technological sovereignty. It was created in 2020 by the German Federal Government and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Defence and the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The Cyberagentur is an associate member of the seL4 Foundation.

The seL4 Foundation thanks Proofcraft for becoming a Silver sponsor of the seL4 Summit 2025.

Founded by the seL4 verification leaders, Proofcraft offers commercial support and projects in formal verification in general, and involving seL4 specifically. By applying mathematical machine-checked software verification, Proofcraft increases critical software systems' reliability, safety and security, for a verified future.

See here if you are interested in sponsoring the seL4 Summit 2025.

The seL4 Foundation thanks UNSW Sydney for becoming a Bronze sponsor of the seL4 Summit 2025.

seL4 was created by the Trustworthy Systems (TS) team, which is now part of the UNSW, a founding member of the seL4 Foundation.

The team has a track record of designing and implementing systems software for performance and reliability, and using rigorous formal methods to prove that they meet their security and reliability goals. Their aims are to:

• shift the software industry away from ad-hoc, unreliable engineering practices, and towards more principled and trustworthy methods; and
• make verified software a default choice, especially in safety- and security-critical systems.

The team works with government and commercial partners, as well as the broader software engineering community, to drive this change.

See here if you are interested in sponsoring the seL4 Summit 2025.

The seL4 Foundation thanks Collins Aerospace for becoming a sponsor of the seL4 Summit 2025. Collins Aerospace has generously sponsored the seL4 summit every year since 2023.

Collins Aerospace, part of seL4 Foundation member RTX, has been a long-time core participant in the seL4 ecosystem. Collins was a prime contractor in the DARPA HACMS program which demonstrated the seL4-based incremental cyber retrofit of autonomous military vehicles. This was a major milestone in the growth of seL4, demonstrating that it protects against cyber attacks on real systems in operation. The same team also led the follow-on DARPA CASE program, aiming at designed-in cyber-resiliency, including the seL4-based framework for verified initialisation and configuration of systems architectures.

Collins Aerospace is now leading a team on the DARPA PROVERS program which has a goal of enhancing the security of defense and aerospace systems by dramatically improving the usability, flexibility, and accessibility of formal methods-based development and verification tools, and targeting seL4 as an implementation platform.

See here if you are interested in sponsoring the seL4 Summit 2025.

We are excited to announce the launch of the new seL4 website! The redesigned site is streamlined for easy access and navigation, with updated content accessible to a broader audience, and new material expanding the scope of topics and information related to seL4 and its ecosystem.

We thank NCSC for their funding of this project, Proofcraft and the seL4 Foundation for its execution, and the community members who provided input and feedback throughout the project.

Stay tuned for the revamp of the seL4 docsite.

We welcome your feedback and we hope you enjoy the new site!

The seL4 Foundation is pleased to welcome MEP as a Member. MEP is a voice communications supplier for Air Traffic and Maritime critical communications worldwide. Its Voice Communication System, the SureVoice Solid, runs on seL4 at its heart. MEP has chosen seL4 for process separation to achieve 24/7 availability.

The seL4 summit 2025 will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, 3 - 5 September 2025.

The seL4 summit will cover the complete seL4 ecosystem, consisting of the verified microkernel, as well as all seL4-related technology, tools, infrastructure, products, projects, and people.

Tickets include:

• Participation in the 3-day conference, including talks, keynotes, seL4 updates & discussions
• Networking with other seL4 experts and enthusiasts
• Reception and dinner

Register here

The early bird cut-off date is 3 August 2025.

A number of informal social activities will be organised by the seL4 community for Tuesday 2 Sep 2025. Stay tuned for more info!

• Share your seL4 work
• Share your seL4 experience
• Share your seL4 thoughts

Check the full Call For Presentations. To propose a talk, upload an abstract of one page or less by 21 April 2025 to the submission portal.

Also note the open invitation for a 5-minute slot to talk about your seL4 deployment.

We are pleased to announce that the seL4 Summit 2025 will be held in

Prague, Czech Republic, 3 - 5 September 2025.

Meet the Program Committee

Our team comes from various parts of the seL4 ecosystem: users, contributors, committers, experts, advocates, researchers, and engineers.

We will announce a Call for Presentations in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

The seL4 Foundation is pleased to welcome Germany's Cyberagentur as Associate Member, coinciding with the launch of five projects in its research program on an “Ecosystem of formally verified IT — provable cybersecurity (EvIT)”.

Two of the projects include work enhancing seL4. The Cyberagentur is joining the seL4 Foundation to underline the importance of this approach for making both highly complex IT systems and critical infrastructures more secure and to attract further supporters. The Cyberagentur funds cybersecurity research projects with a high risk and a very high potential of disruption.