Giacomo Zanatta

Giacomo Zanatta

Cyber Security Engineer & PhD candidate in Computer Science.
#staticanalysis, #robotics, #microservices, #formalverification

Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy

whoami

I am a Cyber Security Engineer and PhD candidate in Computer Science at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, specializing in static analysis, formal verification, and robotic software security. In my PhD, I am building a real-time network security firewall for ROS2 that detects anomalous behaviour and compromised nodes in robotic systems. I also explore microservice security through automated static architecture reconstruction.

Previously, I spent two summers at Amazon Web Services as an Applied Scientist Intern, where I built automated taint analysis pipelines for security-critical codebases. Before academia, I was a Technical Leader at Alpenite, managing cross-functional teams delivering luxury e-commerce platforms.

My approach bridges mathematical rigour — abstract interpretation, formal methods — with hands-on engineering in security-critical environments.

news

(15 Jan. 2026) JLiSA ranked 3rd at SV-COMP 2026!

JLiSA — the Java frontend of the LiSA static analyser — achieved 3rd place in the Java category at the Software Verification Competition (SV-COMP) 2026, on its very first participation. Zero false alarms produced. The result will be presented at TACAS 2026 in Turin in April.

(1 Jun. 2025) Started my internship at Amazon Web Services in New York!

I joined Amazon Web Services as an Applied Scientist Intern in New York City. For the next 12 weeks I will be working on security analysis research, applying formal methods and static analysis to real-world, large-scale systems. So excited for this experience!

New York City skyline

(16 Oct. 2024) Paper presented at IROS 2024!

Read the paper / Check the tool.

It was an amazing experience in Abu Dhabi! Gianluca Caiazza and I were at IROS 2024 to present our paper Automating ROS 2 Security Policies Extraction through Static Analysis.

IROS 2024

(20 Sep. 2024) Paper presented at FTfJP 2024!

Read the paper.

On September 20, 2024, I had the opportunity to present our work, Sound Static Analysis for Microservices: Utopia? at the Formal Techniques for Java-like Programs (FTfJP) workshop in Vienna. It was such a cool experience where I got a lot of interesting questions and feedback.

FTfJP 2024

I had the opportunity to attend also at the co-located conferences ISSTA and ECOOP, where I saw a lot of intriguing talks relating to Programming Languages and Software Analysis.

(7 Jun. 2024) Challenges of Software Verification 2024

On June 6th and 7th, the “Challenges for Software Verification (CSV)” Symposium occurred in Venice. This event, organized by Professors Agostino Cortesi and Pietro Ferrara, featured presentations and discussions on various topics, such as static code analysis, model checking, and dynamic testing.

CSV 2024

During the CSV, I had the opportunity to meet brilliant and interesting people, share ideas with other researchers, and receive feedback on my current research project. It was a fantastic experience! If you are interested, you can find the CSV program here.