Foundations of Program Analysis and Static Verification

Software complexity is growing rapidly, making manual code review and traditional testing insufficient to catch critical bugs and security vulnerabilities. Program analysis provides the mathematical foundations and automated tools to verify software correctness before it ever runs. This course equips you with the fundamental concepts and modern techniques needed to analyze, verify, and optimize software. You will transition from writing code to systematically reasoning about its behavior and security properties. What you'll learn: Understand the core principles of static program analysis and formal verification; Explore type checking systems and how modern compilers ensure type safety; Apply abstract interpretation to approximate program behavior without executing the code; Discover model checking techniques to systematically verify software requirements and states; Integrate static analysis tools into modern development workflows and CI/CD pipelines. We begin with key terminology and the essential mathematical foundations of program behavior. From there, you will progress through the practical implementation of type systems, abstract interpretation, and automated verification tools. This course is designed for software developers, computer science students, and aspiring security researchers who want to understand how code works under the hood. No prior experience with formal methods is required, as we build all concepts from the ground up. Start reading today to build more reliable and secure software systems.