Marine Kadar works as project research engineer at SYSGO. She received her PhD from the Real-Time Systems Chair of TU Kaiserslautern in 2022. Her PhD study applied in the scope of FORA, a European training network in Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation project. She investigated how to develop and deploy intrusion detection solutions into embedded mixed-criticality systems, evaluating the solutions in an industrial environment, using SYSGO’s PikeOS real-time hypervisor. Before her PhD, Marine received her engineering degree from ENSIMAG engineering school (France), with a specialization on embedded systems.
Was there a particular reason for you to take an engineering course?
Retrospectively, taking an engineering course was a logical decision in my education path. At school, I have always been interested in science and math. Most of all, I find scientific reasoning fascinating and I enjoy solving practical problems.
After 2 years of generic preparatory classes, I decided to take a course in math and computer science. I then focused on embedded systems, at system low level with hardware mechanisms and operating system programming. I particularly liked security-related problems: e.g. attack methods to hijack a program and countermeasures to protect a systems against such threats. I chose to do my PhD in the domain of embedded system security with the motivation to learn more on the topic.
Since you got your PhD, not too long ago, you already worked in a few companies. Was your decision to go to the industry motivated by the will to do more applied work, rather than fundamental research?
During my engineering studies, I had the opportunity to do internships in a research lab and several companies. I enjoyed different aspects of both work environments: for example, real-life problems in industry and relative freedom in research. That is one main reason, why I chose to do a PhD in an industrial environment. The principal contribution of my PhD was indeed to integrate and evaluate security solutions into industrial embedded mixed-criticality systems, using a commercial industrial platform.
The STEM areas are typically male dominated. Did you felt any difference concerning the opportunities given to women, when moving from an academic environment to the industry?
I did not feel a difference between my studies in the university and working in the industry in regard to opportunities given to women. As there were very few women in my computer science course, I logically met very few women with programming skills in the companies where I worked.
Can you tell us about what you are working on in the context of ADMORPH?
In ADMORPH, I am responsible for SYSGO’s contributions in the project. I have been working on developing PikeOS (i.e. SYSGO’s real-time hypervisor) extensions to support runtime mechanisms in ADMORPH system architecture. These include fault detection methods and adaptation solutions to support ADMORPH use-cases.
My main focus is on the topic of fault and intrusion detection, which is directly related to my PhD work. I contributed to the implementation of a hardware-assisted framework based on ARM CoreSight processor tracing technology to implement transparent control-flow monitoring of a user-level application during runtime. I participated to the evaluation of this monitoring framework in a real-life environment using PikeOS real-time hypervisor and a commercial hardware target.
Finally, if you would be talking to young girls about their future career, would you try to convince them about the relevance of working in a technological area? How would you motivate them?
Since I started to study general science and then when I specialized in computer science, the ratio of girls fell down below 10%. In my opinion, this result is mostly due to personal choices (without constraint), which are influenced by our day-to-day environment: family, role models, school, medias, politics, etc. Changing the society towards more gender equality is a non-trivial political goal. I do not think that one speech can easily make someone change his/her mind on such personal matter.
Hence, more than convincing young girls to choose a career in a technological area, I would emphasize the need for them to do what they like and to be independent, so that they can be free to make their own choices.
Thanks a lot for your answers, Marine!
