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Introduction

Hi ! I'm Amelia (she/her), a Computer Scientist from Geneva - Switzerland. I'm currently a PhD student in Computer Science in the Programming Languages and System group at Princeton University (Princeton SNS), advised by Mae Milano. My work is at the intersection of Programming Languages and Computer Architecture, where I focus on designing novel languages and paradigms for hardware-software co-design and verification.

In the past, I was a Compiler Engineer at SiFive in Berkeley (California), working on the verification features of Chisel and CIRCT. I got my MSc in Computer Science, majoring in Secure and Reliable Systems with a minor in Computer Graphics, from ETH Zurich, and my BSc in Computer Science from EPFL.

I have also been affiliated to the SLICE Lab in the EECS department at UC Berkeley, where I was a Visiting Student Researcher and worked on temporal property synthesis and formal verification, advised by Kevin Laeufer. Before that, I worked with Martin Schoeberl as a Research Assistant in the Embedded Systems Engineering group at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), where I looked into reimagining UVM for Chisel.

I am a frequent contributor to both CIRCT and Chisel, mostly working on their respective verification features. I generally only write FOSS code, and I am always interested in learning about other cool FOSS projects! I also have a love for video games, and have developped a few FOSS games, some of which are available on itch.io.

News

  • Dec'25
    I Co-hosted NJPLS at Princeton for the first time! This was a lovely experience and I hope to have another change to orgranize the event next time it's at Princeton!
  • Feb'25
    My short position paper on converting SVA properties to synthesizable hardware was accepted at the LATTE workshop at ASPLOS! Looking forward to the interesting discussions there!
  • Jan'25
    I gave a talk at the University of Cambridge about my work on improving the state of hardware verification in high-level hardware languages.
  • Dec'24
    I attended my first NJPLS at Cornell Tech! Loved to have met so many great people there!
  • Nov'24
    I presented a poster for my work on Scalable Formal Verirification in High-Level Hardware Languages at the Ivy Collective Doctoral Engineering Symposium at Hardvard University!
  • Sep'24
    I gave a talk about my on-going work on Modularizing Formal Verirification in CIRCT at the CIRCT ODM.

Current Projects

  • A Unified Language for Hardware-Software Co-design
    Designing a language specifically for developing hardware accelerated systems (both hardware and the software driving it), using a reactive programming paradigm.
    Collaborators: Kevin Laeufer, Mae Milano
    Status: Main dissertation project
    June 2025 - Present
    ( WIP )
  • Deductive Reasoning for Hardware Verification
    Designing a deductive verification system for high-level hardware languages, built around the CIRCT compiler.
    Collaborators: Kevin Laeufer, Fabian Schuiki, Bea Healy
    Status: Current focus (~80% complete)
    Oct. 2023 - Present
    ( dvrtl / CIRCT / dvrtl-spec [2025] / Slides [2025], [2024] / Poster [2024] / Report [2024] )
  • Building a Next-Generation Clash Compiler
    Porting the haskell-based High-Level hardware language to the CIRCT compiler infrastructure.
    Collaborators: Gongqi Huang
    Status: Side project
    August 2025 - Present
    ( repo )

Publications

  • Incremental Conversion of SVA Properties to Synthesizable Hardware -- Mar'25
    Amelia Dobis, Fabian Schuiki, and Mae Milano
    LATTE'25 ( Paper PDF )
  • Formal Verification of Hardware using MLIR -- Apr'24
    Amelia Dobis
    Master Thesis ( Paper PDF / GitHub / DOI Link )
  • Verification of Chisel Hardware Designs with ChiselVerify -- Feb'23
    Amelia Dobis, Kevin Laeufer, Hans Jakob Damsgaard, Tjark Petersen, Kasper Hesse, Enrico Tolotto, Simon Thye Andersen, Richard Lin, and Martin Schoeberl
    Microprocessors and Microsystems ( Paper PDF / GitHub / DOI Link )
  • Enabling Coverage-Based Verification in Chisel -- May'22
    Amelia Dobis, Hans Jakob Damsgaard, Enrico Tolotto, Kasper Hesse, Tjark Petersen, and Martin Schoeberl
    ETS 2022 ( Paper PDF / GitHub / DOI Link )
  • Towards Functional Coverage-Driven Fuzzing for Chisel Designs -- Nov'21
    Amelia Dobis, Tjark Petersen, and Martin Schoeberl
    WOSET 2021 ( Paper PDF / GitHub )
  • ChiselVerify: An Open-Source Hardware Verification Library for Chisel and Scala -- Oct'21
    Amelia Dobis, Tjark Petersen, Hans Jakob Damsgaard, Kasper Hesse, Enrico Tolotto, Simon Thye Andersen, Richard Lin, and Martin Schoeberl
    Best Paper Award
    NorCaS 2021 ( Paper PDF / GitHub / DOI Link )

Academic Advisors