Meet Our Team: 10 Questions for Işil Dillig
Get to know the people who make Veridise special
“Meet Our Team” is a blog series where we introduce you to the people who add the special sauce to Veridise and make our company so incredible.
Today, we virtually “sit down” with one of our co-founders — the Veridise President Işil Dillig.
First things first: how do you pronounce Işil? Simple — it’s “Ishil”!
Işil is a 2015 Sloan Fellow and a recipient of an NSF CAREER award. Currently, she is serving on the ACM SIGPLAN Executive Committee and co-chairing SIGPLAN Awards. She also leads the UToPiA research group.
Işil is a natural-born leader, and an avid educator and academic. You will often find her juggling multiple challenging tasks at the same time, jumping from meeting to meeting and generally proving that you can do it all.
Without further ado, let’s ask her 10 questions and see what she says!
Tell us a bit about yourself. Who’s Işil Dillig?
I’m one of the co-founders of Veridise and also a Computer Science professor at UT Austin. I grew up in Istanbul, Turkey and moved to the US right after high school to attend college at Stanford. As an undergrad, I liked Stanford so much that I ended up sticking around for my PhD.
My PhD was also in computer science and focused mostly on program analysis and verification — that is, developing automated techniques to find bugs in programs or to prove that none exist. I joined UT Austin shortly after finishing my PhD and have been a faculty member there for almost a decade now (wow, time flies!).
You are one of the founders of Veridise? What’s the “origin story” of the company, how did it all get started?
Oh, yes, Veridise’s origin story is an interesting one! I’ve been doing research on smart contract verification since 2018, and Jon Stephens was a PhD student of mine working on this topic. Separately, my former PhD student Yu Feng (who is a UCSB CS professor) was also working on similar things, so we decided to collaborate. I traveled to Santa Barbara to visit Yu in December 2021 and kickstart the collaboration.
At some point during my visit, we went for a hike and Yu broached the topic of starting a blockchain security company. He asked if I’d be interested. So, Jon, Yu, Yanju (Yu’s PhD student), and I decided to join forces and started talking to investors shortly after…
What are your hopes and dreams for Veridise? Where do you want to take the company in the near future?
My main focus for Veridise right now is that we build the best technology out there for securing blockchain applications.
I am truly excited about the Security-as-a-Service product suite that we are building and see it as a game-changer: rather than coding something up and hiring an external firm to do an audit, our suite will allow developers to get feedback in real time and find security vulnerabilities as they develop the code.
Of course, I’m not saying that this will entirely obviate the need for expert audits before deployment, but I do think it will make a big difference in code quality of individual projects, and more broadly, result in improved security for all blockchain applications.
What’s the secret sauce to Veridise?
People, people, people! I think we have an absolutely amazing team consisting of the best researchers and developers, and everyone at Veridise is passionate about what they are doing.
I think having a great team of smart people who enjoy working together is the secret sauce behind any successful start-up.
Let’s take a step back: how did you get into computer science? What do you love the most about it and Web3 security and, what if anything would you change?
Funnily, I kind of got into computer science by accident. When I first started college, I really wasn’t thinking of becoming a CS major but I ended up really enjoying the first few CS classes I took at Stanford and then decided to declare CS as my major.
What I like about CS, and my research area in particular, is that it is the perfect combination of intellectual rigor and real-world impact.
As for Web3/blockchain/DeFi, I like that people care about security and take it seriously. However, I also do think that there is too much of a reliance on third-party audits only and that people should be using more automated tools as they write code. And that’s why I’m so excited about this product suite we are building! I want automated security analysis tools to be at the fingertips of all Web3 project developers.
What can we find you doing when you’re not teaching or working?
I love traveling! If I can afford to take some time off, I love seeing new places and experiencing different cultures. I also love photography, hiking, and scuba diving, so I try to combine my travels with these other hobbies. If you are asking about more everyday “chilling” activities, I like cooking and trying new recipes and spending time with my friends and family.
What’s one book you’ll never stop recommending to people?
To be honest, it’s hard to pick a single book to recommend… One of the books I end up gifting a lot to people, though, is “Surely, you’re joking Mr. Feynman”. It’s witty and frank, somehow it’s a book that often resonates with people in my circle.
Are there any blockchain/crypto/DeFi projects that excite you? If yes, why?
Some of the projects like VitaDAO in the DeSci space seem pretty cool!
How do you feel about AI — is it the beginning of a new era, the end of humanity as we know it or somewhere inbetween?
Somewhere in between — it’s both exciting and scary at the same time! On the one hand, models like GPT can greatly boost our productivity, but some of the potential use cases are truly worrisome — for example, have you heard of WormGPT (a GPT Alternative For BlackHat)?
Like most new technology, modern AI is also a double-edged sword.
Pineapple on pizza: yes or no?
Oh, please. Absolutely not.
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