Marian Buschsieweke

Embedded Development | Security | R&D

My passion is embedded development including both hardware design and software engineering. Currently I am working as embedded software engineer. Before that I was research assistant and worked in the security of highly constrained connected devices with a focus on access control.

About Me

I am an embedded software engineer working with a highly motivated and skilled team to develop embedded solutions according to customer needs. The projects and challenges we face are as diverse as the customer set.

Before that I was a research assistant working in the domain of security for highly constrained IoT devices (think: MCUs) with a focus on access control. For that research I build various IoT prototypes, which allowed me to gain expertise in PCB design and firmware development.

During my career I gained extensive experience in writing proposal for third party funded projects and assisting in the organization and technical lead of such projects. I have supervised more than a dozen BSc and MSc thesis, assisted in lectures, and lead more tutorials and software projects than I can count.

By contributing to various open source projects I gained significant knowledge as developer: I become one of the core contributors and maintainers of RIOT-OS and I am currently maintaining 100+ packages in Alpine Linux.

Projects

Lightweight Capability Based Access Control (LCap)
Research Security IoT Access Control
Lightweight Capability Based Access Control (LCap)

With LCap I am proposing a concept that brings the concept of capability based access control to even the most constrained devices by being radically simple. While LCap has not received the amount of scrutiny by independent security analyses needed to deploy it, it proves a point: Radically reducing complexity of access control does work in practise and at scale: On the hand, the distributed architecture allows to build infrastructure independently and without coordination, allowing to scale the technology up to millions of devices. On the other hand the radical simplicity results in low overhead and resource requirements, allowing it to scale down to even the most constrained devices.

I hope that this work will inspire future security standards for constraints to strictly limit complexity, so that building secure IoT devices becomes a lot easier.

RIOT-OS
Embedded IoT C
RIOT-OS

RIOT is a free, open source operating system for the Internet of Things with a focus on low resource requirements, ease of use, and a friendly and open community.

I have contributed since May 2018 joined the team of maintainers in November 2018.

One focus point of my 2000+ commits was on low level drivers for network devices or peripherals. The second was on fixing bugs, cleaning up code and improving maintainability.

Many of my research prototypes and my hobby projects are powered by RIOT.

Peripheral Selftesting Shield
Hardware Design Embedded Development Automated Testing
Peripheral Selftesting Shield
A daughter PCB mating with board compatible with the Arduino UNO to assist in automatic self-testing of peripheral drivers. Using my RIOT based firmware this allows to quickly perform a self test of the most important peripherals drivers implementing RIOT’s HAL.
MIoT-Lab
Research Hardware Design Embedded Development
MIoT-Lab

The Magdeburg Internet of Things Lab (MIoT-Lab) at the OVGU Magdeburg is a non-commercial research testbed consisting of 200 nodes containing a Linux powered “edge cloud” class board and a highly embedded board.

I contributed the hardware design of the highly embedded board, including the connectivity and power monitoring solution.

Dual Band IEEE 802.15.4 Transceiver
Hardware Design KiCad
Dual Band IEEE 802.15.4 Transceiver

A breakout board for the AT86RF215 transceiver. This is the main connectivity option for the highly embedded board of the MIoT-Lab testbed.

The pinout is compatible with the openlabs.co Raspberry Pi 802.15.4 module that is a breakout of the single band IEEE 802.15.4 AT86RF233 transceiver.

DoRIoT
Research Project Management Technical Lead
DoRIoT
I was among the leading authors of the proposal for the BMBF funded research project “Dynamic Runtime for Organically (dis-)aggregating IoT-processes”. After the proposal was accepted, I assisted in the organization and in the technical lead of the project.
Pressure Fluctuation Monitoring System
Embedded Development Time Synchronization Consulting Research
Pressure Fluctuation Monitoring System
For their FR8-LAB Dr. Arne Henning and Dr. James R. Bell from the DRL reached out to me to help out with the development of the embedded software that allows sampling 200+ pressure sensors at accurately synchronized points in time. I contributed a client side PTP implementation for RIOT that allowed to synchronize STM32 based embedded board with a high level of accuracy. As part of master thesis that James and I supervised a sensor driver was developed that allowed to read out up to 16 sensors in parallel. The student combined this driver with my PTP code to read out 200+ sensors from multiple boards in an accurately synchronized fashion.
Digital Twin of a Car Park
Research Prototype Data Mining Data Analysis
Digital Twin of a Car Park
Together with Contipark we started to develop a digital twin of one of the car parks. The additional insight this yields can allow to navigate customers to free parking lots quickly or detect anomalies in movement patterns that could indicate accidents. In addition, predictions of the wear and tear of the car park can help to better estimate and reduce maintenance cost.

Jobs

Embedded Software Engineer - ML!PA Consulting GmbH
Since September 2024
I am part of excellent embedded software team at ML!PA as Embedded Software Engineer. It is exciting to work as part of a highly skilled and motivated team on various innovative embedded projects to meet and exceed the challenging specifications of our clients.
Research Assistant - OVGU
May 2017 - March 2024
I conducted research in the field of security for IoT devices with a focus on access control. My other tasks included: Writing proposal for third-party funded projects, assisting the management and technical lead of such projects, assisting in lectures, supervising thesis, and leading tutorials and software projects.
Software Engineer - deister
April 2016 - November 2016
I developed a new user interface used to manage, configure and update the RFID based access control solutions of deister electronic with a focus on easy of use for small and medium sized deployments.
Interim Software Engineer - MBB
July 2015 - September 2015
In my internship at MBB Fertigungstechnik GmbH I contributed to the BMBF funded APPsist research project: I developed an industry 4.0 monitoring software for that interfaced with PLCs and provided the data via HTTP/REST APIs with the aim of detecting faults quickly and assisting to restore the operating status of factory equipment.
First Level Support - DVZ
October 2013 - Dezember 2015
As student assistant in the first level support I helped to resolve countless issues and financed my studies in computer science.

Education

Ongoing
PhD in Computer Science
Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg
I am currently finalizing my manuscript on access control for highly constrained devices in the IoT.
Februrary 2017
MSc in Computer Science
Westfählische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Grade: 1.7
My focus of studies was computer networks, operating systems, and software engineering. The major practical component in the curriculum is the software project, in which students can select among a number of topics. I chose to develop in a small team of students an implementation of the C++ standard template with a focus on a high level of parallel execution, which was compiled for GPUs using an experimental LLVM/SPIR based toolchain. In my master thesis I already provided the first building blocks for my PhD thesis on access control for constrained devices.
June 2015
BSc in Computer Science
Westfählische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Grade: 2.4
In the same way the software project was the major practical component of the master curriculum, it also is the corner stone of the applied computer science aspects in the bachelors course. I chose to implement RFC 7252 in a small team of students. In my bachelor thesis I reverse engineered the service interface of a heating system and developed a network protocol for efficient transmission of sensor data via wireless networks. This protocol was then used for data acquisition of the heating system. My bachelor thesis was nominated for the “Förderpreis der Angewandten Informatik”. While ultimately two other theses won the price, it was the only bachelor thesis in the group of the 8 nominees out of all theses submitted in 2015 at the University Münster.
June 2009
Abitur
Evangelisch Stiftisches Gymnasium
Grade: 1.5
In school I chose MINT focused curriculum with Math and Chemistry as advanced courses (“Leistungskurse”) and Physics, Biology, and Computer Science as regular courses. I regularly participated in the Math Olympics and scored well; I even won first place once at school level.