Research projects will strengthen eBPF programmability, runtime safety, and datacenter energy efficiency through verifier-cooperative instrumentation and QoS-aware power management
SAN FRANCISCO – September 16, 2025 – The eBPF Foundation, which focuses on advancing the state of the art for eBPF by directing upstream development, promoting the use of the technology and its benefits, and improving the security and robustness of eBPF as a whole, has awarded two universities each a $50,000 unrestricted research grant to support projects that will benefit the eBPF community.
The 2025 recipients were selected from a competitive pool of 27 proposals from 23 universities by the eBPF Steering Committee, which consists of lead maintainers in the eBPF ecosystem. Each winning project addresses pressing challenges in the evolution of eBPF, from improving safety guarantees to enabling new capabilities in modern datacenter environments.
eBPF is a technology that originated in the Linux kernel and has since grown into a general purpose computing layer to add programmability into infrastructure. It allows developers to extend the kernel’s capabilities safely and efficiently, without modifying source code or loading modules, while maintaining strong safety guarantees. Today, eBPF powers production systems from small deployments to hyperscale clouds across billions of devices.
The 2025 research grant recipients and their projects are:
- Enhancing Flexibility and Safety of eBPF Programs through Verifier-Cooperative Instrumentation – Ryan Huang, Associate Professor, University of Michigan
This project introduces EPASS, which extends static verification in eBPF by integrating a verifier-cooperative runtime enforcement approach. This framework transforms eBPF programs at load time by instrumenting runtime checks guided by verifier analysis, which improves programmability while preserving kernel safety guarantees. The approach aims to resolve false rejections, mitigate verifier blind spots, and strengthen runtime defenses against emerging vulnerabilities. A prototype of EPASS successfully resolved 91% of previously rejected but safe programs and mitigated 14 known vulnerabilities with less than 2% performance overhead. - eBPF Governors: QoS-aware Agile Power Management for Latency-Critical Datacenter Workloads – Daniel Wong, Associate Professor, University of California, Riverside
This project proposes a new class of eBPF-based power governors that enable responsive, QoS-aware dynamic power management in datacenters. By embedding governors directly in eBPF, the work introduces a flexible, low-overhead mechanism to coordinate CPU frequency and idle states while incorporating workload latency feedback. Initial results show the approach can sustain up to 19% power savings under high workload volatility without compromising performance.
“The proposals selected this year highlight how eBPF continues to advance as a foundation for the next generation of infrastructure software,” said Bill Mulligan eBPF Foundation Board Member. “By improving safety guarantees and extending programmability into areas like datacenter energy efficiency, these projects show how eBPF is not just making the kernel safer and easier to program, but also enabling entirely new capabilities to address the infrastructure challenges of today and tomorrow. We are excited to support these projects and look forward to the contributions they will make to the eBPF ecosystem.”
The purpose of the eBPF Foundation Research Grant program is two-fold:
- To improve the functionality, security, and programmability of eBPF through research driven innovation.
- To provide funding directly to educational institutions, ensuring that students, researchers, and professors gain valuable experience with eBPF while advancing open source technology.
Summary reports of the projects’ results will be published in 2026, along with a new request for proposals for the next round of funding.
More information about the grant program can be found at: https://ebpf.foundation/funding-opportunities/research-fund/.
About the eBPF Foundation
The eBPF Foundation was created to advance eBPF as an open, shared technology for programmable infrastructure. It brings together a cross-platform community of maintainers and organizations working upstream to evolve eBPF’s capabilities while ensuring its safety and security. Foundation members collaborate on common technical priorities, security best practices, and a roadmap that supports eBPF across kernels, operating systems, and enterprise environments. More information is available at: https://www.ebpf.foundation.