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My current research project - and the main topic of my PhD thesis - is about developing a *formal model* of the [Rust programming language](https://www.rust-lang.org/) and its type system.
-Rust is an attempt of Mozilla to find a sweet spot in the design space of programming languages: A language that's safe to use, convenient for programmers, and guards against memory errors and thread unsafety.
+Rust is an attempt of Mozilla to find a sweet spot in the design space of programming languages: A language that's safe to use, convenient for programmers, provides low-level control (making it a systems language) and guards against memory errors and thread unsafety.
Other have [said](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5vzLKg7y-k) and [written](http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/why-rust.pdf) a lot on why we need such a language, so I won't lose any more words on this.
Let me just use this opportunity for a shameless plug: If you are curious and want to learn Rust, check out [Rust-101](https://www.ralfj.de/projects/rust-101/main.html), a hands-on Rust tutorial I wrote.
I am going to assume some basic familiarity with Rust in the following.